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UAV Generated Point Cloud Classification

Posted by Jaime Machuca on January 12, 2015 at 3:36pm

Ok, so this may be a more advanced topic than normally found on this forum. But I am struggling to classify the point clouds generated with the UAV. After Pix4D, after Agisoft or others you are left with an unclassified point cloud If I want to classify the buildings, vegetation, and ground points so I can then generate a DTM. How is everyone doing this? What software have you used, what settings?

The main problem I have found is that most point cloud manipulation software is designed for LiDAR, and LiDAR has one thing we do not have, multiple returns. So for them clasifying the ground is a matter of getting the last return and then just cleaning up the buildings. But most of these don't work so well with the point clouds from Pix4D, Agisoft, etc... I have tried LASTools, ESRI, and recently DTMaster. Any other suggestions? or suggestions on the settings to use?

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gis, las, lidar, aerial, agisoft, cloud, mapping, photogrametry, photography, pix4d

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Replies

- - - Guy Whittal > WIlliam Neuhauser April 12, 2015 at 10:55pm
      
      Amazing 360 degree view.
    - Joel Laguárdia > WIlliam Neuhauser April 2, 2015 at 7:51am
      
      Amazing! It will solve a lot of problems!
      
      Thanks William!
    - Josh Lewis 4 > WIlliam Neuhauser March 23, 2015 at 9:44pm
      
      AWESOME! Thanks for sharing that.
      
      Josh
MR60

Hugues March 22, 2015 at 1:57am

Hi Jaime, since you are a developer, you should not be scared to use the open source best photogrammetry software called "Micmac". It is not a GUI based soft, only command lines. This soft is used by the French National Mapping organization (IGN).
arga firmansyah March 21, 2015 at 6:19pm

Happy to see this thread... I'm doing a photogrammetry and had successfully generate a very nice dtm, dem and orthophoto with acurate ground control points using agisoft. Maybe the same problem with Jaime but different perspective, i want to clasify the point cloud that has green colour (which represent trees) seperately from the red and grey clour point cloud (which represent actual ground) automatically. Is there any such function on any softwarr to do that automatically? I have managed to do that manually, but if the survey area is too big, it will be too much pain.
Fouad Mahmud March 20, 2015 at 6:52am

Try Globalmapper, there is a way to classify pointclouds from photogrammetry using the LIDAR module...
- Josh Lewis 4 > Fouad Mahmud March 20, 2015 at 11:48am
  
  Huh. I will look into that. Thanks
  - Tazmoe > Josh Lewis 4 March 20, 2015 at 7:44pm
    
    Here is a surface model of the ground points from the field next door. I used an NEX-5 and photoscan. to generate the point cloud. TerraScan and TerraModel to classify the points and generate the model. I would look into GlobalMapper as well.
    
    Regards,
    
    Robert
Tazmoe March 17, 2015 at 12:38pm

I use Terrasolid's TerraScan product which sits on top of Microstation as an MDL app to process LiDAR points clouds.. TerraScan uses statistical based algorithms, so it is not dependent on Return/echo number. I'm in the process of generating point clouds from UAV photos using photoscan and I'l classify them with TerraScan. I'll let you know how they turn out. I'm having problems georefing the images using Mission Planner. I'm getting very high altitude numbers for the Z. I'm flying at 50 meters and it is saying they are at 2200 meters.
- Developer
  
  Jaime Machuca > Tazmoe March 18, 2015 at 10:17am
  
  50 mts is probably relative to ground 2200 is from MSL.