Our main goal is to develop the most user-friendly and highly accurate photogrammetric software on the market, to serve a wide range of users. Our main product, Elcovision 10, was originally developed at Wild Leitz in 1988 for close-range applications, and has been under constant ­development ever since. It was the first photogram­met­ric software in the world to be based on the personal computer. The modu­lar design facilitates a high degree of flexi­bility, and the most popular modules are the AutoCAD Plug­ins which turn ­AutoCAD into a photogram­metric workstation.

AST India
As a small company with staff numbers varying from five to eight, our management hierarchy is very flat. We aim to create a friendly and stimulating work environment for our ­employees, all of whom have an engineering background ­rather than being trained as man­agers, and are greatly helped in this by our beautiful location in the middle of the Alps, near Lake Constance. Our main revenue stems from international sales of Elcovision 10 and its tools; we have a dealer network covering nearly all ­continents. To avoid competing with our customers we have chosen not to provide services. In February 2006 we founded Assurgent Technology Solutions (AST) India, today one of the fastest growing com­panies on the sub-continent. AST started out with a few employees and by May 2008 numbered more than three thousand. PMS acts as global head office for this KPO (Knowledge Processing Outsourcing) company and ser­vice provider for India and South East Asia.

Applications
Elcovision 10 clients include survey companies, heritage conservation experts, police forces, military forces and mechanical engineers facing unusual measuring/surveying tasks. Applications include architectural façade documentation, small area aerial surveying such as documentation of gravel pit and garbage dump, traffic-accident survey, forensic studies such as crime-scene documentation, and special applications including blood stain/splatter analysis.

Breakthrough
In 2004, after a long period of fundamental research into computer vision, we began development of what we think is a major breakthrough: fully automatic image orientation without signalised points or any restrictions on camera type. It is possible in any sort of image whatsoever to detect homologous points that are then used to perform fully automatic image orientation. This works equally well with terres­trial and aerial images and without any prior information concerning camera parameters. As by-product, our software can calculate dense and highly accurate point-clouds, suitable for volume calculation and contour generation. During small aerial survey, around sixty to a hundred images are taken from heights varying between 200m and 300m and covering 0.3 to 0.5km2. From this input the software calculates 80,000 to 120,000 surface points with height accuracy of 3cm to 5cm, without any user intervention. Since no information is needed regarding camera point of view, any sort of aircraft can be used, even ultra-light. The pictures may be taken freehand, without the need for a special camera platform. Scale information is derived from a few ground-control points, usual­ly measured by GPS.

Future Aims
We are attempting to further improve automatic measurement. In the near future the fully auto­matically drawn generation of architectural and heritage sites will become a reality. This will open up many new applications and trigger a comeback in many fields where the laser-scanner has taken over. We also want to continue our growth in the rapidly developing Indian and South East Asian markets, especially through our daughter companies there.