Semi-Automatic Registration of Airborne and Terrestrial Laser Scanning Data Using Building Corner Matching with Boundaries as Reliability Check

• Main Authors: Liang Cheng, Lihua Tong, Manchun Li, Yongxue Liu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2013-11-01
• Series: Remote Sensing
• Subjects: airborne laser scanning; terrestrial laser scanning; multi-platform; registration; corner matching; reliability check
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/12/6260

Data registration is a prerequisite for the integration of multi-platform laser scanning in various applications. A new approach is proposed for the semi-automatic registration of airborne and terrestrial laser scanning data with buildings without eaves. Firstly, an automatic calculation procedure for thresholds in density of projected points (DoPP) method is introduced to extract boundary segments from terrestrial laser scanning data. A new algorithm, using a self-extending procedure, is developed to recover the extracted boundary segments, which then intersect to form the corners of buildings. The building corners extracted from airborne and terrestrial laser scanning are reliably matched through an automatic iterative process in which boundaries from two datasets are compared for the reliability check. The experimental results illustrate that the proposed approach provides both high reliability and high geometric accuracy (average error of 0.44 m/0.15 m in horizontal/vertical direction for corresponding building corners) for the final registration of airborne laser scanning (ALS) and tripod mounted terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) data.