High quality 3D laser ranging under general vehicle motion

This paper describes an end-to-end system capable of generating high-quality 3D point clouds from the popular LMS200 laser on a continuously moving platform. We describe the hardware, data capture, calibration and data stream processing we have developed which yields remarkable detail in the generated point clouds of urban scenes. Given the increasing interest in outdoor 3D navigation and scene reconstruction by mobile platforms, our aim is to provide a level of hardware and algorithmic detail suitable for replication of our system by interested parties who do not wish to invest in dedicated 3D laser rangers.