Shane beat me to it while I was writing my novelPeyman Bashiri wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:20 pmThanks, I was asking about aerial LiDAR (drone or fixed wing).smacl wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:38 pmIf you had the position and orientation details for each setup, along with a way to link them back to the related scan points, yes.Peyman Bashiri wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 7:34 pm I have a question too, is it possible to convert/export unstructured point cloud to structured?
Peyman
Peyman
I'll post it anyway
I think here we need to define what structured means.
Terrestrial scan data is, when it comes from the scanner, in the first step structured. Every captured point corresponds to the scannerhead, which is the Origin, since the scanner produces local coordinates. Thus we can use that point cloud data to visualize it as a 360 Panorama.
Now going to a mobile scanner: Normally the data is not taken stationary, meaning the captured points correspond to different capture positions.
If we go into images as an example: If you take a 360 Panorama, your camera is at the same position (terrestrial), in contrast when taking a video, while moving around, the position of the camera is different for every picture in the video stream.
Aerial LiDAR data is normally taken as a stripe, rather than an image (only one scan line, not a complete scan frame), so one shot of the scan line corresponds to one position of the drone.
There is relation between where the points are taken and the taken points, but you can't visualize them as a Panorama.
Which means: One can argue, that this point cloud data is structured, as long as there is knowledge about where the captured points (from which position and view direction) were taken. So you need knowledge about the trajectory (position + view direction) + the relation between cloud data and trajectory.
The other question which comes to mind: Is it possible to change mobile captured data into terrestrial 360° panorama data?
Answer is: Yes, depending on the used algorithm it will work better or worse, but I think I have not seen anybody doing that fully automatic (like choosing the virtual scan positions, so every point in the cloud is used in the positions).