Experiment design of the terrestrial laser scanning of elongated objects

Abstract

In high-demanding engineering applications, the latest performance improvements of the terrestrial lasers scanning (TLS) system and price decreasing trend shows the significant potential of this technology. Beside the fact that some scanners have the scanning frequency of over 1.000.000 Hz, in the engineering applications the accuracy of this survey method plays the key role. Achievement of the satisfactory accuracy of the object modelling using TLS has to be done by experiment designing. This implies the optimization process of the relevant measurements parameters and of the methodology of measurement processing through analysis of the different sources of measurement errors, instrumental precision and performance of the specific TLS, spatial configuration of the object and analysis of the models of registration and georeferencing errors. The proposed methodology of the TLS experiment design is related to the scanning of elongated objects (tunnels, corridors, pipelines, underground passages etc), which generally represent unfavorable cases in providing geodetic measurements of sufficient accuracy and reliability.