Error budget of terrestrial laserscanning: Influence of the intensity remission on the scan quality

Error budget of terrestrial laserscanning: Influence of the intensity remission on the scan quality

Bucksch, A.
Lindenbergh, R.C.
Van Ree, J.

Aerospace Engineering

DEOS

2009-10-30

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is a surveying technology to measure distances to surfaces in the spherical surrounding of the scanner instrument. In contrast to pulse, i.e. time of flight scanners, phase based scanners emit a modulated wave signal that allows for determining the object distance from the returned phase pattern. Because of their high scanning speed, phase based instruments are getting more and more popular. It is clear from literature and practice that, because of the interaction between the laser light and the object, the characteristics of the object surface have a large influence on the measurement quality. Still, a quantitative insight in the quality of scanning results is missing. This publication will compare two phase based scanners, the Imager5003 from Zoller und Fröhlich and the HS880 from Faro. We investigate the scan quality of both scanners for a variety of surfaces with different reflection characteristics. For this purpose scans of an Esser Test Chart TE 109 were made with both scanners. The test chart consists of six different grey patches ranging from 71% remission white to 0.05% remission black. The chart was scanned from a distance of 4 m in a stable environment. In order to compare the scanning results of both scanners a patch wise analysis is made of (i) the number of points scanned, (ii) the intensities values of the scanned points, and (iii) the reliability and precision of a local plane adjustment. It turns out that for both scanners the measurement noise is significantly increasing with decreasing remission. An insight in the amount of absorbed and reflected energy per grey value patch will be part of the analysis results. An overall conclusion of the presented experiment is that the two scanners differ only in extreme cases from the specifications given by the manufacturers.

Terrestrial Laser Scanning
Error Budget
Surface Reflectivity

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:aec95116-9e2e-4a63-a27a-c48d17669cfe

Siberian State Academy of Geodesy

9785876932297

III International Scientific Congress Geo-Siberia 2007, 23-27 April, Novosibirsk

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2009 Bucksch, A.; Lindenbergh, R.C.; Van Ree, J.