Automatic method for building indoor boundary models from dense point clouds collected by laser scanners

Research on Distance Transform and Neural Network Lidar Information Sampling Classification-Based Semantic Segmentation of 2D Indoor Room Maps

Semantic segmentation of room maps is an essential issue in mobile robots’ execution of tasks. In this work, a new approach to obtain the semantic labels of 2D lidar room maps by combining distance transform watershed-based pre-segmentation and a skillfully designed neural network lidar information sampling classification is proposed. In order to label the room maps with high efficiency, high precision and high speed, we have designed a low-power and high-performance method, which can be deployed on low computing power Raspberry Pi devices. In the training stage, a lidar is simulated to collect the lidar detection line maps of each point in the manually labelled map, and then we use these line maps and the corresponding labels to train the designed neural network. In the testing stage, the new map is first pre-segmented into simple cells with the distance transformation watershed method, then we classify the lidar detection line maps with the trained neural network. The optimized areas of sparse sampling points are proposed by using the result of distance transform generated in the pre-segmentation process to prevent the sampling points selected in the boundary regions from influencing the results of semantic labeling. A prototype mobile robot was developed to verify the proposed method, the feasibility, validity, robustness and high efficiency were verified by a series of tests. The proposed method achieved higher scores in its recall, precision. Specifically, the mean recall is 0.965, and mean precision is 0.943.

A Decade of Modern Bridge Monitoring Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning: Review and Future Directions

Over the last decade, particular interest in using state-of-the-art emerging technologies for inspection, assessment, and management of civil infrastructures has remarkably increased. Advanced technologies, such as laser scanners, have become a suitable alternative for labor intensive, expensive, and unsafe traditional inspection and maintenance methods, which encourage the increasing use of this technology in construction industry, especially in bridges. This paper aims to provide a thorough mixed scientometric and state-of-the-art review on the application of terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) in bridge engineering and explore investigations and recommendations of researchers in this area. Following the review, more than 1500 research publications were collected, investigated and analyzed through a two-fold literature search published within the last decade from 2010 to 2020. Research trends, consisting of dominated sub-fields, co-occurrence of keywords, network of researchers and their institutions, along with the interaction of research networks, were quantitatively analyzed. Moreover, based on the collected papers, application of TLS in bridge engineering and asset management was reviewed according to four categories including (1) generation of 3D model, (2) quality inspection, (3) structural assessment, and (4) bridge information modeling (BrIM). Finally, the paper identifies the current research gaps, future directions obtained from the quantitative analysis, and in-depth discussions of the collected papers in this area.

Topology Reconstruction of BIM Wall Objects from Point Cloud Data

The processing of remote sensing measurements to Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a popular subject in current literature. An important step in the process is the enrichment of the geometry with the topology of the wall observations to create a logical model. However, this remains an unsolved task as methods struggle to deal with the noise, incompleteness and the complexity of point cloud data of building scenes. Current methods impose severe abstractions such as Manhattan-world assumptions and single-story procedures to overcome these obstacles, but as a result, a general data processing approach is still missing. In this paper, we propose a method that solves these shortcomings and creates a logical BIM model in an unsupervised manner. More specifically, we propose a connection evaluation framework that takes as input a set of preprocessed point clouds of a building’s wall observations and compute the best fit topology between them. We transcend the current state of the art by processing point clouds of both straight, curved and polyline-based walls. Also, we consider multiple connection types in a novel reasoning framework that decides which operations are best fit to reconstruct the topology of the walls. The geometry and topology produced by our method is directly usable by BIM processes as it is structured conform the IFC data structure. The experimental results conducted on the Stanford 2D-3D-Semantics dataset (2D-3D-S) show that the proposed method is a promising framework to reconstruct complex multi-story wall elements in an unsupervised manner.

Automatic Indoor as-Built Building Information Models Generation by Using Low-Cost RGB-D Sensors

To generate indoor as-built building information models (AB BIMs) automatically and economically is a great technological challenge. Many approaches have been developed to address this problem in recent years, but it is far from being settled, particularly for the point cloud segmentation and the extraction of the relationship among different elements due to the complicated indoor environment. This is even more difficult for the low-quality point cloud generated by low-cost scanning equipment. This paper proposes an automatic as-built BIMs generation framework that transforms the noisy 3D point cloud produced by a low-cost RGB-D sensor (about 708 USD for data collection equipment, 379 USD for the Structure sensor and 329 USD for iPad) to the as-built BIMs, without any manual intervention. The experiment results show that the proposed method has competitive robustness and accuracy, compared to the high-quality Terrestrial Lidar System (TLS), with the element extraction accuracy of 100%, mean dimension reconstruction accuracy of 98.6% and mean area reconstruction accuracy of 93.6%. Also, the proposed framework makes the BIM generation workflows more efficient in both data collection and data processing. In the experiments, the time consumption of data collection for a typical room, with an area of 45–67 m2, is reduced to 4–6 min with an RGB-D sensor from 50–60 min with TLS. The processing time to generate BIM models is about half minutes automatically, from around 10 min with a conventional semi-manual method.

Clustering of Wall Geometry from Unstructured Point Clouds Using Conditional Random Fields

The automated reconstruction of Building Information Modeling (BIM) objects from point cloud data is still subject of ongoing research. A vital step in the process is identifying the observations for each wall object. Given a set of segmented and classified point clouds, the labeled segments should be clustered according to their respective objects. The current processes to perform this task are sensitive to noise, occlusions, and the associativity between faces of neighboring objects. The proper retrieval of the observed geometry is especially important for wall geometry as it forms the basis for further BIM reconstruction. In this work, a method is presented to automatically group wall segments derived from point clouds according to the proper walls of a building. More specifically, a Conditional Random Field is employed that evaluates the context of each wall segment in order to determine which wall it belongs to. First, a set of classified planar primitives is obtained through algorithms developed in prior work. Next, both local and contextual features are extracted based on the nearest neighbors and a number of seeds that are heuristically determined. The final wall clusters are then computed by decoding the graph. The method is tested on our own data as well as the 2D-3D-Semantics (2D-3D-S) benchmark data of Stanford. Compared to a conventional region growing method, the proposed method reduces the rate of false positives, resulting in better wall clusters. Overall, the method computes a more balanced clustering of the observations. A key advantage of the proposed method is its capability to deal with wall geometry in complex configurations in multi-storey buildings opposed to the presented methods in current literature.

3D Point Cloud Semantic Modelling: Integrated Framework for Indoor Spaces and Furniture

3D models derived from point clouds are useful in various shapes to optimize the trade-off between precision and geometric complexity. They are defined at different granularity levels according to each indoor situation. In this article, we present an integrated 3D semantic reconstruction framework that leverages segmented point cloud data and domain ontologies. Our approach follows a part-to-whole conception which models a point cloud in parametric elements usable per instance and aggregated to obtain a global 3D model. We first extract analytic features, object relationships and contextual information to permit better object characterization. Then, we propose a multi-representation modelling mechanism augmented by automatic recognition and fitting from the 3D library ModelNet10 to provide the best candidates for several 3D scans of furniture. Finally, we combine every element to obtain a consistent indoor hybrid 3D model. The method allows a wide range of applications from interior navigation to virtual stores.

Towards the automatic scanning of indoors with robots

This paper is framed in both 3D digitization and 3D data intelligent processing research fields. Our objective is focused on developing a set of techniques for the automatic creation of simple three-dimensional indoor models with mobile robots. The document presents the principal steps of the process, the experimental setup and the results achieved. We distinguish between the stages concerning intelligent data acquisition and 3D data processing. This paper is focused on the first stage. We show how the mobile robot, which carries a 3D scanner, is able to, on the one hand, make decisions about the next best scanner position and, on the other hand, navigate autonomously in the scene with the help of the data collected from earlier scans. After this stage, millions of 3D data are converted into a simplified 3D indoor model. The robot imposes a stopping criterion when the whole point cloud covers the essential parts of the scene. This system has been tested under real conditions indoors with promising results. The future is addressed to extend the method in much more complex and larger scenarios.

3D modeling of building indoor spaces and closed doors from imagery and point clouds

3D models of indoor environments are increasingly gaining importance due to the wide range of applications to which they can be subjected: from redesign and visualization to monitoring and simulation. These models usually exist only for newly constructed buildings; therefore, the development of automatic approaches for reconstructing 3D indoors from imagery and/or point clouds can make the process easier, faster and cheaper. Among the constructive elements defining a building interior, doors are very common elements and their detection can be very useful either for knowing the environment structure, to perform an efficient navigation or to plan appropriate evacuation routes. The fact that doors are topologically connected to walls by being coplanar, together with the unavoidable presence of clutter and occlusions indoors, increases the inherent complexity of the automation of the recognition process. In this work, we present a pipeline of techniques used for the reconstruction and interpretation of building interiors based on point clouds and images. The methodology analyses the visibility problem of indoor environments and goes in depth with door candidate detection. The presented approach is tested in real data sets showing its potential with a high door detection rate and applicability for robust and efficient envelope reconstruction.