360-Degree Tri-Modal Scanning: Engineering a Modular Multi-Sensor Platform for Semantic Enrichment of BIM Models

Abstract

Abstract. Point clouds, image data, and corresponding processing algorithms are intensively investigated to create and enrich Building Information Models (BIM) with as-is information and maintain their value across the building lifecycle. Point clouds can be captured using LiDAR and enriched with color information from images. Complementary to such dual-sensor systems, thermography captures the infrared light spectrum, giving insight into the temperature distribution on an object’s surface and allowing a diagnosis of the as-is energetic health of buildings beyond what humans can see. Although the three sensor modes are commonly used in pair-wise combinations, only a few systems leveraging the power of tri-modal sensor fusion have been proposed. This paper introduces a sensor system comprising LiDAR, RGB, and a radiometric thermal infrared sensor that can capture a 360-degree range through bi-axial rotation. The resulting tri-modal data is fused to a thermo-color point cloud from which temperature values are derived for a standard indoor building setting. Qualitative data analysis shows the potential for unlocking further object semantics in a state-of-the-art Scan-to-BIM pipeline. Furthermore, an outlook is provided on the cross-modal usage of semantic segmentation for automatic, accurate temperature calculations.