scholarly journals Comparative Analysis of Different Mobile LiDAR Mapping Systems for Ditch Line Characterization

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 2485
Author(s):  
Yi-Chun Lin ◽  
Raja Manish ◽  
Darcy Bullock ◽  
Ayman Habib
Keyword(s):  
Flow Direction ◽  
Sediment Accumulation ◽  
Digital Terrain Model ◽  
Vertical Direction ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Lidar Data ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Premature Failure ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
Mapping Systems

Maintenance of roadside ditches is important to avoid localized flooding and premature failure of pavements. Scheduling effective preventative maintenance requires a reasonably detailed mapping of the ditch profile to identify areas in need of excavation to remove long-term sediment accumulation. This study utilizes high-resolution, high-quality point clouds collected by mobile LiDAR mapping systems (MLMS) for mapping roadside ditches and performing hydrological analyses. The performance of alternative MLMS units, including an unmanned aerial vehicle, an unmanned ground vehicle, a portable backpack system along with its vehicle-mounted version, a medium-grade wheel-based system, and a high-grade wheel-based system, is evaluated. Point clouds from all the MLMS units are in agreement within the ±3 cm range for solid surfaces and ±7 cm range for vegetated areas along the vertical direction. The portable backpack system that could be carried by a surveyor or mounted on a vehicle is found to be the most cost-effective method for mapping roadside ditches, followed by the medium-grade wheel-based system. Furthermore, a framework for ditch line characterization is proposed and tested using datasets acquired by the medium-grade wheel-based and vehicle-mounted portable systems over a state highway. An existing ground-filtering approach—cloth simulation—is modified to handle variations in point density of mobile LiDAR data. Hydrological analyses, including flow direction and flow accumulation, are applied to extract the drainage network from the digital terrain model (DTM). Cross-sectional/longitudinal profiles of the ditch are automatically extracted from the LiDAR data and visualized in 3D point clouds and 2D images. The slope derived from the LiDAR data turned out to be very close to the highway cross slope design standards of 2% on driving lanes, 4% on shoulders, and a 6-by-1 slope for ditch lines.

scholarly journals Road Ditch Line Mapping with Mobile LiDAR

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayman Habib ◽  
◽  
Darcy M. Bullock ◽  
Yi-Chun Lin ◽  
Raja Manish
Keyword(s):  
Flow Direction ◽  
Digital Terrain Model ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Lidar Data ◽  
Design Standards ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Terrain Model ◽  
State Highway ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
Longitudinal Profiles

Maintenance of roadside ditches is important to avoid localized flooding and premature failure of pavements. Scheduling effective preventative maintenance requires mapping of the ditch profile to identify areas requiring excavation of long-term sediment accumulation. High-resolution, high-quality point clouds collected by mobile LiDAR mapping systems (MLMS) provide an opportunity for effective monitoring of roadside ditches and performing hydrological analyses. This study evaluated the applicability of mobile LiDAR for mapping roadside ditches for slope and drainage analyses. The performance of alternative MLMS units was performed. These MLMS included an unmanned ground vehicle, an unmanned aerial vehicle, a portable backpack system along with its vehicle-mounted version, a medium-grade wheel-based system, and a high-grade wheel-based system. Point cloud from all the MLMS units were in agreement in the vertical direction within the ±3 cm range for solid surfaces, such as paved roads, and ±7 cm range for surfaces with vegetation. The portable backpack system that could be carried by a surveyor or mounted on a vehicle and was the most flexible MLMS. The report concludes that due to flexibility and cost effectiveness of the portable backpack system, it is the preferred platform for mapping roadside ditches, followed by the medium-grade wheel-based system. Furthermore, a framework for ditch line characterization is proposed and tested using datasets acquired by the medium-grade wheel-based and vehicle-mounted portable systems over a state highway. An existing ground filtering approach is modified to handle variations in point density of mobile LiDAR data. Hydrological analyses, including flow direction and flow accumulation, are applied to extract the drainage network from the digital terrain model (DTM). Cross-sectional/longitudinal profiles of the ditch are automatically extracted from LiDAR data and visualized in 3D point clouds and 2D images. The slope derived from the LiDAR data was found to be very close to highway cross slope design standards of 2% on driving lanes, 4% on shoulders, as well as 6-by-1 slope for ditch lines. Potential flooded regions are identified by detecting areas with no LiDAR return and a recall score of 54% and 92% was achieved by the medium-grade wheel-based and vehicle-mounted portable systems, respectively. Furthermore, a framework for ditch line characterization is proposed and tested using datasets acquired by the medium-grade wheel-based and vehicle-mounted portable systems over a state highway. An existing ground filtering approach is modified to handle variations in point density of mobile LiDAR data. Hydrological analyses, including flow direction and flow accumulation, are applied to extract the drainage network from the digital terrain model (DTM). Cross-sectional/longitudinal profiles of the ditch are automatically extracted from LiDAR data, and visualized in 3D point clouds and 2D images. The slope derived from the LiDAR data was found to be very close to highway cross slope design standards of 2% on driving lanes, 4% on shoulder, as well as 6-by-1 slope for ditch lines. Potential flooded regions are identified by detecting areas with no LiDAR return and a recall score of 54% and 92% was achieved by the medium-grade wheel-based and vehicle-mounted portable systems, respectively.

scholarly journals COMPARISON OF 3D POINT CLOUDS FROM AERIAL STEREO IMAGES AND LIDAR FOR FOREST CHANGE DETECTION

2017 ◽  
Vol XLII-3/W3 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Ali-Sisto ◽  
P. Packalen
Keyword(s):  
Classification Accuracy ◽  
Digital Terrain Model ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Aerial Image ◽  
Lidar Data ◽  
Forest Change ◽  
Time Points ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
The Difference

This study compares performance of aerial image based point clouds (IPCs) and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) based point clouds in detection of thinnings and clear cuts in forests. IPCs are an appealing method to update forest resource data, because of their accuracy in forest height estimation and cost-efficiency of aerial image acquisition. We predicted forest changes over a period of three years by creating difference layers that displayed the difference in height or volume between the initial and subsequent time points. Both IPCs and LiDAR data were used in this process. The IPCs were constructed with the Semi-Global Matching (SGM) algorithm. Difference layers were constructed by calculating differences in fitted height or volume models or in canopy height models (CHMs) from both time points. The LiDAR-derived digital terrain model (DTM) was used to scale heights to above ground level. The study area was classified in logistic regression into the categories ClearCut, Thinning or NoChange with the values from the difference layers. We compared the predicted changes with the true changes verified in the field, and obtained at best a classification accuracy for clear cuts 93.1 % with IPCs and 91.7 % with LiDAR data. However, a classification accuracy for thinnings was only 8.0 % with IPCs. With LiDAR data 41.4 % of thinnings were detected. In conclusion, the LiDAR data proved to be more accurate method to predict the minor changes in forests than IPCs, but both methods are useful in detection of major changes.

scholarly journals FWNet: Semantic Segmentation for Full-Waveform LiDAR Data Using Deep Learning

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 3568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takayuki Shinohara ◽  
Haoyi Xiu ◽  
Masashi Matsuoka
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Semantic Segmentation ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Lidar Data ◽  
Global Features ◽  
Waveform Data ◽  
Full Waveform ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
Waveform Lidar ◽  
Full Waveform Lidar

In the computer vision field, many 3D deep learning models that directly manage 3D point clouds (proposed after PointNet) have been published. Moreover, deep learning-based-techniques have demonstrated state-of-the-art performance for supervised learning tasks on 3D point cloud data, such as classification and segmentation tasks for open datasets in competitions. Furthermore, many researchers have attempted to apply these deep learning-based techniques to 3D point clouds observed by aerial laser scanners (ALSs). However, most of these studies were developed for 3D point clouds without radiometric information. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using a deep learning method to solve the semantic segmentation task of airborne full-waveform light detection and ranging (lidar) data that consists of geometric information and radiometric waveform data. Thus, we propose a data-driven semantic segmentation model called the full-waveform network (FWNet), which handles the waveform of full-waveform lidar data without any conversion process, such as projection onto a 2D grid or calculating handcrafted features. Our FWNet is based on a PointNet-based architecture, which can extract the local and global features of each input waveform data, along with its corresponding geographical coordinates. Subsequently, the classifier consists of 1D convolutional operational layers, which predict the class vector corresponding to the input waveform from the extracted local and global features. Our trained FWNet achieved higher scores in its recall, precision, and F1 score for unseen test data—higher scores than those of previously proposed methods in full-waveform lidar data analysis domain. Specifically, our FWNet achieved a mean recall of 0.73, a mean precision of 0.81, and a mean F1 score of 0.76. We further performed an ablation study, that is assessing the effectiveness of our proposed method, of the above-mentioned metric. Moreover, we investigated the effectiveness of our PointNet based local and global feature extraction method using the visualization of the feature vector. In this way, we have shown that our network for local and global feature extraction allows training with semantic segmentation without requiring expert knowledge on full-waveform lidar data or translation into 2D images or voxels.

scholarly journals MULTI-SCALE BASED EXTRACION OF VEGETATION FROM TERRESTRIAL LiDAR DATA FOR ASSESSING LOCAL LANDSCAPE

2015 ◽  
Vol II-3/W4 ◽  
pp. 263-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Wakita ◽  
J. Susaki
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Lidar Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Landscape Index ◽  
Terrestrial Lidar ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
Set Of Points

In this study, we propose a method to accurately extract vegetation from terrestrial three-dimensional (3D) point clouds for estimating landscape index in urban areas. Extraction of vegetation in urban areas is challenging because the light returned by vegetation does not show as clear patterns as man-made objects and because urban areas may have various objects to discriminate vegetation from. The proposed method takes a multi-scale voxel approach to effectively extract different types of vegetation in complex urban areas. With two different voxel sizes, a process is repeated that calculates the eigenvalues of the planar surface using a set of points, classifies voxels using the approximate curvature of the voxel of interest derived from the eigenvalues, and examines the connectivity of the valid voxels. We applied the proposed method to two data sets measured in a residential area in Kyoto, Japan. The validation results were acceptable, with F-measures of approximately 95% and 92%. It was also demonstrated that several types of vegetation were successfully extracted by the proposed method whereas the occluded vegetation were omitted. We conclude that the proposed method is suitable for extracting vegetation in urban areas from terrestrial light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data. In future, the proposed method will be applied to mobile LiDAR data and the performance of the method against lower density of point clouds will be examined.

scholarly journals POSSIBILITIES FOR USING LIDAR AND PHOTOGRAMMETRIC DATA OBTAINED WITH AN UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE FOR LEVEE MONITORING

2016 ◽  
Vol XLI-B1 ◽  
pp. 773-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Bakuła ◽  
W. Ostrowski ◽  
M. Szender ◽  
W. Plutecki ◽  
A. Salach ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Laser Scanner ◽  
Digital Camera ◽  
Digital Terrain Model ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Lidar Data ◽  
Unmanned Aerial System ◽  
Navigation Systems ◽  
Control Points ◽  
Terrain Model ◽  
Increase In Accuracy

This paper presents the possibilities for using an unmanned aerial system for evaluation of the condition of levees. The unmanned aerial system is equipped with two types of sensor. One is an ultra-light laser scanner, integrated with a GNSS receiver and an INS system; the other sensor is a digital camera that acquires data with stereoscopic coverage. Sensors have been mounted on the multirotor, unmanned platform the Hawk Moth, constructed by MSP company. LiDAR data and images of levees the length of several hundred metres were acquired during testing of the platform. Flights were performed in several variants. Control points measured with the use of the GNSS technique were considered as reference data. The obtained results are presented in this paper; the methodology of processing the acquired LiDAR data, which increase in accuracy when low accuracy of the navigation systems occurs as a result of systematic errors, is also discussed. The Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm, as well as measurements of control points, were used to georeference the LiDAR data. Final accuracy in the order of centimetres was obtained for generation of the digital terrain model. The final products of the proposed UAV data processing are digital elevation models, an orthophotomap and colour point clouds. The authors conclude that such a platform offers wide possibilities for low-budget flights to deliver the data, which may compete with typical direct surveying measurements performed during monitoring of such objects. However, the biggest advantage is the density and continuity of data, which allows for detection of changes in objects being monitored.

Automatic Background Filtering Method for Roadside LiDAR Data

2018 ◽  
Vol 2672 (45) ◽  
pp. 106-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianqing Wu ◽  
Hao Xu ◽  
Yuan Sun ◽  
Jianying Zheng ◽  
Rui Yue
Keyword(s):  
Data Processing ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Identification Accuracy ◽  
Lidar Data ◽  
Connected Vehicle ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Night Time ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
Real Time Data Processing

The high-resolution micro traffic data (HRMTD) of all roadway users is important for serving the connected-vehicle system in mixed traffic situations. The roadside LiDAR sensor gives a solution to providing HRMTD from real-time 3D point clouds of its scanned objects. Background filtering is the preprocessing step to obtain the HRMTD of different roadway users from roadside LiDAR data. It can significantly reduce the data processing time and improve the vehicle/pedestrian identification accuracy. An algorithm is proposed in this paper, based on the spatial distribution of laser points, which filters both static and moving background efficiently. Various thresholds of point density are applied in this algorithm to exclude background at different distances from the roadside sensor. The case study shows that the algorithm can filter background LiDAR points in different situations (different road geometries, different traffic demands, day/night time, different speed limits). Vehicle and pedestrian shape can be retained well after background filtering. The low computational load guarantees this method can be applied for real-time data processing such as vehicle monitoring and pedestrian tracking.

scholarly journals Fully Automated Profile-based Calibration Strategy for Airborne and Terrestrial Mobile LiDAR Systems with Spinning Multi-beam Laser Units

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi ◽  
Habib
Keyword(s):  
Point Clouds ◽  
Mobile Systems ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Mobile Mapping ◽  
Beam Laser ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
Feature Based ◽  
True Values ◽  
Mobile Mapping Systems ◽  
Mapping Systems

LiDAR-based mobile mapping systems (MMS) are rapidly gaining popularity for a multitude of applications due to their ability to provide complete and accurate 3D point clouds for any and every scene of interest. However, an accurate calibration technique for such systems is needed in order to unleash their full potential. In this paper, we propose a fully automated profile-based strategy for the calibration of LiDAR-based MMS. The proposed technique is validated by comparing its accuracy against the expected point positioning accuracy for the point cloud based on the used sensors’ specifications. The proposed strategy was seen to reduce the misalignment between different tracks from approximately 2 to 3 m before calibration down to less than 2 cm after calibration for airborne as well as terrestrial mobile LiDAR mapping systems. In other words, the proposed calibration strategy can converge to correct estimates of mounting parameters, even in cases where the initial estimates are significantly different from the true values. Furthermore, the results from the proposed strategy are also verified by comparing them to those from an existing manually-assisted feature-based calibration strategy. The major contribution of the proposed strategy is its ability to conduct the calibration of airborne and wheel-based mobile systems without any requirement for specially designed targets or features in the surrounding environment. The above claims are validated using experimental results conducted for three different MMS – two airborne and one terrestrial – with one or more LiDAR unit.

scholarly journals Impact-Detection Algorithm That Uses Point Clouds as Topographic Inputs for 3D Rockfall Simulations

Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 188
Author(s):  
François Noël ◽  
Catherine Cloutier ◽  
Michel Jaboyedoff ◽  
Jacques Locat
Keyword(s):  
Surface Roughness ◽  
Digital Terrain Model ◽  
Simulation Models ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Detection Algorithm ◽  
Simulation Software ◽  
Impact Detection ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
Terrain Models ◽  
Rockfall Simulation

Numerous 3D rockfall simulation models use coarse gridded digital terrain model (DTM raster) as their topography input. Artificial surface roughness is often added to overcome the loss of details that occurs during the gridding process. Together with the use of sensitive energy damping parameters, they provide great freedom to the user at the expense of the objectivity of the method. To quantify and limit the range of such artificial values, we developed an impact-detection algorithm that can be used to extract the perceived surface roughness from detailed terrain samples in relation to the size of the impacting rocks. The algorithm can also be combined with a rebound model to perform rockfall simulations directly on detailed 3D point clouds. The abilities of the algorithm are demonstrated by objectively extracting different perceived surface roughnesses from detailed terrain samples and by simulating rockfalls on detailed terrain models as proof of concept. The results produced are also compared to that of rockfall simulation software CRSP 4, RocFall 8 and Rockyfor3D 5.2.15 as validation. Although differences were observed, the validation shows that the algorithm can produce similar results. With the presented approach not being limited to coarse terrain models, the need for adding artificial terrain roughness or for adjusting sensitive damping parameters on a per-site basis is reduced, thereby limiting the related biases and subjectivity.

scholarly journals Scalable and Detail-Preserving Ground Surface Reconstruction from Large 3D Point Clouds Acquired by Mobile Mapping Systems

2014 ◽  
Vol XL-3 ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
D. Craciun ◽  
A. Serna Morales ◽  
J.-E. Deschaud ◽  
B. Marcotegui ◽  
F. Goulette
Keyword(s):  
Surface Reconstruction ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ground Surface ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Reconstruction Algorithms ◽  
Mobile Mapping ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
Mesh Shrinkage ◽  
Mobile Mapping Systems ◽  
Mapping Systems

The currently existing mobile mapping systems equipped with active 3D sensors allow to acquire the environment with high sampling rates at high vehicle velocities. While providing an effective solution for environment sensing over large scale distances, such acquisition provides only a discrete representation of the geometry. Thus, a continuous map of the underlying surface must be built. Mobile acquisition introduces several constraints for the state-of-the-art surface reconstruction algorithms. Smoothing becomes a difficult task for recovering sharp depth features while avoiding mesh shrinkage. In addition, interpolation-based techniques are not suitable for noisy datasets acquired by Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) systems. Furthermore, scalability is a major concern for enabling real-time rendering over large scale distances while preserving geometric details. This paper presents a fully automatic ground surface reconstruction framework capable to deal with the aforementioned constraints. The proposed method exploits the quasi-flat geometry of the ground throughout a morphological segmentation algorithm. Then, a planar Delaunay triangulation is applied in order to reconstruct the ground surface. A smoothing procedure eliminates high frequency peaks, while preserving geometric details in order to provide a regular ground surface. Finally, a decimation step is applied in order to cope with scalability constraints over large scale distances. Experimental results on real data acquired in large urban environments are presented and a performance evaluation with respect to ground truth measurements demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

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