Solving bundle block adjustment by generalized anisotropic Procrustes analysis

The paper presents a new analytical tool to solve the classical photogrammetric bundle block adjustment. The analytical model is based on the generalized extension of the anisotropic row-scaling Procrustes analysis, that has been recently proposed by the same authors to solve the image exterior orientation problem. The main advantage of the method is given by the fact that the problem solution does not require any approximate value of the unknown parameters, nor any linearization procedure. Moreover, the algorithm is exceedingly simple to describe and easy to implement. Empirical results indicate that a zero-information initialization of the iterative relaxation procedure leads almost always to the correct final least squares solution. Experiments confirm the accuracy of the proposed method, when compared to the results obtained by applying a classical photogrammetric bundle block adjustment.