Natural landmark extraction in cluttered forested environments

In this paper, a new systematical method for extracting tree trunk landmarks from 3D point clouds of cluttered forested environments is proposed. This purely geometric method is established on scene understanding and automatic analysis of trees. The pipeline of our method includes three steps. First, the raw point clouds are segmented by utilizing the circular shape of trees, and segments are grouped into tree sections based on the principle of spatial proximity. Second, circles and axes are extracted from tree sections which are subject to loss of shape information. Third, by clustering and integrating the tree sections resulted from various space inconsistencies, straight tree trunk landmarks are finally formed for future localization. The experimental results from real forested environments are presented.