Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for extracting various features from data having spatial coordinates. The systems and methods may identify and extract data points from a point cloud, where the data points are considered to be part of the ground surface, a building, or a wire (e.g. power lines). Systems and methods are also provided for enhancing a point cloud using external data (e.g. images and other point clouds), and for tracking a moving object by comparing images with a point cloud. An objects database is also provided which can be used to scale point clouds to be of similar size. The objects database can also be used to search for certain objects in a point cloud, as well as recognize unidentified objects in a point cloud.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for aligning a line scan camera with a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanner for real-time data fusion in three dimensions is provided. Imaging data is captured at a computer processor simultaneously from the line scan camera and the laser scanner from target object providing scanning targets defined in an imaging plane perpendicular to focal axes of the line scan camera and the LiDAR scanner. X-axis and Y-axis pixel locations of a centroid of each of the targets from captured imaging data is extracted. LiDAR return intensity versus scan angle is determined and scan angle locations of intensity peaks which correspond to individual targets is determined. Two axis parallax correction parameters are determined by applying a least squares. The correction parameters are provided to post processing software to correct for alignment differences between the imaging camera and LiDAR scanner for real-time colorization for acquired LiDAR data.