Automation of object extraction from LiDAR in urban areas

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) has become a valuable data source for urban data acquisition. This paper gives an overview about current trends in the automation of object extraction from LiDAR data. These trends are caused by the technical development of LiDAR sensors that enable the acquisition of point clouds at higher resolution as well as the recording of the full waveform of the returned signal, and by the adoption of processing techniques from the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition communities. Triggered by these developments, new applications are being found for LiDAR data.