Georeferencing of terrestrial laserscanner data for applications in architectural modeling

Abstract

Commonly several measurements originating from different sensor systems and stations are combined in order to completely model an architectural site. An important step preceding data fusion is the geometric alignment of the measurements with a geodetic coordi-nate system, or in other words georeferencing the measurements. This paper investigates methods for the georeferencing of terrestrial laserscanning data. Both sensor- and data-driven methods are considered. We propose the integration of a GPS receiver and a digital compass for automated georeferencing. We detail on how virtual city models and aerial LIDAR data can be utilized for georeferenc-ing by point cloud matching. The proposed methods are evaluated in practical experiments and compared to conventional methods. The results obtained are presented and illustrated.