Estimation of cluster centers on building roof from LiDAR footprints

A new method for the estimation of the cluster centers on the building roof from the LiDAR footprints is proposed. The elevation image of the building roof is obtained by applying gridding method on the data of the point cloud. The distribution areas of edge lines and ridge line on the building roof are respectively extracted through the calculation of morphological gradient of the elevation image and the operation of point detection on the erosion image. By the method of Hough transform, the feature lines of the building roof are obtained from the distribution areas of them. On the basis of number and normal vectors of geometrical planes, which are composed of the feature lines, the number of the clusters and the initial values of the cluster centers on the building roof are obtained. The proposed method is validated by a simulation experiment.