Digitizing and 3D modeling of urban environments and roads using vehicle-borne laser scanner system

In this paper we present a system for three-dimensional environment modeling. It consists of an instrumented vehicle equipped with a 2D laser range scanner for data mapping, and GPS, INS and odometers for vehicle positioning and attitude information. The advantage of this system is its ability to perform data acquisition during the vehicle navigation; the sensor needed being a basic 2D scanner with opposition to traditional expensive 3D sensors. This system integrates the laser raw range data with the vehicle´s internal state estimator and is capable of reconstructing the 3D geometry of the environment by real-time geo-referencing. We propose a high level representation of the urban scene while identifying automatically and in real time some types of existing objects in this environment. Thus, our modeling is articulated around three principal axes: the segmentation, decimation, the 3D reconstruction and visualization. The road is the most important object for us; some road features like the curvature and the width are extracted.