It is possible to use modern total stations for leveling applications. Using digital staffs for relative height transfer gets a higher precision than using automatic target recognition (ATR) for prism detection. The study at hand describes the implementation to automatically read and analyze the code pattern of a digital leveling staff using an Image Assisted Total Station (IATS). The acquired 2-dimensional color image is converted into a binary signal and correlated with the a priori known reference signal. The result is used as initial value for a newly developed, alternative decoding method, in which the height differences of corresponding barcode edges are minimized. In different tests the precision and accuracy of our method is compared with the built-in ATR function of the total station as well as with a digital level. Standard deviations below 10 μm (1σ) prove comparable leveling capabilities of modern total stations – IATS.     «

It is possible to use modern total stations for leveling applications. Using digital staffs for relative height transfer gets a higher precision than using automatic target recognition (ATR) for prism detection. The study at hand describes the implementation to automatically read and analyze the code pattern of a digital leveling staff using an Image Assisted Total Station (IATS). The acquired 2-dimensional color image is converted into a binary signal and correlated with the a priori known refe...     »