The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
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Articles | Volume XLII-2/W6
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W6-399-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W6-399-2017
24 Aug 2017
 | 24 Aug 2017

POINT CLOUD ANALYSIS FOR UAV-BORNE LASER SCANNING WITH HORIZONTALLY AND VERTICALLY ORIENTED LINE SCANNERS – CONCEPT AND FIRST RESULTS

M. Weinmann, M. S. Müller, M. Hillemann, N. Reydel, S. Hinz, and B. Jutzi

Keywords: Unmanned Aerial System, Laser Scanning, Multi-Sensor, Point Cloud, Feature Extraction, Scene Interpretation

Abstract. In this paper, we focus on UAV-borne laser scanning with the objective of densely sampling object surfaces in the local surrounding of the UAV. In this regard, using a line scanner which scans along the vertical direction and perpendicular to the flight direction results in a point cloud with low point density if the UAV moves fast. Using a line scanner which scans along the horizontal direction only delivers data corresponding to the altitude of the UAV and thus a low scene coverage. For these reasons, we present a concept and a system for UAV-borne laser scanning using multiple line scanners. Our system consists of a quadcopter equipped with horizontally and vertically oriented line scanners. We demonstrate the capabilities of our system by presenting first results obtained for a flight within an outdoor scene. Thereby, we use a downsampling of the original point cloud and different neighborhood types to extract fundamental geometric features which in turn can be used for scene interpretation with respect to linear, planar or volumetric structures.