Automatic Registration of Terrestrial Laser Scanning Data Using Precisely Located Artificial Planar Targets

Registration of terrestrial laser scanning data is an important and labor-intensive task for large surveying and mapping projects. Artificial targets are commonly used for accurate and robust registration of point clouds in practice. A methodology for automatic registration of terrestrial point clouds using artificial planar targets is presented. An intensity-domain orthographic image is presented and used to locate targets by detecting rotational symmetric patterns. The adjustment procedure is exploited for precise localization of the detected targets. Invariant of Euclidean transformation is used for matching located targets. The presented methodology enables precise localization of artificial planar targets in laser scans and determination of correspondence for accurate point cloud registration. The robustness and effectiveness of the methodology is demonstrated by experimental results. Potential applications of the presented techniques include registration of image with point cloud and 3-D object indexing.