Determining the Center Path of Ground Surface LIDAR Data

Abstract

This report describes a computational methodology for determining the central path through ground surface LIDAR point cloud data, i.e. many points located in 3-D space. This approach answers the need for a singular point-to-point path useful for follow-up applications after acquisition of a large magnitude of data by LIDAR ground surveying. The methods employed include a preliminary approximate ordering of the LIDAR coordinates and color data, followed by the computation of minimum enclosing rectangles of subsets of the preordered original data. The centroids of the minimum enclosing rectangles that cover the LIDAR data are identified as final path points, since they are at the center of local LIDAR data and unaffected by the variable LIDAR data density. To provide a more precise description for later applications, the final path is defined to also include points uniformly interpolated between the rectangle centroid coordinates.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2017
Accession Number
AD1042297

Entities

People

  • Gary P. Zientara
  • Maxwell Rome
  • Stephen P. Mullen
  • William R. Santee

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Algorithms
  • Applied Mathematics
  • Army
  • Computations
  • Computer Graphics
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Data Sets
  • Department Of Defense
  • Elevation
  • Engineering
  • Geometry
  • Global Positioning Systems
  • Lidar
  • Point Clouds
  • Three Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Atmospheric Remote Sensing.
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
  • Regression Analysis.

Technology Areas

  • Space