A method for automated registration of unorganised point clouds

A registration method for unorganised point cloud datasets, the Geometric Primitive ICP with the RANSAC (GP-ICPR), which uses geometric primitives, neighbourhood search and the positional uncertainty of laser scanners is proposed. The change of geometric curvature and approximate normal vector of the surface formed by a point and its neighbourhood are used to search for possible corresponding points. The GP-ICPR was tested with terrestrial laser scanner datasets in terms of its precision and accuracy. It is shown that the GP-ICPR improved the precision of the estimated relative transformation parameters by as much as a factor of 5, which provides a window of opportunity to utilise this automated registration method in practical applications such as terrestrial surveying and deformation monitoring. (C) 2007 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.