SURVEYING INSTRUMENT AND METHOD OF PROVIDING SURVEY DATA USING A SURVEYING INSTRUMENT

A processing unit is disclosed, which is to be used with a surveying instrument or is part of the surveying instrument, the surveying instrument comprising a telescope unit being mounted for controllable rotation about a horizontal and a vertical axis, and having imaging optics and an array of optical detector elements, each detector element having a location in the array and being responsive to an image projected on the array by the imaging optics to generate data of a pixel representing a point of the image, the instrument further comprising orientation sensors to produce orientation signals representing an orientation of the telescope unit, rotation drives for rotating the telescope unit about the horizontal and vertical axes and a controllable distance- measuring unit to produce a distance signal representing a distance between the instrument and an object to be surveyed along a sighting direction. The processing unit comprises a memory storing instructions and calibration data for relating the location of each optical detector element to a sighting direction and a processor responsive to the instructions to perform the following operations when the processing unit is connected to the surveying instrument: obtaining target region data representing a target region to be surveyed, obtaining projection surface data representing a projection surface, acquiring a set of pixel data produced by the optical detector array representing a two-dimensional image of at least a part of the target region, transforming the set of pixel data to a set of projected image data representing a projection of the image to the projection surface using the calibration data, and storing at least the projected image data as surveying data. Une unité de traitement est utilisée avec un instrument de recherche ou une partie de l'instrument qui comprend une unité télescope montée en vue de tourner autour d'un axe horizontal et vertical et comportant une optique d'imagerie à un réseau d'éléments détecteurs optiques, chaque élément détecteur étant placé dans un réseau et répondant à une image projetée sur le réseau par l'optique d'imagerie afin de générer des données d'un pixel représentant un point de l'image. L'instrument comprend également des capteurs d'orientation destinés à émettre des signaux d'orientation représentant l'orientation de l'unité télescope, des moyens de rotation faisant tourner l'unité télescope autour des axes horizontal et vertical et un unité de mesure à distan