An automatic 3D registration method for rock mass point clouds based on plane detection and polygon matching

Abstract

Point cloud registration is an essential step in the process of 3D reconstruction. Considering that the surface of rock mass is complex and mainly composed of planes, in this paper, we introduce a novel and automatic 3D registration method for rock mass point clouds based on plane detection and polygon matching. Firstly, planes are detected from rock mass point clouds by an efficient tripe-region growing method, and then, the corresponding polygons are calculated by concave hull method. Secondly, PCA-based polygon matching procedure is used for coarse registration. Finally, ICP method is applied to fine registration. The performance of this method was tested in different rock mass point clouds. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed method demonstrates a reliable and stable solution for accurately registering in rock mass scenes.