Photogrammetry and geoinformation trends in large scale mapping

laser scanning Technologies are changing depending upon the development sometimes slow, sometimes very rapid. A typical example is the introduction of the digital photogrammetry which has been established in a very short period because of the obvious advantages. The development in other fields may not be so fast. A typical trend which exists just now is the introduction of digital photogrammetric cameras which started slowly up to solving the operational problems, but now it is coming very fast. Also the very high resolution satellites are entering the field of large scale mapping. The image orientation traditionally based on bundle block adjustment is slowly changing to the combined adjustment with GPS projection centres and now also to the direct sensor orientation, determining the full exterior orientation by a combination of GPS and an inertial measurement unit. Some existing problems with this new technology are solved by a combination of the direct sensor orientation with bundle block adjustment, leading to integrated sensor orientation. The progress of automation in object recognition is slow and still in the field of research. The few published results about real projects do show the today existing limitations, up to now the solutions ar