Photogrammetric software as an alternative to 3D laser scanning in an amateur environment

Abstract: Photogrammetric software today is at a level where it is accessible to the mainstream public and without larger effort is able to reconstruct digital 3D models from photographic input.  This thesis investigates the performance of photogrammetricly reconstructed models and evaluates them by comparing the results to their corresponding reconstructed models from a 3D laser scanner with a focus on smaller objects in an amateur environment. The evaluation is performed on four different objects, which are all individually compared to their scanned counterpart. They are compared both with a subjective judgment of quality and by numerically measuring the point-to-point distance on the models. From the results conclusions are drawn that the methods can produce similar results albeit there are many performance factors discovered for a good reconstructions with photogrammetry. The properties of the physical object and the quality of the visual input data stand out as the most important factors.