3D information extraction from laser point clouds covering complex road junctions

An automated method for 3D modelling of complex highway interchanges is presented. Laser data and 2D topographic map data have been combined in an innovative 3D reconstruction procedure. Complex situations as shown in this paper demand knowledge to guide the automatic reconstruction. This knowledge has been used in the fusion procedure to constrain the topological and geometrical properties of the reconstructed 3D model. These additions are needed to take care of the lack of data in occluded areas. Laser data has been segmented and filtered before it is fused with map data. In the surface-growing algorithm combining map and laser points, the laser data is assigned to the corresponding road element. Although results are shown using two specific data sources, the algorithm is designed to be capable of dealing with any polygon-based topographic map and any aerial laser scanner data-set.