Mobile Mapping - An Emerging Technology For Spatial Data Acquisition

Mobile mapping has been the subject of significant research and development by several research teams over the past decade. A mobile mapping system consists mainly of a moving platform, navigation sensors, and mapping sensors. The mobile platform may be a land vehicle, a vessel, or an aircraft. Generally, the navigation sensors, such as GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers, vehicle wheel sensors, and INS (Inertial Navigation System), provide both the track of the vehicle and positional and orientational information of the mapping sensors. Objects to be surveyed are sensed directly by mapping sensors, for instance CCD (Charge Coupled Device) cameras, laser rangers, and radar sensors. Since the orientation parameters of the mapping sensors are estimated directly by the navigation sensors, complicated computations such as photogrammetric triangulation are greatly simplified or avoided. Spatial information of the objects is extracted directly from the georeferenced mapping sensor data by integrating navigation sensor data. Mobile mapping technology has evolved to a stage which allows mapping and GIS industries to apply it in order to obtain high flexibility in data acquisition, more information with less time and effort, and high productivity. In addition, a successful extension of this technology to helicopter borne and airborne systems will provide a powerful tool for large scale and medium scale spatial data acquisition and database updating. This paper provides a systematic introduction to the use of mobile mapping technology for spatial data acquisition. Issues related to the basic principle, data processing, automation, achievable accuracies and a break down of errors are given. Application considerations and application examples of the technology in highway and utility mapping are described. Finally, the perspective of the mobile mapping technology is discussed.