Panoramic Epipolar Image Generation for Mobile Mapping System

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The notable improvements on performance and low cost of digital cameras and GPS/IMU devices have caused MMSs (Mobile Mapping Systems) to be gradually becoming one of the most important devices for mapping highway and railway networks, generating and updating road navigation data and constructing urban 3D models over the last 20 years. Moreover, the demands for large scale visual street-level image database construction by the internet giants such as Google and Microsoft have made the further rapid development of this technology. As one of the most important sensors, the omni-directional cameras are being commonly utilized on many MMSs to collect panoramic images for 3D close range photogrammetry and fusion with 3D laser point clouds since these cameras could record much visual information of the real environment in one image at field view angle of 360° in longitude direction and 180° in latitude direction. This paper addresses the problem of panoramic epipolar image generation for 3D modelling and mapping by stereoscopic viewing. These panoramic images are captured with Point Grey's Ladybug3 mounted on the top of Mitsubishi MMS-X 220 at 2m intervals along the streets in urban environment. Onboard GPS/IMU, speedometer and post sequence image analysis technology such as bundle adjustment provided high accuracy position and attitude data for these panoramic images and laser data, this makes it possible to construct the epipolar geometric relationship between any two adjacent panoramic images and then the panoramic epipolar images could be generated. Three kinds of projection planes: sphere, cylinder and flat plane are selected as the epipolar images' planes. In final we select the flat plane and use its effective parts (middle parts of base line's two sides) for epipolar image generation. The corresponding geometric relations and results will be presented in this paper.

System Design, Calibration and Performance Analysis of a Novel 360° Stereo Panoramic Mobile Mapping System

“…These include investigations on the generation of panoramic epipolar images from panoramic image pairs by Chen et al (2012). Schneider et al (2016) present an approach for extracting a 3D point cloud from an epipolar equidistant stereo image pair and provide a functional model for accuracy pre-analysis.…”

Mobile Laser Scanning Systems for Measuring the Clearance Gauge of Railways: State of Play, Testing and Outlook

“…Examples of mobile systems based on laser scanning include: Riegl MLS VMX-450 [ 2 ], Mitsubishi MMS-X220 [ 3 ], ROAMER [ 4 ], Zoller + Fröhlich Profiler [ 5 ], LIMEZ II/III [ 6 , 7 ], L-KOPIA/LKO B1 Clearance Laser System [ 8 ], Street Mapper [ 9 ], Topcon (IP-S2 HD) [ 10 , 11 ] and ROAMER [ 12 ]. There are also other MLS scanner geometries that take into account movement and 3D mapping [ 13 , 14 ].…”

A Method of Generating Panoramic Street Strip Image Map With Mobile Mapping System

“…This will cause another research and application great mass fervor in photogrammetry field (Chen et al, 2012). Figure 3.…”

“…Unfortunately, because all of the source imagery is compressed into a single flat summary, they lack the spatial geographic information as the traditional ortho-images generated from aero and satellite images. This paper explores a method of making panoramic street strip image map which is called as "Pano-Street" here and contains both sides, ground surface and overhead part all directions of a street with a sequence of 360° panoramic images which are captured with a Point Grey's Ladybug3 mounted on the top of Mitsubishi MMS-X 220 at 2m intervals along the streets in urban environment (Chen et al, 2012), and projected/stitched on to one special 3D mesh called projection base plan (See Figure 1) which is equivalent to the DEM/DSM used to generate ortho-image with aerial/satellite images, and constructed with existing 2D/3D GIS data along the street. Onboard GPS/IMU, speedometer and post sequence image analysis technology such as bundle adjustment provided high accuracy position and attitude data for these panoramic images, and laser scanning data.…”