Tridimensional Reconstruction Applied to Cultural Heritage with the Use of Camera-Equipped UAV and Terrestrial Laser Scanner

Remote Sensing

Zhihua Xu³  Lixin Wu⁴  Yonglin Shen⁵  Fashuai Li¹  Qiuling Wang³  Ran Wang¹  Rosa Lasaponara²  Nicola Masini²  Henrique Lorenzo²  Nicolas Baghdadi² 

[1] College of Geoscience and Surveying Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China; E-Mails:Key Laboratory of Environment Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;;Key Laboratory of Environment Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; E-Mails:;Center for Internet of Things, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China;Faculty of Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China; E-Mail:

关键词: 3D reconstruction;    cultural heritage;    image-based method;    camera network;    unmanned aerial vehicle system;    terrestrial laser scanner;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs61110413

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

No single sensor can acquire complete information by applying one or several multi-surveys to cultural object reconstruction. For instance, a terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) usually obtains information on building facades, whereas aerial photogrammetry is capable of providing the perspective for building roofs. In this study, a camera-equipped unmanned aerial vehicle system (UAV) and a TLS were used in an integrated design to capture 3D point clouds and thus facilitate the acquisition of whole information on an object of interest for cultural heritage. A camera network is proposed to modify the image-based 3D reconstruction or structure from motion (SfM) method by taking full advantage of the flight control data acquired by the UAV platform. The camera network improves SfM performances in terms of image matching efficiency and the reduction of mismatches. Thus, this camera network modified SfM is employed to process the overlapping UAV image sets and to recover the scene geometry. The SfM output covers most information on building roofs, but has sparse resolution. The dense multi-view 3D reconstruction algorithm is then applied to improve in-depth detail. The two groups of point clouds from image reconstruction and TLS scanning are registered from coarse to fine with the use of an iterative method. This methodology has been tested on one historical monument in Fujian Province, China. Results show a final point cloud with complete coverage and in-depth details. Moreover, findings demonstrate that these two platforms, which integrate the scanning principle and image reconstruction methods, can supplement each other in terms of coverage, sensing resolution, and model accuracy to create high-quality 3D recordings and presentations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.