scholarly journals POINTO - A LOW COST SOLUTION TO POINT CLOUD PROCESSING

Author(s):  
H. Houshiar ◽  
S. Winkler

With advance in technology access to data especially 3D point cloud data becomes more and more an everyday task. 3D point clouds are usually captured with very expensive tools such as 3D laser scanners or very time consuming methods such as photogrammetry. Most of the available softwares for 3D point cloud processing are designed for experts and specialists in this field and are usually very large software packages containing variety of methods and tools. This results in softwares that are usually very expensive to acquire and also very difficult to use. Difficulty of use is caused by complicated user interfaces that is required to accommodate a large list of features. The aim of these complex softwares is to provide a powerful tool for a specific group of specialist. However they are not necessary required by the majority of the up coming average users of point clouds. In addition to complexity and high costs of these softwares they generally rely on expensive and modern hardware and only compatible with one specific operating system. Many point cloud customers are not point cloud processing experts or willing to spend the high acquisition costs of these expensive softwares and hardwares. In this paper we introduce a solution for low cost point cloud processing. Our approach is designed to accommodate the needs of the average point cloud user. To reduce the cost and complexity of software our approach focuses on one functionality at a time in contrast with most available softwares and tools that aim to solve as many problems as possible at the same time. Our simple and user oriented design improve the user experience and empower us to optimize our methods for creation of an efficient software. In this paper we introduce Pointo family as a series of connected softwares to provide easy to use tools with simple design for different point cloud processing requirements. PointoVIEWER and PointoCAD are introduced as the first components of the Pointo family to provide a fast and efficient visualization with the ability to add annotation and documentation to the point clouds.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2332
Author(s):  
Daniel Lamas ◽  
Mario Soilán ◽  
Javier Grandío ◽  
Belén Riveiro

The growing development of data digitalisation methods has increased their demand and applications in the transportation infrastructure field. Currently, mobile mapping systems (MMSs) are one of the most popular technologies for the acquisition of infrastructure data, with three-dimensional (3D) point clouds as their main product. In this work, a heuristic-based workflow for semantic segmentation of complex railway environments is presented, in which their most relevant elements are classified, namely, rails, masts, wiring, droppers, traffic lights, and signals. This method takes advantage of existing methodologies in the field for point cloud processing and segmentation, taking into account the geometry and spatial context of each classified element in the railway environment. This method is applied to a 90-kilometre-long railway lane and validated against a manual reference on random sections of the case study data. The results are presented and discussed at the object level, differentiating the type of the element. The indicators F1 scores obtained for each element are superior to 85%, being higher than 99% in rails, the most significant element of the infrastructure. These metrics showcase the quality of the algorithm, which proves that this method is efficient for the classification of long and variable railway sections, and for the assisted labelling of point cloud data for future applications based on training supervised learning models.


Aerospace ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hriday Bavle ◽  
Jose Sanchez-Lopez ◽  
Paloma Puente ◽  
Alejandro Rodriguez-Ramos ◽  
Carlos Sampedro ◽  
...  

This paper presents a fast and robust approach for estimating the flight altitude of multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) using 3D point cloud sensors in cluttered, unstructured, and dynamic indoor environments. The objective is to present a flight altitude estimation algorithm, replacing the conventional sensors such as laser altimeters, barometers, or accelerometers, which have several limitations when used individually. Our proposed algorithm includes two stages: in the first stage, a fast clustering of the measured 3D point cloud data is performed, along with the segmentation of the clustered data into horizontal planes. In the second stage, these segmented horizontal planes are mapped based on the vertical distance with respect to the point cloud sensor frame of reference, in order to provide a robust flight altitude estimation even in presence of several static as well as dynamic ground obstacles. We validate our approach using the IROS 2011 Kinect dataset available in the literature, estimating the altitude of the RGB-D camera using the provided 3D point clouds. We further validate our approach using a point cloud sensor on board a UAV, by means of several autonomous real flights, closing its altitude control loop using the flight altitude estimated by our proposed method, in presence of several different static as well as dynamic ground obstacles. In addition, the implementation of our approach has been integrated in our open-source software framework for aerial robotics called Aerostack.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (20) ◽  
pp. 4569
Author(s):  
Joan R. Rosell-Polo ◽  
Eduard Gregorio ◽  
Jordi Llorens

In this editorial, we provide an overview of the content of the special issue on “Terrestrial Laser Scanning”. The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together innovative developments and applications of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), understood in a broad sense. Thus, although most contributions mainly involve the use of laser-based systems, other alternative technologies that also allow for obtaining 3D point clouds for the measurement and the 3D characterization of terrestrial targets, such as photogrammetry, are also considered. The 15 published contributions are mainly focused on the applications of TLS to the following three topics: TLS performance and point cloud processing, applications to civil engineering, and applications to plant characterization.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-53
Author(s):  
Sinh Van Nguyen ◽  
Ha Manh Tran ◽  
Minh Khai Tran

Building 3D objects or reconstructing their surfaces from 3D point cloud data are researched activities in the field of geometric modeling and computer graphics. In the recent years, they are also studied and used in some fields such as: graph models and simulation; image processing or restoration of digital heritages. This article presents an improved method for restoring the shape of 3D point cloud surfaces. The method is a combination of creating a Bezier surface patch and computing tangent plane of 3D points to fill holes on a surface of 3D point clouds. This method is described as follows: at first, a boundary for each hole on the surface is identified. The holes are then filled by computing Bezier curves of surface patches to find missing points. After that, the holes are refined based on two steps (rough and elaborate) to adjust the inserted points and preserve the local curvature of the holes. The contribution of the proposed method has been shown in processing time and the novelty of combined computation in this method has preserved the initial shape of the surface


2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taro Suzuki ◽  
◽  
Yoshiharu Amano ◽  
Takumi Hashizume

This paper describes outdoor localization for a mobile robot using a laser scanner and three-dimensional (3D) point cloud data. A Mobile Mapping System (MMS) measures outdoor 3D point clouds easily and precisely. The full six-dimensional state of a mobile robot is estimated combining dead reckoning and 3D point cloud data. Two-dimensional (2D) position and orientation are extended to 3D using 3D point clouds assuming that the mobile robot remains in continuous contact with the road surface. Our approach applies a particle filter to correct position error in the laser measurement model in 3D point cloud space. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the accuracy of our proposal. As the result of the experiment, it was confirmed that a localization precision of 0.2 m (RMS) is possible using our proposal.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 3043 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan M. Jurado ◽  
Luís Pádua ◽  
Francisco R. Feito ◽  
Joaquim J. Sousa

The optimisation of vineyards management requires efficient and automated methods able to identify individual plants. In the last few years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become one of the main sources of remote sensing information for Precision Viticulture (PV) applications. In fact, high resolution UAV-based imagery offers a unique capability for modelling plant’s structure making possible the recognition of significant geometrical features in photogrammetric point clouds. Despite the proliferation of innovative technologies in viticulture, the identification of individual grapevines relies on image-based segmentation techniques. In that way, grapevine and non-grapevine features are separated and individual plants are estimated usually considering a fixed distance between them. In this study, an automatic method for grapevine trunk detection, using 3D point cloud data, is presented. The proposed method focuses on the recognition of key geometrical parameters to ensure the existence of every plant in the 3D model. The method was tested in different commercial vineyards and to push it to its limit a vineyard characterised by several missing plants along the vine rows, irregular distances between plants and occluded trunks by dense vegetation in some areas, was also used. The proposed method represents a disruption in relation to the state of the art, and is able to identify individual trunks, posts and missing plants based on the interpretation and analysis of a 3D point cloud. Moreover, a validation process was carried out allowing concluding that the method has a high performance, especially when it is applied to 3D point clouds generated in phases in which the leaves are not yet very dense (January to May). However, if correct flight parametrizations are set, the method remains effective throughout the entire vegetative cycle.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 460
Author(s):  
Gracchi ◽  
Gigli ◽  
Noël ◽  
Jaboyedoff ◽  
Madiai ◽  
...  

In this paper, a MATLAB tool for the automatic detection of the best locations to install a wireless sensor network (WSN) is presented. The implemented code works directly on high-resolution 3D point clouds and aims to help in positioning sensors that are part of a network requiring inter-visibility, namely, a clear line of sight (LOS). Indeed, with the development of LiDAR and Structure from Motion technologies, there is an opportunity to directly use 3D point cloud data to perform visibility analyses. By doing so, many disadvantages of traditional modelling and analysis methods can be bypassed. The algorithm points out the optimal deployment of devices following mainly two criteria: inter-visibility (using a modified version of the Hidden Point Removal operator) and inter-distance. Furthermore, an option to prioritize significant areas is provided. The proposed method was first validated on an artificial 3D model, and then on a landslide 3D point cloud acquired from terrestrial laser scanning for the real positioning of an ultrawide-band WSN already installed in 2016. The comparison between collected data and data acquired by the WSN installed following traditional patterns has demonstrated its ability for the optimal deployment of a WSN requiring inter-visibility.


Author(s):  
V. Stojanovic ◽  
M. Trapp ◽  
R. Richter ◽  
J. Döllner

Abstract. Visualization of point clouds plays an important role in understanding the context of the digital representation of the built environment. Modern commodity mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets), are capable of capturing representations in the form of 3D point clouds, with their depth-sensing and photogrammetry capabilities. Points clouds enable the encoding of important spatial and physical features of the built environment they represent. However, once captured, point clouds need to be processed before they can be used for further semantic enrichment and decision making. An integrated pipeline for such processes is crucial for use in larger and more complex enterprise systems and data analysis platforms, especially within the realm of Facility Management (FM) and Real Estate 4.0. We present and discuss a prototypical implementation for a service-oriented point cloud processing pipeline. The presented processing features focus on detecting and visualizing spatial deviations between as-is versus as-designed representations. We discuss the design and implementation of these processing features, and present experimental results. The presented approach can be used as a lightweight software component for processing indoor point clouds captured using commodity mobile devices, as well as primary deviation analysis, and also provides a processing link for further semantic enrichment of base-data for Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Digital Twin (DT) applications.


Author(s):  
R. Boerner ◽  
M. Kröhnert

3D point clouds, acquired by state-of-the-art terrestrial laser scanning techniques (TLS), provide spatial information about accuracies up to several millimetres. Unfortunately, common TLS data has no spectral information about the covered scene. However, the matching of TLS data with images is important for monoplotting purposes and point cloud colouration. Well-established methods solve this issue by matching of close range images and point cloud data by fitting optical camera systems on top of laser scanners or rather using ground control points. <br><br> The approach addressed in this paper aims for the matching of 2D image and 3D point cloud data from a freely moving camera within an environment covered by a large 3D point cloud, e.g. a 3D city model. The key advantage of the free movement affects augmented reality applications or real time measurements. Therefore, a so-called real image, captured by a smartphone camera, has to be matched with a so-called synthetic image which consists of reverse projected 3D point cloud data to a synthetic projection centre whose exterior orientation parameters match the parameters of the image, assuming an ideal distortion free camera.


Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 2489
Author(s):  
Marta García-Fernández ◽  
Enoc Sanz-Ablanedo ◽  
Dimas Pereira-Obaya ◽  
José Ramón Rodríguez-Pérez

In viticulture, information about vine vigour is a key input for decision-making in connection with production targets. Pruning weight (PW), a quantitative variable used as indicator of vegetative vigour, is associated with the quantity and quality of the grapes. Interest has been growing in recent years around the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones fitted with remote sensing facilities for more efficient crop management and the production of higher quality wine. Current research has shown that grape production, leaf area index, biomass, and other viticulture variables can be estimated by UAV imagery analysis. Although SfM lowers costs, saves time, and reduces the amount and type of resources needed, a review of the literature revealed no studies on its use to determine vineyard pruning weight. The main objective of this study was to predict PW in vineyards from a 3D point cloud generated with RGB images captured by a standard drone and processed by SfM. In this work, vertical and oblique aerial images were taken in two vineyards of Godello and Mencía varieties during the 2019 and 2020 seasons using a conventional Phantom 4 Pro drone. Pruning weight was measured on sampling grids comprising 28 calibration cells for Godello and 59 total cells for Mencía (39 calibration cells and 20 independent validation). The volume of vegetation (V) was estimated from the generated 3D point cloud and PW was estimated by linear regression analysis taking V as predictor variable. When the results were leave-one-out cross-validated (LOOCV), the R2 was found to be 0.71 and the RMSE 224.5 (g) for the PW estimate in Mencía 2020, calculated for the 39 calibration cells on the grounds of oblique images. The regression analysis results for the 20 validation samples taken independently of the rest (R2 = 0.62; RMSE = 249.3 g) confirmed the viability of using the SfM as a fast, non-destructive, low-cost procedure for estimating pruning weight.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document