Patent Document ID: 9875404
Application ID: 14984613
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of selecting Ground Control Points (GCPs) for a geodetic network, comprising: with a computer, receiving more than one photographic image of the ground in a given area on the Earth; with a computer, detecting interest points in each photographic image and generating an interest point descriptor and a geo-location for each interest point; with a computer, clustering the interest points in the more than one photographic image based on geo-location to create clusters of interest points, wherein at least one of the clusters includes at least one interest point from a first one of the more than one photographic image and at least one interest point from a second one of the more than one photographic image; with a computer, comparing the interest point descriptors for the interest points within each cluster; with a computer, grouping at least some of the interest points based on the comparison; and with a computer, selecting certain groups as GCPs that directly tie together two or more received photographic images of the ground in a given area on the ground, wherein the selecting includes considering the similarity of the geo-locations and of the descriptors of the interest points and considering the quantity of interest points within a group.