Full color 3D point clouds from bird's-eye view using multi-view laser scanner and quadcopter

Abstract

Bird's-eye views are critical in responding to disasters or accidents. Mobile robots mounted with laser scanners are often used for large-scale spatial remote sensing. We construct a multi-view laser scanning system as a prototype to acquire highly-detailed 3D structures from a bird's-eye viewpoint. We demonstrate the fusion of the 3D point clouds with aerial images captured by a quadcopter. Our experiments show that full color 3D point clouds from bird's-eye view provide an extremely useful approach for organizing disaster response efforts.