<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-363-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Methodological framework for determining vertical angular variances of terrestrial laser scanners</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hummelsberger</surname>
<given-names>Jakob</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0005-9842-135X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>AbdelGafar</surname>
<given-names>Omar</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0001-3746-8980</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lichti</surname>
<given-names>Derek</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Holst</surname>
<given-names>Christoph</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Chair of Engineering Geodesy, TUM School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Department of Geomatics Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>03</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XI-1-2026</volume>
<fpage>363</fpage>
<lpage>371</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Jakob Hummelsberger et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-1-2026/363/2026/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-363-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-1-2026/363/2026/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-363-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-1-2026/363/2026/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-363-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-1-2026/363/2026/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-363-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Information on the precision of TLS observables is limited. While the range measurement precision can be modeled with respect to the intensity measurement nowadays, the precision of the angular observations still relies on the claims of the manufacturer. This contribution proposes a method to determine the vertical angular variance of a TLS using profile measurements. Supported by a simulation, which serves as proof-of concept, the methodology is laid out. In the end, measurements with a &lt;em&gt;Z+F IMAGER&lt;/em&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&amp;reg;&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;em&gt;5016A&lt;/em&gt; are evaluated. A dependency of the angular standard deviation on the rotational speed of the beam deflection unit is observed. The estimation precision of the angular standard deviation is high with consistent values for differing ranges. The estimated angular standard deviations are much lower than the claims of the manufacturer starting with roughly 2&amp;rdquo; for the slowest rotating settings, up to 4&amp;rdquo; for the fastest. All this can be achieved by scanning a reflectivity target with at least two adjacent fields of different homogeneous reflectivity. This needs to be aligned to the scanner to reduce and eliminate as many contributing error sources as possible. The target itself provides the fields and the transitions needed to perform the in-situ estimation of the angular precision.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="9"/></counts>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>