Acta Geodaetica et Cartographica Sinica ›› 2017, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (10): 1509-1516.doi: 10.11947/j.AGCS.2017.20170351

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Progress, Challenges and Perspectives of 3D LiDAR Point Cloud Processing

YANG Bisheng, LIANG Fuxun, HUANG Ronggang   

  1. State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
  • Received:2017-06-26 Revised:2017-09-01 Online:2017-10-20 Published:2017-10-26
  • Supported by:
    The Key Program of The National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos. 41531177;41371431);The National Natural Science Foundation of China(No. 41371431);The National Science and Technology Support Program (No. 2014BAL05B07);The National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFF0103501)

Abstract: 3D LiDAR can perform an intensive sampling of the earth surface in a direct way, and yield the 3D point cloud that contains numerous and scattered points with the coordinates (X, Y, Z) and attributes (e.g., intensity). As the vital 3D geospatial data for description of the world in the digital era, 3D point cloud plays an important role not only in earth science researches but also in national requirements (e.g., global change analysis, global mapping, and smart city). Inspired by sensor technologies and national requirements, 3D LiDAR has got great progresses in hardware, data processing and applications, and is facing new challenges. Following the history of 3D LiDAR, this paper first reviews the status of 3D LiDAR system, and introduces the development of key technologies in data processing. Then the typical applications of 3D LiDAR in surveying and other related fields are listed, and current challenges in point cloud processing are concluded. Finally, some future perspectives are presented.

Key words: 3D LiDAR, point cloud, point cloud fusion, object extraction, 3D representation, ubiquitous point cloud

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