LiDAR Point Cloud Registration by Image Detection Technique

In this letter, a novel approach that utilizes the spectrum information (i.e., images) provided in a modern light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor is proposed for the registration of multistation LiDAR data sets. First, the conjugate points in the images collected at varied LiDAR stations are extracted through the speedup robust feature technique. Then, by applying the image-object space mapping technique, the 3-D coordinates of the conjugate image points can be obtained. Those identified 3-D conjugate points are then fed into a registration model so that the transformation parameters can be immediately solved using the efficient noniterative solution to linear transformations technique. Based on numerical results from a case study, it has been demonstrated that, by implementing the proposed approach, a fully automatic and reliable registration of multistation LiDAR point clouds can be achieved without the need for any human intervention.