Using mobile laser scanning data for automated extraction of road markings

A mobile laser scanning (MLS) system allows direct collection of accurate 3D point information in unprecedented detail at highway speeds and at less than traditional survey costs, which serves the fast growing demands of transportation-related road surveying including road surface geometry and road environment. As one type of road feature in traffic management systems, road markings on paved roadways have important functions in providing guidance and information to drivers and pedestrians. This paper presents a stepwise procedure to recognize road markings from MLS point clouds. To improve computational efficiency, we first propose a curb-based method for road surface extraction. This method first partitions the raw MLS data into a set of profiles according to vehicle trajectory data, and then extracts small height jumps caused by curbs in the profiles via slope and elevation-difference thresholds. Next, points belonging to the extracted road surface are interpolated into a geo-referenced intensity image using an extended inverse-distance-weighted (IDW) approach. Finally, we dynamically segment the geo-referenced intensity image into road-marking candidates with multiple thresholds that correspond to different ranges determined by point-density appropriate normality. A morphological closing operation with a linear structuring element is finally used to refine the road-marking candidates by removing noise and improving completeness. This road-marking extraction algorithm is comprehensively discussed in the analysis of parameter sensitivity and overall performance. An experimental study performed on a set of road markings with ground-truth shows that the proposed algorithm provides a promising solution to the road-marking extraction from MLS data.     

车载激光扫描数据中实线型交通标线提取

本文提出一种基于路面点云强度增强的车载激光点云实线型交通标线提取方法。首先通过预处理提取路面点云,获取各激光点与轨迹线的距离。然后逐段对路面进行强度增强,集合多滤波器集成的策略进行强度变换和去噪,消除距离、点密度、磨损等因素对反射强度值影响,增强路面点云和标线的强度差异。基于增强后的反射强度,采用k均值聚类和连通分支聚类等方法对标线进行分割,并利用归一化图割方法优化强度分割结果。最后利用实线型标线的语义信息和空间分布特征从分割后标线对象中识别实线型交通标线。试验采用四份不同车载激光扫描系统获取的数据用于验证本文方法有效性,实线型标线提取结果的准确率达到95.98%,召回率达到91.87%,综合评价指标F 1-Measure值达到95.55%以上。试验结果表明本文方法能够有效增强受扫描距离、路面磨损及点密度分布不均等因素影响的点云强度信息,实现不同车载激光扫描获取的复杂道路环境下实线型交通标线的提取。     

Rural Road Surface Extraction Using Mobile LiDAR Point Cloud Data

The existing roadway infrastructures are mostly archived with two-dimensional (2D) drawings that lack the possibility for three-dimensional (3D) interpretation and advanced 3D analysis. The mobile LiDAR system (MLS) is gaining popularity in 3D mapping applications along various types of road corridors. MLS achieves the highest data quality and completeness among the traditional roadway data collection methods. The rural roads in different countries especially in India form a substantial portion of the road network. Therefore the proper maintenance and road safety analysis of rural roads are recommended activity, which could be addressed using detailed 3D road surface information. The absence of raised curb at road boundary, and presence of complexity, heterogeneity and occlusions along the rural roadway settings restrict the use of existing studies for road surface extraction using MLS point cloud data. Therefore considering the above requirement, this research paper proposes a two-stage method. The first stage extract planar ground surfaces which are further used to filter road surface in the second stage. Global properties of road, that is, topology and smoothness and its radiometric response to laser beam of MLS are used in the second stage. MLS point cloud data of rural roadway were used to test the proposed method. The road surface points were accurately extracted without being affected by the absence of raised curb and hanging objects over the road surface, that is, tree canopies and overhead power lines. The quantitative assessment of the proposed method was performed in terms of correctness, completeness and quality, which were 96.3, 94.2, and 90.9%, respectively.     

An automated algorithm for extracting road edges from terrestrial mobile LiDAR data

Terrestrial mobile laser scanning systems provide rapid and cost effective 3D point cloud data which can be used for extracting features such as the road edge along a route corridor. This information can assist road authorities in carrying out safety risk assessment studies along road networks. The knowledge of the road edge is also a prerequisite for the automatic estimation of most other road features. In this paper, we present an algorithm which has been developed for extracting left and right road edges from terrestrial mobile LiDAR data. The algorithm is based on a novel combination of two modified versions of the parametric active contour or snake model. The parameters involved in the algorithm are selected empirically and are fixed for all the road sections. We have developed a novel way of initialising the snake model based on the navigation information obtained from the mobile mapping vehicle. We tested our algorithm on different types of road sections representing rural, urban and national primary road sections. The successful extraction of road edges from these multiple road section environments validates our algorithm. These findings and knowledge provide valuable insights as well as a prototype road edge extraction tool-set, for both national road authorities and survey companies.     

车载激光扫描数据中高速公路路面点滤波

提出了一种从车载激光扫描数据中自动提取路面的方法。通过分析车载激光扫描点云的空间特征,提出运用近似平面约束法、有序最小二乘坡度估计法和多尺度窗口迭代分析法进行初始路面种子点提取;然后基于局部坡度滤波方法提取所有的路面点;最后选择两组实际点云数据进行实验。结果表明,该方法能快速准确地提取高速公路路面点云,实验数据的提取准确率为95.74%,完整率为98.11%。     

车载激光点云的道路标线提取及语义关联

自动驾驶技术已成为未来智能交通的发展方向之一,高精度地图为L3级及以上自动驾驶实现高精度定位和路径规划提供先验信息,是自动驾驶车辆传感器在遮挡或观测距离受限情况下的重要补充。道路标线的位置和语义信息,比如实线和虚线的绝对位置是高精度地图的基本组成部分。本文从车载激光点云中提取扫描线,根据道路边缘位置几何形态的突变从扫描线中提取道路路面,在此基础上首先利用反距离加权插值的方法把路面点云图像以一定的分辨率转换为栅格图像,其次利用基于积分图的自适应阈值分割方法把栅格图像转化为二值图像,然后利用欧氏聚类的方法从二值图像中提取标线点云,并利用特征属性筛选的方法对提取的标线点云进行语义识别,最后建立交通标线和交通规则之间的语义关联。     

车载LiDAR点云中交通标线的提取方法

交通标线,作为道路上重要的交通标识,为司机和行人提供重要的引导信息。车载激光扫描系统(车载LiDAR)可以快速获得被测目标的表面三维坐标信息,为提取高精度三维交通标线提供了可靠数据源。本文通过分析道路点云数据的平面距离、点云强度、点云密度等特征,将点云数据归化成地理参考强度图像。针对生成的二维参考图像,充分借鉴图像处理中目标分类与识别的手段,将交通标线信息准确提取出来。实验表明,该方法可行、有效。     

Derivation of tree skeletons and error assessment using LiDAR point cloud data of varying quality

The architecture of trees is of particular interest for 3D model creation in forestry and ecolocical applications. Terrestrial (TLS) and mobile laser scanning (MLS) systems are used to acquire detailed geometrical data of trees. Since 3D point clouds from laser scanning consist of large data amounts representing uninterpreted topographical information including noise and data gaps, an extraction of salient tree structures is important for further applications. We present a fully automated modular workflow for topological reliable reconstruction of tree architecture. Object-based point cloud processing such as branch extraction is combined with tree skeletonization. Branch extraction is performed using a segmentation procedure followed by segment-based analysis of form indices derived from eigenvector metrics. Extracted branch primitives are simplified and connected to line features during skeletonization. The modular workflow allows comprehensive parameter tests and error assessments that are used for a calibration of the module parameters with respect to various characteristics of the input data (e.g noise, scanning resolution, and the number of scan positions). The estimated parameter settings are validated using an exemplary MLS data set. The quality of input point cloud data, strongly influencing the quality of the skeleton results, can be improved by the presented branch extraction procedure. The potential for data improvement increases with increasing point densities. For our object-based appoach, we can show that the presence of erroneous structures and filtering artifacts have the strongest influence onto the quality of the derived skeletons. In contrast to traditional skeletonization approaches, the existance of data gaps has less influence onto the results.     

Automatic Road Extraction from High Resolution Satellite Image using Adaptive Global Thresholding and Morphological Operations

Road network extraction from high resolution satellite images is one of the most important aspects. In the present paper, research experimentation is carried out in order to extract the roads from the high resolution satellite image using image segmentation methods. The segmentation technique is implemented using adaptive global thresholding and morphological operations. Global thresholding segments the image to fix the boundaries. To compute the appropriate threshold values several problems are also analyzed, for instance, the illumination conditions, the different type of pavement material, the presence of objects such as vegetation, vehicles, buildings etc. Image segmentation is performed using morphological approach implemented through dilation of similar boundaries and erosion of dissimilar and irrelevant boundaries decided on the basis of pixel characteristics. The roads are clearly identifiable in the final processed image, which is obtained by superimposing the segmented image over the original enhanced image. The experimental results proved that proposed approach can be used in reliable way for automatic detection of roads from high resolution satellite image. The results can be used in automated map preparation, detection of network in trajectory planning for unmanned aerial vehicles. It also has wide applications in navigation, computer vision as a predictor-corrector algorithm for estimating the road position to simulate dynamic process of road extraction. Although an expert can label road pixels from a given satellite image but this operation is prone to errors. Therefore, an automated system is required to detect the road network in a high resolution satellite image in a robust manner.     

Semi-automated extraction and delineation of 3D roads of street scene from mobile laser scanning point clouds

Accurate 3D road information is important for applications such as road maintenance and virtual 3D modeling. Mobile laser scanning (MLS) is an efficient technique for capturing dense point clouds that can be used to construct detailed road models for large areas. This paper presents a method for extracting and delineating roads from large-scale MLS point clouds. The proposed method partitions MLS point clouds into a set of consecutive “scanning lines”, which each consists of a road cross section. A moving window operator is used to filter out non-ground points line by line, and curb points are detected based on curb patterns. The detected curb points are tracked and refined so that they are both globally consistent and locally similar. To evaluate the validity of the proposed method, experiments were conducted using two types of street-scene point clouds captured by Optech’s Lynx Mobile Mapper System. The completeness, correctness, and quality of the extracted roads are over 94.42%, 91.13%, and 91.3%, respectively, which proves the proposed method is a promising solution for extracting 3D roads from MLS point clouds.     

3D information extraction from laser point clouds covering complex road junctions

An automated method for 3D modelling of complex highway interchanges is presented. Laser data and 2D topographic map data have been combined in an innovative 3D reconstruction procedure. Complex situations as shown in this paper demand knowledge to guide the automatic reconstruction. This knowledge has been used in the fusion procedure to constrain the topological and geometrical properties of the reconstructed 3D model. These additions are needed to take care of the lack of data in occluded areas. Laser data has been segmented and filtered before it is fused with map data. In the surface-growing algorithm combining map and laser points, the laser data is assigned to the corresponding road element. Although results are shown using two specific data sources, the algorithm is designed to be capable of dealing with any polygon-based topographic map and any aerial laser scanner data-set.     

高分辨率SAR与光学遥感影像中道路提取方法的研究

高分辨率影像能够提供丰富的地表细节信息,从高分辨率遥感影像中进行高精度的道路提取是目前遥感信息处理的研究热点。分别以高分辨光学IKONOS影像和COSMO-Skymed SAR影像为数据源,对北京市某区域进行了道路信息自动提取方法的研究。高分辨率光学影像中采用最大似然分类进行道路信息提取,在SAR影像中则采用Otsu阈...     

基于规则格网DEM线状矢量要素三维可视化方法

如何在三维地形表面无缝叠加矢量要素是三维地理信息系统、三维制图等领域面临的一个重要问题。目前矢量要素与三维地形无缝叠加的研究主要集中在矢量数据基于三维地形的实时显示上面,面向三维制图的研究相对较少,导致矢量要素的显示过于简单,地图要素信息传输受限。文中提出一种基于几何法的线状矢量数据与规则格网DEM无缝叠加算法,并通过纹理映射的方式实现矢量数据符号化,最后以道路数据为例进行实验,验证了方案的可行性。     

车载激光点云道路边界提取的Snake方法

针对车载激光点云中道路边界提取困难,自动化程度低的问题,提出一种基于离散点Snake的车载激光点云道路边界提取方法。不同于传统基于图像建立Snake,本文直接基于离散点建立Snake模型。先利用伪轨迹点数据,确定初始轮廓位置,参数化不同类型的道路边界初始轮廓;然后基于离散点构建适合多类型道路边界的Snake模型,定义模型内部、外部和约束能量,通过能量函数最小化推动轮廓曲线移动到显著道路边界特征点处,实现不同道路边界的精细提取。本文试验采用3份不同城市场景的车载激光点云数据验证本文方法的有效性,道路边界提取结果的准确率达到97.62%,召回率达到98.04%,F1-Measure值达到97.83%以上,且提取的道路边界结果与软件交互提取的结果有较好的吻合度。试验结果表明,本文方法能够修正噪声、断裂等数据质量对道路边界提取的影响,能够实现各类复杂城市环境中不同形状道路边界的提取,具有较强的稳健性和适用性。     

Open source map matching with Markov decision processes: A new method and a detailed benchmark with existing approaches

Map matching is a widely used technology for mapping tracks to road networks. Typically, tracks are recorded using publicly available Global Navigation Satellite Systems, and road networks are derived from the publicly available OpenStreetMap project. The challenge lies in resolving the discrepancies between the spatial location of the tracks and the underlying road network of the map. Map matching is a combination of defined models, algorithms, and metrics for resolving these differences that result from measurement and map errors. The goal is to find routes within the road network that best represent the given tracks. These matches allow further analysis since they are freed from the noise of the original track, they accurately overlap with the road network, and they are corrected for impossible detours and gaps that were present in the original track. Given the ongoing need for map matching in mobility research, in this work, we present a novel map matching method based on Markov decision processes with Reinforcement Learning algorithms. We introduce the new Candidate Adoption feature, which allows our model to dynamically resolve outliers and noise clusters. We also incorporate an improved Trajectory Simplification preprocessing algorithm for further improving our performance. In addition, we introduce a new map matching metric that evaluates direction changes in the routes, which effectively reduces detours and round trips in the results. We provide our map matching implementation as Open Source Software (OSS) and compare our new approach with multiple existing OSS solutions on several public data sets. Our novel method is more robust to noise and outliers than existing methods and it outperforms them in terms of accuracy and computational speed.     

A Uniform Sky Illumination Model to Enhance Shading of Terrain and Urban Areas

Users of geographic information systems (GIS) usually render terrain using a point light source defined by an illumination vector. A terrain shaded from a single point provides good perceptual cues to surface orientation. This type of hill shading, however, does not include any visual cues to the relative height of surface elements. We propose shading the terrain under uniform diffuse illumination, where light arrives equally from all directions of a theoretical sky surrounding the terrain. Surface elements at lower elevations tend to have more of the sky obscured from view and are thus shaded darker. This tinting approach has the advantage that it provides more detailed renderings than point source illumination. We describe two techniques of computing terrain shading under uniform diffuse illumination. One technique uses a GIS–based hill-shading and shadowing tool to combine many point source renderings into one approximating the terrain under uniform diffuse illumination. The second technique uses a C++ computer algorithm for computing the inclination to the horizon in all azimuth directions at all points of the terrain. These virtual horizons are used to map sky brightness to the rendering of the terrain. To evaluate our techniques, we use two Digital Elevation Models (DEMs)—of the Schell Creek Range of eastern Nevada and a portion of downtown Houston, Texas, developed from Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) data. Renderings based on the uniform diffuse illumination model show more detailed changes in shading than renderings based on a point source illumination model.     

基于LIDAR回波信息的道路提取

机载激光扫描系统在采集三维坐标的同时,也提供回波信息(回波次数、回波强度).本文提出了一种利用回波信息提取道路的方法:逐层加密,TIN提取数字地形模型(DTM),根据点云的回波信息从DTM中提取道路信息,通过搜索孤立点的滤波算法删除其中的噪声点.最后用实测数据对提取的道路信息进行精度分析,验证了该提取方法的有效性.     

Automatic change detection for road networks from images based on GIS

Up to now, detailed strategies and algorithms of automatic change detection for road networks based on GIS have not been discussed. This paper discusses two different strategies of automatic change detection for images with low resolution and high resolution using old GIS data, and presents a buffer detection and tracing algorithm for detecting road from low-resolution images and a new profile tracing algorithm for detecting road from high-resolution images. For feature-level change detection (FL-CD), a so-called buffer detection algorithm is proposed to detect changes of features. Some ideas and algorithms of using GIS prior information and some context information such as substructures of road in high-resolution images to assist road detection and extraction are described in detail.     

Automatic Change Detection for Road Networks from Images Based on GIS

Up to now, detailed strategies and algorithms of automatic change detection for road networks based on GIS have not been discussed. This paper discusses two different strategies of automatic change detection for images with low resolution and high resolution using old GIS data, and presents a buffer detection and tracing algorithm for detecting road from low-resolution images and a new profile tracing algorithm for detecting road from high-resolution images. For feature-level change detection (FL-CD), a so-called buffer detection algorithm is proposed to detect changes of features. Some ideas and algorithms of using GIS prior information and some context information such as substructures of road in high-resolution images to assist road detection and extraction are described in detail.     

车载激光扫描的三维道路自动提取方法

车载激光扫描系统获取的复杂道路环境点云数据量大、目标复杂,难以有效提取出道路的点云。本文通过分析扫描线上激光点云的空间分布和统计特征,提出一种适用于复杂道路环境的道路点云自动提取方法。该方法首先根据点的扫描角度或GPS时间信息提取扫描线;利用移动窗口法进行高程滤波,提取地面点云,然后采用基于路坎模型的移动窗口法提取路坎点;利用局部区域相邻扫描线的相似性特点,对提取的路坎点云进行跟踪和优化;最后利用优化后的路坎作为道路的边界实现道路路面精确提取。经过实验和分析,该方法不仅适应于有固定道路宽度的结构化道路提取,同样适用于无固定宽度的复杂道路提取。