Reduction Method for Mobile Laser Scanning Data

Abstract

Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) technology acquires a huge volume of data in a very short time. In many cases, it is reasonable to reduce the size of the dataset with eliminating points in such a way that the datasets, after reduction, meet specific optimization criteria. Various methods exist to decrease the size of point cloud, such as raw data reduction, Digital Terrain Model (DTM) generalization or generation of regular grid. These methods have been successfully applied on data captured from Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS), however, they have not been fully analyzed on data captured by an MLS system. The paper presents our new approach, called the Optimum Single MLS Dataset method (OptD-single-MLS), which is an algorithm for MLS data reduction. The tests were carried out in two variants: (1) for raw sensory measurements and (2) for a georeferenced 3D point cloud. We found that the OptD-single-MLS method provides a good solution in both variants; therefore, the choice of the reduction variant depends only on the user.