Estimating wood quality attributes from dense airborne LiDAR point clouds

Mapping individual tree quality parameters from high-density LiDAR point clouds is an important step towards improved forest inventories.We present a novel machine learning-based workflow that uses individual tree point clouds from drone laser scanning to predict wood quality indicators in standing trees.Unlike object reconstruction methods,our approach is based on simple metrics computed on vertical slices that summarize information on point distances,angles,and geometric attributes of the space between and around the points.Our models use these slice metrics as predictors and achieve high accuracy for predicting the diameter of the largest branch per log (DLBs) and stem diameter at different heights (DS) from survey-grade drone laser scans.We show that our models are also robust and accurate when tested on suboptimal versions of the data generated by reductions in the number of points or emulations of suboptimal single-tree segmentation scenarios.Our approach provides a simple,clear,and scalable solution that can be adapted to different situations both for research and more operational mapping.

A LiDAR Point Clouds Dataset of Ships in a Maritime Environment

For the first time, this article introduces a LiDAR Point Clouds Dataset of Ships composed of both collected and simulated data to address the scarcity of LiDAR data in maritime applications. The collected data are acquired using specialized maritime LiDAR sensors in both inland waterways and wide-open ocean environments. The simulated data is generated by placing a ship in the LiDAR coordinate system and scanning it with a redeveloped Blensor that emulates the operation of a LiDAR sensor equipped with various laser beams. Furthermore,we also render point clouds for foggy and rainy weather conditions. To describe a realistic shipping environment, a dynamic tail wave is modeled by iterating the wave elevation of each point in a time series. Finally, networks serving small objects are migrated to ship applications by feeding our dataset. The positive effect of simulated data is described in object detection experiments, and the negative impact of tail waves as noise is verified in single-object tracking experiments. The Dataset is available at https://github.com/zqy411470859/ship_dataset.

Building Facade Point Clouds Segmentation Based on Optimal Dual-Scale Feature Descriptors

To address the current issues of inaccurate segmentation and the limited applicability of segmentation methods for building facades in point clouds, we propose a facade segmentation algorithm based on optimal dual-scale feature descriptors. First, we select the optimal dual-scale descriptors from a range of feature descriptors. Next, we segment the facade according to the threshold value of the chosen optimal dual-scale descriptors. Finally, we use RANSAC (Random Sample Consensus) to fit the segmented surface and optimize the fitting result. Experimental results show that, compared to commonly used facade segmentation algorithms, the proposed method yields more accurate segmentation results, providing a robust data foundation for subsequent 3D model reconstruction of buildings.

Automatic Extraction Method of 3D Feature Guidelines for Complex Cultural Relic Surfaces Based on Point Cloud

Cultural relics line graphic serves as a crucial form of traditional artifact information documentation,which is a simple and intuitive product with low cost of displaying compared with 3D models.Dimensionality reduction is undoubtedly necessary for line drawings.However,most existing methods for artifact drawing rely on the principles of orthographic projection that always cannot avoid angle occlusion and data overlapping while the surface of cultural relics is complex.Therefore,conformal mapping was introduced as a dimensionality reduction way to compensate for the limitation of orthographic projection.Based on the given criteria for assessing surface complexity,this paper proposed a three-dimensional feature guideline extraction method for complex cultural relic surfaces.A 2D and 3D combined factor that measured the importance of points on describing surface features,vertex weight,was designed.Then the selection threshold for feature guideline extraction was determined based on the differences between vertex weight and shape index distributions.The feasibility and stability were verified through experiments conducted on real cultural relic surface data.Results demonstrated the ability of the method to address the challenges associated with the automatic generation of line drawings for complex surfaces.The extraction method and the obtained results will be useful for line graphic drawing,displaying and propaganda of cultural relics.

Part-Whole Relational Few-Shot 3D Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation

This paper focuses on the task of few-shot 3D point cloud semantic segmentation.Despite some progress,this task still encounters many issues due to the insufficient samples given,e.g.,incomplete object segmentation and inaccurate semantic discrimination.To tackle these issues,we first leverage part-whole relationships into the task of 3D point cloud semantic segmentation to capture semantic integrity,which is empowered by the dynamic capsule routing with the module of 3D Capsule Networks(CapsNets)in the embedding network.Concretely,the dynamic routing amalgamates geometric information of the 3D point cloud data to construct higher-level feature representations,which capture the relationships between object parts and their wholes.Secondly,we designed a multi-prototype enhancement module to enhance the prototype discriminability.Specifically,the single-prototype enhancement mechanism is expanded to the multi-prototype enhancement version for capturing rich semantics.Besides,the shot-correlation within the category is calculated via the interaction of different samples to enhance the intra-category similarity.Ablation studies prove that the involved part-whole relations and proposed multi-prototype enhancement module help to achieve complete object segmentation and improve semantic discrimination.Moreover,under the integration of these two modules,quantitative and qualitative experiments on two public benchmarks,including S3DIS and ScanNet,indicate the superior performance of the proposed framework on the task of 3D point cloud semantic segmentation,compared to some state-of-the-art methods.

Point Cloud Classification Using Content-Based Transformer via Clustering in Feature Space

Recently, there have been some attempts of Transformer in 3D point cloud classification. In order to reduce computations, most existing methods focus on local spatial attention,but ignore their content and fail to establish relationships between distant but relevant points. To overcome the limitation of local spatial attention, we propose a point content-based Transformer architecture, called PointConT for short. It exploits the locality of points in the feature space(content-based), which clusters the sampled points with similar features into the same class and computes the self-attention within each class, thus enabling an effective trade-off between capturing long-range dependencies and computational complexity. We further introduce an inception feature aggregator for point cloud classification, which uses parallel structures to aggregate high-frequency and low-frequency information in each branch separately. Extensive experiments show that our PointConT model achieves a remarkable performance on point cloud shape classification. Especially, our method exhibits 90.3% Top-1 accuracy on the hardest setting of ScanObjectN N. Source code of this paper is available at https://github.com/yahuiliu99/PointC onT.

A Random Fusion of Mix 3D and Polar Mix to Improve Semantic Segmentation Performance in 3D Lidar Point Cloud

This paper focuses on the effective utilization of data augmentation techniques for 3Dlidar point clouds to enhance the performance of neural network models.These point clouds,which represent spatial information through a collection of 3D coordinates,have found wide-ranging applications.Data augmentation has emerged as a potent solution to the challenges posed by limited labeled data and the need to enhance model generalization capabilities.Much of the existing research is devoted to crafting novel data augmentation methods specifically for 3D lidar point clouds.However,there has been a lack of focus on making the most of the numerous existing augmentation techniques.Addressing this deficiency,this research investigates the possibility of combining two fundamental data augmentation strategies.The paper introduces PolarMix andMix3D,two commonly employed augmentation techniques,and presents a new approach,named RandomFusion.Instead of using a fixed or predetermined combination of augmentation methods,RandomFusion randomly chooses one method from a pool of options for each instance or sample.This innovative data augmentation technique randomly augments each point in the point cloud with either PolarMix or Mix3D.The crux of this strategy is the random choice between PolarMix and Mix3Dfor the augmentation of each point within the point cloud data set.The results of the experiments conducted validate the efficacy of the RandomFusion strategy in enhancing the performance of neural network models for 3D lidar point cloud semantic segmentation tasks.This is achieved without compromising computational efficiency.By examining the potential of merging different augmentation techniques,the research contributes significantly to a more comprehensive understanding of how to utilize existing augmentation methods for 3D lidar point clouds.RandomFusion data augmentation technique offers a simple yet effective method to leverage the diversity of augmentation techniques and boost the robustness of models.The insights gained from this research can pave the way for future work aimed at developing more advanced and efficient data augmentation strategies for 3D lidar point cloud analysis.

SGT-Net: A Transformer-Based Stratified Graph Convolutional Network for 3D Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation

In recent years,semantic segmentation on 3D point cloud data has attracted much attention.Unlike 2D images where pixels distribute regularly in the image domain,3D point clouds in non-Euclidean space are irregular and inherently sparse.Therefore,it is very difficult to extract long-range contexts and effectively aggregate local features for semantic segmentation in 3D point cloud space.Most current methods either focus on local feature aggregation or long-range context dependency,but fail to directly establish a global-local feature extractor to complete the point cloud semantic segmentation tasks.In this paper,we propose a Transformer-based stratified graph convolutional network(SGT-Net),which enlarges the effective receptive field and builds direct long-range dependency.Specifically,we first propose a novel dense-sparse sampling strategy that provides dense local vertices and sparse long-distance vertices for subsequent graph convolutional network(GCN).Secondly,we propose a multi-key self-attention mechanism based on the Transformer to further weight augmentation for crucial neighboring relationships and enlarge the effective receptive field.In addition,to further improve the efficiency of the network,we propose a similarity measurement module to determine whether the neighborhood near the center point is effective.We demonstrate the validity and superiority of our method on the S3DIS and ShapeNet datasets.Through ablation experiments and segmentation visualization,we verify that the SGT model can improve the performance of the point cloud semantic segmentation.

Three-dimensional(3D)parametric measurements of individual gravels in the Gobi region using point cloud technique

Gobi spans a large area of China,surpassing the combined expanse of mobile dunes and semi-fixed dunes.Its presence significantly influences the movement of sand and dust.However,the complex origins and diverse materials constituting the Gobi result in notable differences in saltation processes across various Gobi surfaces.It is challenging to describe these processes according to a uniform morphology.Therefore,it becomes imperative to articulate surface characteristics through parameters such as the three-dimensional(3D)size and shape of gravel.Collecting morphology information for Gobi gravels is essential for studying its genesis and sand saltation.To enhance the efficiency and information yield of gravel parameter measurements,this study conducted field experiments in the Gobi region across Dunhuang City,Guazhou County,and Yumen City(administrated by Jiuquan City),Gansu Province,China in March 2023.A research framework and methodology for measuring 3D parameters of gravel using point cloud were developed,alongside improved calculation formulas for 3D parameters including gravel grain size,volume,flatness,roundness,sphericity,and equivalent grain size.Leveraging multi-view geometry technology for 3D reconstruction allowed for establishing an optimal data acquisition scheme characterized by high point cloud reconstruction efficiency and clear quality.Additionally,the proposed methodology incorporated point cloud clustering,segmentation,and filtering techniques to isolate individual gravel point clouds.Advanced point cloud algorithms,including the Oriented Bounding Box(OBB),point cloud slicing method,and point cloud triangulation,were then deployed to calculate the 3D parameters of individual gravels.These systematic processes allow precise and detailed characterization of individual gravels.For gravel grain size and volume,the correlation coefficients between point cloud and manual measurements all exceeded 0.9000,confirming the feasibility of the proposed methodology for measuring 3D parameters of individual gravels.The proposed workflow yields accurate calculations of relevant parameters for Gobi gravels,providing essential data support for subsequent studies on Gobi environments.

Intelligent extraction of road cracks based on vehicle laser point cloud and panoramic sequence images

In light of the limited efficacy of conventional methods for identifying pavement cracks and the absence of comprehensive depth and location data in two-dimensional photographs,this study presents an intelligent strategy for extracting road cracks.This methodology involves the integration of laser point cloud data obtained from a vehicle-mounted system and a panoramic sequence of images.The study employs a vehicle-mounted LiDAR measurement system to acquire laser point cloud and panoramic sequence image data simultaneously.A convolutional neural network is utilized to extract cracks from the panoramic sequence image.The extracted sequence image is then aligned with the laser point cloud,enabling the assignment of RGB information to the vehicle-mounted three dimensional(3D)point cloud and location information to the two dimensional(2D)panoramic image.Additionally,a threshold value is set based on the crack elevation change to extract the aligned roadway point cloud.The three-dimensional data pertaining to the cracks can be acquired.The experimental findings demonstrate that the use of convolutional neural networks has yielded noteworthy outcomes in the extraction of road cracks.The utilization of point cloud and image alignment techniques enables the extraction of precise location data pertaining to road cracks.This approach exhibits superior accuracy when compared to conventional methods.Moreover,it facilitates rapid and accurate identification and localization of road cracks,thereby playing a crucial role in ensuring road maintenance and traffic safety.Consequently,this technique finds extensive application in the domains of intelligent transportation and urbanization development.The technology exhibits significant promise for use in the domains of intelligent transportation and city development.

Building 3D CityGML models of mining industrial structures using integrated UAV and TLS point clouds

Mining industrial areas with anthropogenic engineering structures are one of the most distinctive features of the real world.3D models of the real world have been increasingly popular with numerous applications,such as digital twins and smart factory management.In this study,3D models of mining engineering structures were built based on the CityGML standard.For collecting spatial data,the two most popular geospatial technologies,namely UAV-SfM and TLS were employed.The accuracy of the UAV survey was at the centimeter level,and it satisfied the absolute positional accuracy requirement of creat-ing all levels of detail(LoD)according to the CityGML standard.Therefore,the UAV-SfM point cloud dataset was used to build LoD 2 models.In addition,the comparison between the UAV-SfM and TLS sub-clouds of facades and roofs indicates that the UAV-SfM and TLS point clouds of these objects are highly consistent,therefore,point clouds with a higher level of detail and accuracy provided by the integration of UAV-SfM and TLS were used to build LoD 3 models.The resulting 3D CityGML models include 39 buildings at LoD 2,and two mine shafts with hoistrooms,headframes,and sheave wheels at LoD3.

Perceptual Quality Assessment for Point Clouds:A Survey

A point cloud is considered a promising 3D representation that has achieved wide applications in several fields.However,quality degradation inevitably occurs during its acquisition and generation,communication and transmission,and rendering and display.Therefore,how to accurately perceive the visual quality of point clouds is a meaningful topic.In this survey,we first introduce the point cloud to emphasize the importance of point cloud quality assessment(PCQA).A review of subjective PCQA is followed,including common point cloud distortions,subjective experimental setups and subjective databases.Then we review and compare objective PCQA methods in terms of modelbased and projection-based.Finally,we provide evaluation criteria for objective PCQA methods and compare the performances of various methods across multiple databases.This survey provides an overview of classical methods and recent advances in PCQA.

基于轻量化PointNet网络的林果园喷雾作业靶标实时识别方法

为了进一步提高喷雾机器人靶标检测的精准性、实时性和应用部署的实用性,该研究提出一种基于轻量化PointNet网络的林果园喷雾作业靶标实时识别方法。首先通过区域提取降采样、地面分割和改进DBSCAN聚类等点云预处理方法提取原始点云中的靶标;然后通过移动最小二乘上采样将靶标点云转化为满足点云识别网络输入要求的点云数据;最终通过在PointNet网络中引入残差模块和改进循环剪枝算法轻量化PointNet网络,完成林果树靶标的实时识别。试验结果表明,在ModelNet40数据集上,轻量化PointNet网络可达89.7%的准确率;在实际苗圃环境的试验中,该研究方法对靶标的识别准确率可达92.49%,同时误识率与拒识率分别为13.4%和6.47%,相较PointNet网络识别准确率提升了4.38个百分点,误识率和拒识率分别降低了7.2和4.07个百分点;轻量化PointNet网络识别准确率仅比PointNet++网络低1.14个百分点,误识率和拒识率分别高了0.9和1.12个百分点。但是轻量化PointNet网络的模型参数量较PointNet网络和PointNet++网络的模型参数量显著减少,仅为PointNet网络的11.5%,PointNet++网络的27.02%;运算量相较PointNet网络、PointNet++网络分别减少13.3和76.79个百分点。该研究提出的轻量化PointNet网络具有较高的实时性、精确性和鲁棒性,能够满足林果园喷雾作业的靶标识别需求,可为林果园喷雾作业靶标实时识别提供参考。

基于PointNet++的邻域特征增强点云语义分割方法

随着智能驾驶、机器人导航等以点云为基础的应用蓬勃发展,点云语义分割逐渐成为研究热点。然而,现有的点云语义分割方法存在局部特征提取不充分、特征融合不完整的缺陷。针对这些不足,提出了对应的解决方案。对于局部特征提取不充分的现象,通过嵌入邻域点的坐标、方向、距离等相关信息去关联邻域点的显式特征。对于特征融合不完整的现象,提出了一种最大池化与自注意力池化相结合的混合池化方法。网络架构基于PointNet++,并结合提出的局部特征提取和融合方法,在S3DIS数据集上的实验结果表明,与基线方法PointNet++相比,各评价指标都有不同程度的提高,证实了新方法的有效性和优越性。

Point Cloud Based Semantic Segmentation Method for Unmanned Shuttle Bus

The complexity of application scenarios and the enormous volume of point cloud data make it difficult to quickly and effectively segment the scenario only based on the point cloud.In this paper,to address the semantic segmentation for safety driving of unmanned shuttle buses,an accurate and effective point cloud-based semantic segmentation method is proposed for specified scenarios(such as campus).Firstly,we analyze the characteristic of the shuttle bus scenarios and propose to use ROI selection to reduce the total points in computation,and then propose an improved semantic segmentation model based on Cylinder3D,which improves mean Intersection over Union(mIoU)by 1.3%over the original model on SemanticKITTI data;then,a semantic category division method is proposed for road scenario of shuttle bus and practical application requirements,and then we further simplify the model to improve the efficiency without losing the accuracy.Finally,the nuScenes dataset and the real gathered campus scene data are used to validate and analyze the proposed method.The experimental results on the nuScenes dataset and our data demonstrate that the proposed method performs better than other point cloud semantic segmentation methods in terms of application requirements for unmanned shuttle buses.Which has a higher accuracy(82.73%in mIoU)and a higher computational efficiency(inference speed of 90 ms).

Hawk‐eye‐inspired perception algorithm of stereo vision for obtaining orchard 3D point cloud navigation map

The binocular stereo vision is the lowest cost sensor for obtaining 3D information.Considering the weakness of long‐distance measurement and stability,the improvement of accuracy and stability of stereo vision is urgently required for application of precision agriculture.To address the challenges of stereo vision long‐distance measurement and stable perception without hardware upgrade,inspired by hawk eyes,higher resolution perception and the adaptive HDR(High Dynamic Range)were introduced in this paper.Simulating the function from physiological structure of‘deep fovea’and‘shallow fovea’of hawk eye,the higher resolution reconstruction method in this paper was aimed at ac-curacy improving.Inspired by adjustment of pupils,the adaptive HDR method was proposed for high dynamic range optimisation and stable perception.In various light conditions,compared with default stereo vision,the accuracy of proposed algorithm was improved by 28.0%evaluated by error ratio,and the stability was improved by 26.56%by disparity accuracy.For fixed distance measurement,the maximum improvement was 78.6%by standard deviation.Based on the hawk‐eye‐inspired perception algorithm,the point cloud of orchard was improved both in quality and quantity.The hawk‐eye‐inspired perception algorithm contributed great advance in binocular 3D point cloud recon-struction in orchard navigation map.

基于改进PointNet++的输电线路关键部位点云语义分割研究

输电线路的关键部位包括塔身、导线、绝缘子、避雷线以及引流线,无人机精细化导航的首要任务是构造输电线路的点云地图并从中分割出上述部位。为解决现有算法在输电线路的绝缘子、引流线等精细结构分割时精度低的问题,通过改进PointNet++算法,提出了一种面向输电线路精细结构的点云分割方法。首先,基于无人机机载激光雷达在现场采集的点云数据,构造了输电线路点云分割数据集;其次,通过对比实验,筛选出在本输电线路场景下合理的数据增强方法,并对数据集进行了数据增强;最后,将自注意力机制以及倒置残差结构和PointNet++相结合,设计了输电线路关键部位点云语义分割算法。实验结果表明:该改进PointNet++算法在全场景输电线路现场点云数据作为输入的前提下,首次实现了对引流线、绝缘子等输电线路中精细结构和导线、杆塔塔身以及输电线路无关背景点的同时分割,平均交并比(mean intersection over union,mIoU)达80.79%,所有类别分割的平均F_(1)值(F1 score)达88.99%。

A modified method of discontinuity trace mapping using three-dimensional point clouds of rock mass surfaces

This paper presents an automated method for discontinuity trace mapping using three-dimensional point clouds of rock mass surfaces.Specifically,the method consists of five steps:(1)detection of trace feature points by normal tensor voting theory,(2)co ntraction of trace feature points,(3)connection of trace feature points,(4)linearization of trace segments,and(5)connection of trace segments.A sensitivity analysis was then conducted to identify the optimal parameters of the proposed method.Three field cases,a natural rock mass outcrop and two excavated rock tunnel surfaces,were analyzed using the proposed method to evaluate its validity and efficiency.The results show that the proposed method is more efficient and accurate than the traditional trace mapping method,and the efficiency enhancement is more robust as the number of feature points increases.

Formula for calculating spatial similarity degrees between point clouds on multi-scale maps taking map scale change as the only independent variable

The degree of spatial similarity plays an important role in map generalization, yet there has been no quantitative research into it. To fill this gap, this study first defines map scale change and spatial similarity degree/relation in multi-scale map spaces and then proposes a model for calculating the degree of spatial similarity between a point cloud at one scale and its gener- alized counterpart at another scale. After validation, the new model features 16 points with map scale change as the x coordinate and the degree of spatial similarity as the y coordinate. Finally, using an application for curve fitting, the model achieves an empirical formula that can calculate the degree of spatial similarity using map scale change as the sole independent variable, and vice versa. This formula can be used to automate algorithms for point feature generalization and to determine when to terminate them during the generalization.

Aggregate Point Cloud Geometric Features for Processing

As 3D acquisition technology develops and 3D sensors become increasingly affordable,large quantities of 3D point cloud data are emerging.How to effectively learn and extract the geometric features from these point clouds has become an urgent problem to be solved.The point cloud geometric information is hidden in disordered,unstructured points,making point cloud analysis a very challenging problem.To address this problem,we propose a novel network framework,called Tree Graph Network(TGNet),which can sample,group,and aggregate local geometric features.Specifically,we construct a Tree Graph by explicit rules,which consists of curves extending in all directions in point cloud feature space,and then aggregate the features of the graph through a cross-attention mechanism.In this way,we incorporate more point cloud geometric structure information into the representation of local geometric features,which makes our network perform better.Our model performs well on several basic point clouds processing tasks such as classification,segmentation,and normal estimation,demonstrating the effectiveness and superiority of our network.Furthermore,we provide ablation experiments and visualizations to better understand our network.