A mobile mapping system is effective for capturing dense point-clouds of roads and roadside objects．Point-clouds of urban areas, residential areas, and arterial roads are useful for maintenance of infrastructure, map creation, and automatic driving. However, the data size of point-clouds measured in large areas is enormously large. A large storage capacity is required to store such point-clouds, and heavy loads will be taken on network if point-clouds are transferred through the network. Therefore, it is desirable to reduce data sizes of point-clouds without deterioration of quality. In this research, we propose a novel point-cloud compression method for vehicle-based mobile mapping systems. In our compression method, point-clouds are mapped onto 2D pixels using GPS time and the parameters of the laser scanner. Then, the images are encoded in the Portable Networking Graphics (PNG) format and compressed using the PNG algorithm. In our experiments, our method could efficiently compress point-clouds without deteriorating the quality.

The recent progress of mid-range and long-range laser scanners makes it possible to capture dense point-clouds of manufacturing plants. 3D models of manufacturing plants are useful for simulating the reorganizing of production lines. Since point-clouds are not structured and very large, it is often required to convert point-clouds into more concise models. So far, researchers have studied shape reconstruction of pipe structures by detecting cylindrical surfaces and estimating the lengths of the cylinders. On the other hand, few researches have discussed to extract polygonal faces from large-scale point-clouds. Planar faces may have very complicated boundaries, because point-clouds are noisy and often occluded by other surfaces in manufacturing plants. In this paper, we propose an efficient method for constructing simplified polygonal faces from large-scale point-clouds. In our method, we map each point-cloud onto a 2D image and detect bounded planar faces in the 2D image. Our method allows us to construct polygonal faces in a practical calculation time.

Mobile mapping systems can capture point clouds and digital images of roadside objects. Such data are useful for maintenance, asset management, and 3D map creation. In this paper, we discuss methods for extracting guardrails that separate roadways and walkways. Since there are various shape patterns for guardrails in Japan, flexible methods are required for extracting them. We propose a new extraction method based on point processing and a convolutional neural network (CNN). In our method, point clouds and images are segmented into small fragments, and their features are extracted using CNNs for images and point clouds. Then, features from images and point clouds are combined and investigated using whether they are guardrails or not. Based on our experiments, our method could extract guardrails from point clouds with a high success rate.

With the use of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) in forest stands, surveys are now equipped to obtain dense point cloud data. However, the data range, i.e., the number of points, often reaches the billions or even higher, exceeding random access memory (RAM) limits on common computers. Moreover, the processing time often also extends beyond acceptable processing lengths. Thus, in this paper, we present a new method of efficiently extracting stem traits from huge point cloud data obtained by TLS, without subdividing or downsampling the point clouds. In this method, each point cloud is converted into a wireframe model by connecting neighboring points on the same continuous surface, and three-dimensional points on stems are resampled as cross-sectional points of the wireframe model in an out-of-core manner. Since the data size of the section points is much smaller than the original point clouds, stem traits can be calculated from the section points on a common computer. With the study method, 1381 tree stems were calculated from 3.6 billion points in ~20 min on a common computer. To evaluate the accuracy of this method, eight targeted trees were cut down and sliced at 1-m intervals; actual stem traits were then compared to those calculated from point clouds. The experimental results showed that the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method are sufficient for practical use in various fields, including forest management and forest research.