Automatic calibration of airborne LiDAR installation angle based on point cloud conjugate matching

Abstract

Airborne LiDAR plays an important role in island detection, shallow ocean topography mapping and intertidal zone detection. The installation angle error usually leads to deviation between overlapping strips, which affects the accuracy of LiDAR point cloud data. However, previous methods had complex requirements for routes and calibration field, leading to inefficient calibration. This paper proposes an automatic installation angle error calibration algorithm based on point cloud conjugate matching, which does not require strict route design and field selection. In the algorithm, the conjugated point cloud is extracted by selecting routes and processing point cloud, and the installation angle error is calculated by matching the conjugate point cloud. Airborne LiDAR data from Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics is utilized to verify the method which show that the overlap degree of conjugate point clouds can reach 90% in different routes. This method is expected to dramatically improve the efficiency of system calibration and the convenience of measurement.