Most existing sewer pipeline condition assessment methods determine the presence and types of faults via examination of videos, which is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. A few automatic methods based on image processing techniques can be used to detect specific faults. However, these methods have limitations due to the presence of unpredictable sewer pipeline fault patterns. Deep learning methods have also been applied to sewer pipeline fault detection. However, these methods require a large amount of annotated data to obtain reliable results. In this paper, we propose a fault detection method that applies unsupervised machine learning based anomaly detection algorithms with feature extraction to videos recorded by new sewer pipeline visual inspection equipment. The recorded videos are regarded as sequence signals, which are converted into feature vectors, followed by application of an anomaly detection algorithm. Unlike existing methods, the proposed method is computationally efficient as it does not require an annotated fault sample database for training fault detection models. We evaluate various anomaly detection algorithms and feature combinations on real sewer pipeline data collected in Shenzhen, with an overall accuracy result of above 90%. The proposed method provides a new and fast technique for surveying urban sewer pipelines, and to facilitate further research in this area, we have made the code and data used in this paper publicly available.

In environments that are hostile to Global Navigation Satellites Systems (GNSS), the precision achieved by a mobile light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system (MLS) can deteriorate into the sub-meter or even the meter range due to errors in the positioning and orientation system (POS). This paper proposes a novel least squares collocation (LSC)-based method to improve the accuracy of the MLS in these hostile environments. Through a thorough consideration of the characteristics of POS errors, the proposed LSC-based method effectively corrects these errors using LiDAR control points, thereby improving the accuracy of the MLS. This method is also applied to the calibration of misalignment between the laser scanner and the POS. Several datasets from different scenarios have been adopted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results from experiments indicate that this method would represent a significant improvement in terms of the accuracy of the MLS in environments that are essentially hostile to GNSS and is also effective regarding the calibration of misalignment.

Fisheye cameras are widely used in visual localization due to the advantage of the wide field of view. However, the severe distortion in fisheye images lead to feature matching difficulties. This paper proposes an IMU-assisted fisheye image matching method called spherically optimized random sample consensus (So-RANSAC). We converted the putative correspondences into fisheye spherical coordinates and then used an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to provide relative rotation angles to assist fisheye image epipolar constraints and improve the accuracy of pose estimation and mismatch removal. To verify the performance of So-RANSAC, experiments were performed on fisheye images of urban drainage pipes and public data sets. The experimental results showed that So-RANSAC can effectively improve the mismatch removal accuracy, and its performance was superior to the commonly used fisheye image matching methods in various experimental scenarios.

In the study of the mid-long-term early warning of landslide, the computational efficiency of the prediction model is critical to the timeliness of landslide prevention and control. Accordingly, enhancing the computational efficiency of the prediction model is of practical implication to the mid-long-term prevention and control of landslides. When the Apriori algorithm is adopted to analyze landslide data based on the MapReduce framework, numerous frequent item-sets will be generated, adversely affecting the computational efficiency. To enhance the computational efficiency of the prediction model, the IAprioriMR algorithm is proposed in this paper to enhance the efficiency of the Apriori algorithm based on the MapReduce framework by simplifying operations of the frequent item-sets. The computational efficiencies of the IAprioriMR algorithm and the original AprioriMR algorithm were compared and analyzed in the case of different data quantities and nodes, and then the efficiency of IAprioriMR algorithm was verified to be enhanced to some extent in processing large-scale data. To verify the feasibility of the proposed algorithm, the algorithm was employed in the mid-long-term early warning study of landslides in the Three Parallel Rivers. Under the same conditions, IAprioriMR algorithm of the same rule exhibited higher confidence than FP-Growth algorithm, which implied that IAprioriMR can achieve more accurate landslide prediction. This method is capable of technically supporting the prevention and control of landslides.

Mobile laser scanning (MLS) point cloud registration plays a critical role in mobile 3D mapping and inspection, but conventional point cloud registration methods for terrain LiDAR scanning (TLS) are not suitable for MLS. To cope with this challenge, we use inertial measurement unit (IMU) to assist registration and propose an MLS point cloud registration method based on an inertial trajectory error model. First, we propose an error model of inertial trajectory over a short time period to construct the constraints between trajectory points at different times. On this basis, a relationship between the point cloud registration error and the inertial trajectory error is established, then trajectory error parameters are estimated by minimizing the point cloud registration error using the least squares optimization. Finally, a reliable and concise inertial-assisted MLS registration algorithm is realized. We carried out experiments in three different scenarios: indoor, outdoor and integrated indoor–outdoor. We evaluated the overall performance, accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. Compared with the ICP method, the accuracy and speed of the proposed method were improved by 2 and 2.8 times, respectively, which verified the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed method. Furthermore, experimental results show the significance of our method in constructing a reliable and scalable mobile 3D mapping system suitable for complex scenes.

Path voting is a widely used technique for line structure detection in images. Traditional path voting, based on minimal-path, is performed to track paths based on how seeds grow. The former requires to set a starting point and an end point. Thus, the performance of minimal-path path voting depends on the initialization. However, high-quality initialization often requires human interaction, which limits its applications in practice. In this paper, a fully automatic path voting method has been proposed and applied for crack detection. The proposed path voting is performed to segment images, which partitions an image patch along the potential crack path and integrates the path to form a crack probability map. After path voting, crack seeds are sampled and modeled into a graph, and the edge weights are assigned using an attraction field algorithm. Finally, cracks are extracted by using spanning tree and tree pruning algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed path voting approach can effectively infer the cracks from 2D optic images and 3D depth images.