Geo-Registering Consecutive Construction Site Recordings Using a Pre-Registered Reference Module

Abstract

The monitoring of construction sites and the achieved progress is a vital aspect of construction works in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. Only if three-dimensional reconstructions require a limited time, the creation of consecutive datasets, portraying the site in subsequent phases, becomes feasible. Moreover, a shared coordinate system between all datasets is essential for monitoring purposes. In this work, a new photogrammetric framework is presented to shift from the current error-prone and tedious manual geo-referencing process to a semi-automated one. The fundament of the method is an accurately processed reference module that repeatedly serves as the starting point for processing subsequent image datasets. By means of overlap between pictures in both datasets, the coordinate system, incorporated in the reference module, is inherited by the subsequent datasets, hence bypassing the indication process. The proposed procedure is able to outperform current methods, while requiring less time considered over all consecutive datasets. In our experiments, we compared an unaltered part of two subsequent datasets, each of them processed via the traditional and our proposed method. The obtained mean disparity was 9 mm, while for the manual approach it was 16 mm. Especially for comparative analyses, the proposed approach yields excellent results as every dataset is registered exactly the same, whereas results diverge more when following manual methods. In conclusion, our approach is favourable over the current one, especially for a multitude of consecutive site reconstructions, as no ground control points (GCPs) must be indicated in each separate subsequent dataset, while yielding similar to even better results.

Co-Registration of Video-Grammetric Point Clouds With Bim – First Conceptual Results

“…The rising usage of digital methods like Building Information Modeling (BIM) has accelerated this trend. In projects related to construction progress monitoring (Vincke andVergauwen, 2020, Tuttas et al, 2017) the registration is carried out once at the begin of the construction using a classical approach with control points. Image blocks of later points in time are then co-registered with the initial reference frame.…”

“…One of the most common feature detectors and used in various applications like object recognition, image retrieval or 3d reconstruction is SIFT, published and patented by Lowe (2004). There are different approaches to speed them up, like SiftGPU (Wu, 2010). But in robotics, when Computer vision needs to work in real-time, other solutions are more common (Miksik and Mikolajczyk, 2012).…”

Drift Invariant Metric Quality Control of Construction Sites Using BIM and Point Cloud Data

“…However, the (geo)referencing of a construction site environment is error prone due to occluded markers, the site complexity and GPS denied zones. As such, GPS (geo)referencing accuracy of photogrammetric and lidar processes again is several centimeters in average sized construction sites if costly surveyor teams are not employed [8]. Noise is also rampant in construction sites due to the operations that are accompanied by the presence of temporary objects, workers, dust, vibrations and so on.…”

“…This is ensured via a pre-registered reference module that incorporates the correct coordinate system. The followed method is described in depth in previous work [8]. The laser scanning dataset is registered via the traditional method of indicating ground control points.…”

“…One approach to systematically evaluate construction sites is through point cloud data produced by remote sensing that is, laser scanning or photogrammetry, which produce vast amounts of geometric and visual information of the construction site in a more cost-effective manner (Figure 1). For progress monitoring purposes and metric quality assessments, it is paramount that these recorded datasets are properly (geo)referenced [8]. Traditionally, the procedure to align a point cloud with the corresponding as-design BIM model relies on a rigid body transformation of the former based on geometric correspondences [9].…”