A brief history of total stations, what is the principle of total stations?

Total station is the process of people in the process of angle measurement automation, all kinds of electronic theodolite play a huge role in a variety of surveying and mapping operations.

The development of total station has gone through several stages, from the combination of photoelectric rangefinder and optical theodolite, or the combination of photoelectric rangefinder and electronic theodolite, to the integral combination of the optical axis of the photoelectric rangefinder and the collimation axis of the theodolite into a coaxial integral total station.

Originally, the distance measurement of the tachymeter was achieved by optical methods, and we called this tachymeter "optical tachymeter". In fact, the "optical tachymeter" refers to a theodolite with a line-of-sight wire, the plane position of the measured point is determined by the direction measurement and optical line-of-sight distance, and the elevation is determined by the triangulation method.

Optical tachometers with "line-of-sight wires" are widely used because they are fast and easy, and they have the advantage of measuring short distances (within 100 meters) and with low accuracy of 500 meters, such as the determination of broken parts.

With the advent of electronic ranging technology, the development of tachymeters has been greatly promoted. The electromagnetic wave rangefinder is used instead of the optical line-of-sight theodolite, which makes the measurement range larger, the measurement time shorter, and the accuracy higher. Tachymeters, whose distances are measured by electromagnetic rangefinders, are generally referred to as "electronic tachymeters."

However, with the advent of electronic goniometric technology. The concept of "electronic tachymeter" has changed accordingly, and it is divided into semi-station electronic tachymeter and full-station electronic tachymeter according to different angle measurement methods. Half-station electronic tachymeter refers to an electronic tachymeter that uses optical methods to measure angles, and is also called "ranging theodolite".

This tachymeter was an early adopter and has been continuously improved to input optical angle readings into the rangefinder via a keypad, calculate the slant distance, and finally derive the flat distance, elevation difference, direction angle, and coordinate difference, all of which can be automatically transferred to external memory. The total station electronic tachymeter is a three-dimensional coordinate measuring system composed of electronic angle measurement, electronic ranging, electronic calculation and data storage unit, etc., the measurement results can be automatically displayed, and can exchange information with peripheral equipment multi-functional measuring instrument. Because the total station electronic tachymeter has realized the electronic and integrated measurement and processing process more perfectly, it is also commonly called the total station electronic tachymeter or the total station for short.

At the end of the eighties of the 20th century, according to the imbalance in the development of electronic angle measuring system and electronic ranging system, the total station was divided into two categories, namely building block type and integral type.

Since the nineties of the 20th century, it has basically developed into an integral total station.

Total station: total station type electronic rangefinder.

Total station is a set of optical, mechanical, electrical as one of the new type of angle measuring instrument, compared with the optical theodolite electronic theodolite will be optical dial for photoelectric total station scanning dial, the artificial optical micrometer reading instead of automatic recording and display of reading, so that the angle measurement operation is simplified, and can avoid the generation of reading error. The automatic recording, storage, and calculation functions of the electronic theodolite, as well as the data communication function, further improve the degree of automation of the measurement operation.

The difference between the total station and the optical theodolite is the dial reading and display system, the horizontal and vertical dials and the reading device of the electronic theodolite are respectively using two identical grating dials (or coding disks) and reading sensors for angle measurement. According to the angle measurement accuracy, it can be divided into several grades, such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, etc

To put it simply, it is a theodolite plus a rangefinder, plus some calculation applets!

Everything is the same, it's just a trigonometric function.