Mobile Laser Scanning Systems Research Articles

PLANAR PROJECTION OF MOBILE LASER SCANNING DATA IN TUNNELS

Abstract. Laser scanning is now a common technology in the surveying and monitoring of large engineering infrastructures, such as tunnels, both in motorways and railways. Extended possibilities exist now with the mobile terrestrial laser scanning systems, which produce very large data sets that need efficient processing techniques in order to facilitate their exploitation and usability. This paper deals with the implementation of a methodology for processing and presenting 3D point clouds acquired by laser scanning in tunnels, making use of the approximately cylindrical shape of tunnels. There is a need for a 2D presentation of the 3D point clouds, in order to facilitate the inspection of important features as well as to easily obtain their spatial location. An algorithm was developed to treat automatically point clouds obtained in tunnels in order to produce rectified images that can be analysed. Tests were carried with data acquired with static and mobile Riegl laser scanning systems, by Artescan company, in highway tunnels in Portugal and Spain, with very satisfactory results. The final planar image is an alternative way of data presentation where image analysis tools can be used to analyze the laser intensity in order to detect problems in the tunnel structure.

Characterization of mobile LiDAR data collected with multiple echoes per pulse from crowns during foliation

As a state-of-the-art technology for fine-scale forest investigation, mobile terrestrial light detection and ranging (LiDAR), also referred to as mobile laser scanning (MLS), recently has been increasingly exploited to improve its performance on this task. One potential solution is to apply special MLS systems with the capability of collecting multiple echoes per pulse (multi-echoes, for short) from canopies. The methodologies of this rationale turned out to perform better but still insufficiently for canopy properties retrieval, owing to their common defective premise. That is, the knowledge of the characteristics of MLS scan data comprising multi-echoes, so far, is in shortage, especially when regarding the dynamic process of tree foliation. As a pioneering work for this challenge, this study attempted to comprehensively analyze the characteristics of MLS multi-echoes collected from tree crowns during foliation. Specifically, new stable multi-echoes-related features were deduced under the schematic frame of relative quantification, in both spatial and temporal sense. “Relative” here briefly means the division operation deployed on the attributes of multi-echoes, individually in terms of the number of echoes, echo width and crown volume integrity, between their different return orders. Then, the “relative” schematic was primarily validated for more stably representing crown properties during foliation, based on the real data that was collected by the Sensei MLS system with a maximum of three echoes per pulse. Further, a case of tree species classification was examined using a linear discriminant classifier, and it was testified that the resultant temporal statistical rules of multi-echoes as the reverse clues can enhance the performance of MLS in applications.

Boresight alignment method for mobile laser scanning systems

Mobile laser scanning (MLS) is the latest approach towards fast and cost-efficient acquisition of 3-dimensional spatial data. Accurately evaluating the boresight alignment in MLS systems is an obvious necessity. However, recent systems available on the market may lack of suitable and efficient practical workflows on how to perform this calibration. This paper discusses an innovative method for accurately determining the boresight alignment of MLS systems by employing 3D laser scanners. Scanning objects using a 3D laser scanner operating in a 2D line-scan mode from various different runs and scan directions provides valuable scan data for determining the angular alignment between inertial measurement unit and laser scanner. Field data is presented demonstrating the final accuracy of the calibration and the high quality of the point cloud acquired during an MLS campaign.