Laboratory geometric calibration of areal digital aerial camera

Digital aerial camera is non-metric camera. Geometric calibration, including the determination of interior orientation elements and distortion parameters, is the base of high precision photogrammetry. In this paper, a laboratory geometric calibration system of areal digital aerial cameras is developed. This system uses a collimator and a star tester as the target generator. After measurement of the coordinates of targets on the CCD plane and corresponding angles of parallel lights, the geometric calibration of digital aerial camera can be realized according to the geometric calibration model of this paper. Geometric calibration experiments are taken out based on this system using two kinds of mainstream digital aerial cameras, Cannon EOS 5D Mark II and Hasselblad H3D. Experiment results show that this system can satisfy the calibration requirements of aerial photogrammetric application and prove the correctness and the reliability of this calibration method.