Abstract
The technology of mobile laser scanning (MLS) has developed rapidly in recent years. This speedy development is evidenced by the emergence of a variety of MLS systems in commercial market and academic institutions. However, the producers tend to supply the specifications of the individual sensors in a generic sense, and this is not enough for guiding the choice of a MLS system for a specific application case. So far, the research efforts comparing the efficacy ranges of the existing MLS systems have been little reported. To fill this gap, this study examined the performance of three typical MLS systems (Riegl VMX-250, Roamer and Sensei) in terms of target representation. Retrievals of window areas and lighting pole radiuses served as representative cases, as these parameters correspond to the spatial scales from meter to centimeter. The evaluations showed that the VMX-250 with highest sampling density did best, and thus, it was preferred in the scenario of this study. If both the cost and efficacy were regarded, Roamer was a choice of compromise. Therefore, an application-oriented scheme was suggested for selecting MLS systems to acquire the desired performance.
Highlights
As a state-of-the-art technology for mapping and remote sensing, mobile laser scanning (MLS) can serve as an effective solution for surveying complex situations, such as urban environments and transportation corridors
There are plenty of MLS systems developed by academic institutions, and the VLMS [3], Roamer [4], and Sensei [5] are the representative cases of this type
Given that this is a study in target representation, the analysis of MLS performance starts by selecting the objects with representative significance
Summary
As a state-of-the-art technology for mapping and remote sensing, mobile laser scanning (MLS) can serve as an effective solution for surveying complex situations, such as urban environments and transportation corridors. A large number of MLS-based information extraction methods have been developed for, e.g., geographical database update [19], vegetation bio-properties retrieval [20,21,22,23,24,25], transportation landmark surveying [26,27,28,29,30], historical remains documentation [31], roadside environment investigation [32,33,34,35,36,37], and rock-fall hazard monitoring [38] All of these endeavors have effectively expanded the application ranges of MLS systems. With the relationships between the performance and the dominant impact factors exploited, it was attempted to derive the basic rules for guiding the selection of MLS systems
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