Exploration of temperature effect on videogrammetric technique for displacement monitoring

There has been a sustained interest towards the non-contact structural displacement measurement by means of videogrammetric technique. On the way forward, one of the major concerns is the spurious image drift induced by temperature variation. This study therefore carries out an investigation into the temperature effect of videogrammetric technique, focusing on the exploration of the mechanism behind the temperature effect and the elimination of the temperature-caused measurement error. 2D videogrammetric measurement tests under monotonic or cyclic temperature variation are first performed. Features of measurement error and the casual relationship between temperature variation and measurement error are then studied. The variation of the temperature of digital camera is identified as the main cause of measurement error. An excellent linear relationship between them is revealed. After that, camera parameters are extracted from the mapping between world coordinates and pixels coordinates of the calibration targets. The coordinates of principle point and focal lengths show variations well correlated with temperature variation. The measurement error is thought to be an outcome mainly attributed to the variation of the coordinates of principle point. An approach for eliminating temperature-caused measurement error is finally proposed. Correlation models between camera parameters and temperature are formulated. Thereby, camera parameters under different temperature conditions can be predicted and the camera projective matrix can be updated accordingly. By reconstructing the world coordinates with the updated camera projective matrix, the temperature-caused measurement error is eliminated. A satisfactory performance has been achieved by the proposed approach in eliminating the temperature-caused measurement error.