DAEDALUS: A versatile usable digital clip-on measuring system for Total Stations

DAEDALUS designates a measuring system which was designed and developed at the Geodesy and Geo-dynamics Lab (GGL) at ETH Zurich primarily for auto-mated on-line astro-geodetic measurements. It consists of a small CCD
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camera which can easily be clipped on a Total Station instead of the ordinary eye-piece, a pluggable front lens, a low-cost GNSS receiver, and dedicated software for steering, imaging and on-line processing. The system enables new possibilities for fully automated high-precision digital angle measurements, unaffected by human interference, both in outdoor as well as in indoor applications. Furthermore the software is capable to perform optical target recognition by using various image processing algorithms like least-squares template matching, circle recognition or center of mass operators. Although DAEDALUS was initially designed for astro-geodetic use, the results obtained re-veal new and unexpected possibilities in other disciplines such as automated terrestrial and engineering surveying, deformation, vibration, and frequency analysis and photo-graphic documentation. For applications where event timing is needed, high-precision time-tagged measurements are possible by means of a GNSS receiver, equipped with an external antenna for indoor applications. In addition to some aspects of astro-geodetic measurements the paper describes selected applications using TCA 1800, TCA 2003 and TDA 5005 Total Stations from Leica Geosystems to demonstrate new and still unexploited possibilities of this new technique.