The paper presents the results of investigating the effect of increase of observation correlations on detectability and identifiability of a single gross error, the outlier test sensitivity and also the response-based measures of internal reliability of networks. To reduce in a research a practically incomputable number of possible test options when considering all the non-diagonal elements of the correlation matrix as variables, its simplest representation was used being a matrix with all non-diagonal elements of equal values, termed uniform correlation. By raising the common correlation value incrementally, a sequence of matrix configurations could be obtained corresponding to the increasing level of observation correlations. For each of the measures characterizing the above mentioned features of network reliability the effect is presented in a diagram form as a function of the increasing level of observation correlations. The influence of observation correlations on sensitivity of the w -test for correlated observations (Förstner 1983,Teunissen 2006) is investigated in comparison with the original Baarda’s w -test designated for uncorrelated observations, to determine the character of expected sensitivity degradation of the latter when used for correlated observations. The correlation effects obtained for different reliability measures exhibit mutual consistency in a satisfactory extent. As a by-product of the analyses, a simple formula valid for any arbitrary correlation matrix is proposed for transforming the Baarda’s w -test statistics into the w -test statistics for correlated observations.

In the execution of edge detection algorithms and clustering algorithms to segment image containing ore and soil, ore images with very similar textural features cannot be segmented effectively when the two algorithms are used alone. This paper proposes a novel image segmentation method based on the fusion of a confidence edge detection algorithm and a mean shift algorithm, which integrates image color, texture and spatial features. On the basis of the initial segmentation results obtained by the mean shift segmentation algorithm, the edge information of the image is extracted by using the edge detection algorithm based on the confidence degree, and the edge detection results are applied to the initial segmentation region results to optimize and merge the ore or pile belonging to the same region. The experimental results show that this method can successfully overcome the shortcomings of the respective algorithm and has a better segmentation results for the ore, which effectively solves the problem of over segmentation.

Based on the theory of computer vision, a new method for extracting ore from underground mines is proposed. This is based on a combination of RGB images collected by a color industrial camera and a point cloud generated by a 3D ToF camera. Firstly, the mean-shift algorithm combined with the embedded confidence edge detection algorithm is used to segment the RGB ore image into different regions. Secondly, the effective ore regions are classified into large pieces of ore and ore piles consisting of a number of small pieces of ore. The method applied in the classification process is to embed the confidence into the edge detection algorithm which calculates edge distribution around ore regions. Finally, the RGB camera and the 3D ToF camera are calibrated and the camera matrix transformation of the two cameras is obtained. Point cloud fragments are then extracted according to the cross-calibration result. The geometric properties of the ore point cloud are then analysed in the subsequent procedure.