High precision videogrammetric technique for structural dynamic response measurement

The past few years have seen unprecedented technological advancement in commercial digital cameras. The image resolution of these cameras has increased from below 1 million pixels a few years ago to over 10 million pixels today, with little increase in cost. These low cost high-resolution digital cameras have opened up new areas of application for various engineering disciplines, including civil engineering. The objective of this study is to investigate the application of videogrammetric principle for measuring structural response. A general videogrammetric framework for high precision measurement of three-dimensional structural response is proposed using two commercial digital cameras. Some important issues such as camera calibration, feature point detection and 3D point reconstruction are discussed. In order to evaluate the performance of the technique, three experiments involving capturing the trajectories of different types of motion are performed. The test results indicate that the videogrammetric technique can provide sub-pixel measurement accuracy and can be used to measure both static and dynamic responses of structures in laboratory