Automatic generation of high-quality building models from lidar data

Automating data acquisition for 3D city models is an important research topic in photogrammetry. In addition to techniques that rely on aerial images, generating 3D building models from point clouds provided. by light detection and ranging (Lidar) sensors is gaining importance. The progress in sensor technology has triggered this development. Airborne laser scanners can deliver dense point clouds with densities of up to one point per square meter. Using this information, it's possible to detect buildings and their approximate outlines and also to extract planar roof faces and create models that correctly resemble the roof structures. The author presents a method for automatically generating 3D building models from point clouds generated by the Lidar sensing technology.     

Structural Analysis of Multivariate Point Clouds Using Simplicial Chains

Topological and geometrical methods constitute common tools for the analysis of high‐dimensional scientific data sets. Geometrical methods such as projection algorithms focus on preserving distances in the data set. Topological methods such as contour trees, by contrast, focus on preserving structural and connectivity information. By combining both types of methods, we want to benefit from their individual advantages. To this end, we describe an algorithm that uses persistent homology to analyse the topology of a data set. Persistent homology identifies high‐dimensional holes in data sets, describing them as simplicial chains. We localize these chains using geometrical information of the data set, which we obtain from geodesic distances on a neighbourhood graph. The localized chains describe the structure of point clouds. We represent them using an interactive graph, in which each node describes a single chain and its geometrical properties. This graph yields a more intuitive understanding of multivariate point clouds and simplifies comparisons of time‐varying data. Our method focuses on detecting and analysing inhomogeneous regions, i.e. holes, in a data set because these regions characterize data in a different manner, thereby leading to new insights. We demonstrate the potential of our method on data sets from particle physics, political science and meteorology.     

A novel plane extraction approach using supervised learning

This paper presents a novel approach for the classification of planar surfaces in an unorganized point clouds. A feature-based planner surface detection method is proposed which classifies a point cloud data into planar and non-planar points by learning a classification model from an example set of planes. The algorithm performs segmentation of the scene by applying a graph partitioning approach with improved representation of association among graph nodes. The planarity estimation of the points in a scene segment is then achieved by classifying input points as planar points which satisfy planarity constraint imposed by the learned model. The resultant planes have potential application in solving simultaneous localization and mapping problem for navigation of an unmanned-air vehicle. The proposed method is validated on real and synthetic scenes. The real data consist of five datasets recorded by capturing three-dimensional(3D) point clouds when a RGBD camera is moved in five different indoor scenes. A set of synthetic 3D scenes are constructed containing planar and non-planar structures. The synthetic data are contaminated with Gaussian and random structure noise. The results of the empirical evaluation on both the real and the simulated data suggest that the method provides a generalized solution for plane detection even in the presence of the noise and non-planar objects in the scene. Furthermore, a comparative study has been performed between multiple plane extraction methods.     

Robust point matching for nonrigid shapes by preserving local neighborhood structures

In previous work on point matching, a set of points is often treated as an instance of a joint distribution to exploit global relationships in the point set. For nonrigid shapes, however, the local relationship among neighboring points is stronger and more stable than the global one. In this paper, we introduce the notion of a neighborhood structure for the general point matching problem. We formulate point matching as an optimization problem to preserve local neighborhood structures during matching. Our approach has a simple graph matching interpretation, where each point is a node in the graph, and two nodes are connected by an edge if they are neighbors. The optimal match between two graphs is the one that maximizes the number of matched edges. Existing techniques are leveraged to search for an optimal solution with the shape context distance used to initialize the graph matching, followed by relaxation labeling updates for refinement. Extensive experiments show the robustness of our approach under deformation, noise in point locations, outliers, occlusion, and rotation. It outperforms the shape context and TPS-RPM algorithms on most scenarios.     

GWCNN: A Metric Alignment Layer for Deep Shape Analysis

Deep neural networks provide a promising tool for incorporating semantic information in geometry processing applications. Unlike image and video processing, however, geometry processing requires handling unstructured geometric data, and thus data representation becomes an important challenge in this framework. Existing approaches tackle this challenge by converting point clouds, meshes, or polygon soups into regular representations using, e.g., multi‐view images, volumetric grids or planar parameterizations. In each of these cases, geometric data representation is treated as a fixed pre‐process that is largely disconnected from the machine learning tool. In contrast, we propose to optimize for the geometric representation during the network learning process using a novel metric alignment layer. Our approach maps unstructured geometric data to a regular domain by minimizing the metric distortion of the map using the regularized Gromov–Wasserstein objective. This objective is parameterized by the metric of the target domain and is differentiable; thus, it can be easily incorporated into a deep network framework. Furthermore, the objective aims to align the metrics of the input and output domains, promoting consistent output for similar shapes. We show the effectiveness of our layer within a deep network trained for shape classification, demonstrating state‐of‐the‐art performance for nonrigid shapes.     

Integral invariants for shape matching

For shapes represented as closed planar contours, we introduce a class of functionals which are invariant with respect to the Euclidean group and which are obtained by performing integral operations. While such integral invariants enjoy some of the desirable properties of their differential counterparts, such as locality of computation (which allows matching under occlusions) and uniqueness of representation (asymptotically), they do not exhibit the noise sensitivity associated with differential quantities and, therefore, do not require presmoothing of the input shape. Our formulation allows the analysis of shapes at multiple scales. Based on integral invariants, we define a notion of distance between shapes. The proposed distance measure can be computed efficiently and allows warping the shape boundaries onto each other; its computation results in optimal point correspondence as an intermediate step. Numerical results on shape matching demonstrate that this framework can match shapes despite the deformation of subparts, missing parts and noise. As a quantitative analysis, we report matching scores for shape retrieval from a database.     

Three-dimensional point cloud alignment detecting fiducial markers by structured light stereo imaging

In recent years, various methodologies of shape reconstruction have been proposed with the aim at creating Computer-Aided Design models by digitising physical objects using optical sensors. Generally, the acquisition of 3D geometrical data includes crucial tasks, such as planning scanning strategies and aligning different point clouds by multiple view approaches, which differ for user’s interaction and hardware cost. This paper describes a methodology to automatically measure three-dimensional coordinates of fiducial markers to be used as references to align point clouds obtained by an active stereo vision system based on structured light projection. Intensity-based algorithms and stereo vision principles are combined to detect passive fiducial markers localised in a scene. 3D markers are uniquely recognised on the basis of geometrical similarities. The correlation between fiducial markers and point clouds allows the digital creation of complete object surfaces. The technology has been validated by experimental tests based on nominal benchmarks and reconstructions of target objects with complex shapes.     

Straight-Line Drawing Algorithms for Hierarchical Graphs and Clustered Graphs

Hierarchical graphs and clustered graphs are useful non-classical graph models for structured relational information. Hierarchical graphs are graphs with layering structures; clustered graphs are graphs with recursive clustering structures. Both have applications in CASE tools, software visualization and VLSI design. Drawing algorithms for hierarchical graphs have been well investigated. However, the problem of planar straight-line representation has not been solved completely. In this paper we answer the question: does every planar hierarchical graph admit a planar straight-line hierarchical drawing? We present an algorithm that constructs such drawings in linear time. Also, we answer a basic question for clustered graphs, that is, does every planar clustered graph admit a planar straight-line drawing with clusters drawn as convex polygons? We provide a method for such drawings based on our algorithm for hierarchical graphs.     

PCPNet Learning Local Shape Properties from Raw Point Clouds

In this paper, we propose PCPNET , a deep‐learning based approach for estimating local 3D shape properties in point clouds. In contrast to the majority of prior techniques that concentrate on global or mid‐level attributes, e.g., for shape classification or semantic labeling, we suggest a patch‐based learning method, in which a series of local patches at multiple scales around each point is encoded in a structured manner. Our approach is especially well‐adapted for estimating local shape properties such as normals (both unoriented and oriented) and curvature from raw point clouds in the presence of strong noise and multi‐scale features. Our main contributions include both a novel multi‐scale variant of the recently proposed PointNet architecture with emphasis on local shape information, and a series of novel applications in which we demonstrate how learning from training data arising from well‐structured triangle meshes, and applying the trained model to noisy point clouds can produce superior results compared to specialized state‐of‐the‐art techniques. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our approach in the context of shape reconstruction, by showing how it can be used to extract normal orientation information from point clouds.     

Cross‐Collection Map Inference by Intrinsic Alignment of Shape Spaces

Inferring maps between shapes is a long standing problem in geometry processing. The less similar the shapes are, the harder it is to compute a map, or even define criteria to evaluate it. In many cases, shapes appear as part of a collection, e.g. an animation or a series of faces or poses of the same character, where the shapes are similar enough, such that maps within the collection are easy to obtain. Our main observation is that given two collections of shapes whose “shape space” structure is similar, it is possible to find a correspondence between the collections, and then compute a cross‐collection map. The cross‐map is given as a functional correspondence, and thus it is more appropriate in cases where a bijective point‐to‐point map is not well defined. Our core idea is to treat each collection as a point‐sampling from a low‐dimensional shape‐space manifold, and use dimensionality reduction techniques to find a low‐dimensional Euclidean embedding of this sampling. To measure distances on the shape‐space manifold, we use the recently introduced shape differences, which lead to a similar low‐dimensional structure of the shape spaces, even if the shapes themselves are quite different. This allows us to use standard affine registration for point‐clouds to align the shape‐spaces, and then find a functional cross‐map using a linear solve. We demonstrate the results of our algorithm on various shape collections and discuss its properties.     

融合概念和属性信息的领域知识图谱补全方法

针对领域知识图谱具有严格的模式层和丰富的属性信息的特点,提出一种融合概念和属性信息的领域知识图谱补全方法.首先对领域知识图谱模式层中的概念使用可建模语义分层结构的HAKE模型进行嵌入表示,建立基于概念的实例向量表示;其次对数据层的实例三元组和属性三元组进行区分,通过注意力机制对实例的属性和概念进行融合,建立基于属性的实例向量表示;最后对基于概念和基于属性的实例向量表示进行联合训练以实现对实例三元组的评分.使用基于DWY100K数据集构建的知识图谱、MED-BBK-9K 医疗知识图谱和根据某钢铁企业设备故障诊断数据构建的知识图谱进行实验,结果表明所提出方法在领域知识图谱补全中的性能优于现有知识图谱补全方法.     

Effective Piecewise Linear Skeletonization of Sparse Shapes

Conventional image skeletonization techniques implicitly assume the pixel level connectivity. However, noise inside the object regions destroys the connectivity and exhibits sparseness in the image. We present a skeletonization algorithm designed for these kinds of sparse shapes. The skeletons are produced quickly by using three operations. First, initial skeleton nodes are selected by farthest point sampling with circles containing the maximum effective information. A skeleton graph of these nodes is imposed via inheriting the neighborhood of their associated pixels, followed by an edge collapse operation. Then a skeleton tting process based on feature-preserving Laplacian smoothing is applied. Finally, a re nement step is proposed to further improve the quality of the skeleton and deal with noise or different local shape scales. Numerous experiments demonstrate that our algorithm can effectively handle several disconnected shapes in an image simultaneously, and generate more faithful skeletons for shapes with intersections or different local scales than classic methods.     

点云的形状与曲线重建算法

针对平面无序带噪点云的曲线重建问题,给出了点云形状的定义并提出了构造点云形状的算法.该算法基于Delaunay三角剖分,在构造好点云的Delaunay三角剖分后对三角剖分进行细化,使得在点云中的点周围形成空间上的局部均匀采样;基于集合论中的基本概念定义点云中内点、外点和边界点,并且明确地定义了点云的形状,根据Delaunay三角剖分细化时,选择不同的参数得到不同层次的点云的形状;选择合适的参数得到相应形状后,通过薄化过程得到具有流形结构的曲线.实验结果表明,采用文中算法得到的重建曲线很好地反映了点云的形状,验证了该算法的有效性.     

自适应的基于点云的CAD模型重建方法

基本的随机抽样一致性(RANSAC)算法无法根据点云模型的噪声自适应地设定分割参数,并有效判断点云数据是否被合理分割。针对该问题,提出了一种自适应的基于点云模型的计算机辅助设计(CAD)模型重建方法。该方法采用RANSAC算法从点云数据中提取基本形状体素,使用直方图法分析点到相应形状体素表面的投影距离。对分割不合理的区域,按照该点云面片的高斯噪声设置新的分割参数,再次进行形状提取。经过一定轮数的迭代,该方法可以合理提取点云模型中的细小形状体素。然后通过校准形状体素的位置和方向、根据相邻形状体素之间的交线裁剪形状体素,实现CAD模型的重建。最后,以误差分布图和直方图分析了原始点云数据中点到CAD模型表面投影距离,有70.71%的点的投影距离不超过点云模型包围盒高度的1%。实验结果表明,以点云包围盒高度的1%为尺度向实验数据中加入噪声时,该方法仍能够通过自适应设置分割参数提取出合理的细小体素。     

三维点云法向量估计综述

由于获取方便、表示简单、灵活等优势,点云逐渐成为常用的三维模型表示方法之一。法向量作为点云必不可少的属性之一,其估计方法在点云处理中具有重要的位置。另一方面,由于点云获取过程中不可避免的噪声、误差和遮挡,点云中通常含有噪声、外点和空洞,并且部分采样模型如CAD模型,也会存在尖锐特征,这些都给法向量估计提出了挑战。对当前已有的点云法向量估计算法进行综述,分析其原理及关键技术,着重分析它们在处理噪声、外点和尖锐特征等方面的能力并给出比较,最后为未来研究提供了一些建议。     

Skeleton-based image warping

Image warping refers to the 2D resampling of a source image onto a target image. Despite the variety of techniques proposed, a large class of image warping problems remains inadequately solved: mapping between two images which are delimited by arbitrary, closed, planar curves, e.g., handdrawn curves. This paper describes a novel algorithm to perform image warping among arbitrary planar shapes whose boundary correspondences are known. A generalized polar coordinate parameterization is introduced to facilitate an efficient mapping procedure. Images are treated as collections of interior layers, extracted via a thinning process. Mapping these layers between the source and target images generates the 2D resampling grid that defines the warping. The thinning operation extends the standard polar coordinate representation to deal with arbitrary shapes.     

Robust Structure‐Based Shape Correspondence

We present a robust method to find region‐level correspondences between shapes, which are invariant to changes in geometry and applicable across multiple shape representations. We generate simplified shape graphs by jointly decomposing the shapes, and devise an adapted graph‐matching technique, from which we infer correspondences between shape regions. The simplified shape graphs are designed to primarily capture the overall structure of the shapes, without reflecting precise information about the geometry of each region, which enables us to find correspondences between shapes that might have significant geometric differences. Moreover, due to the special care we take to ensure the robustness of each part of our pipeline, our method can find correspondences between shapes with different representations, such as triangular meshes and point clouds. We demonstrate that the region‐wise matching that we obtain can be used to find correspondences between feature points, reveal the intrinsic self‐similarities of each shape and even construct point‐to‐point maps across shapes. Our method is both time and space efficient, leading to a pipeline that is significantly faster than comparable approaches. We demonstrate the performance of our approach through an extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation on several benchmarks where we achieve comparable or superior performance to existing methods.     

On Triangulating Planar Graphs under the Four-Connectivity Constraint

Triangulation of planar graphs under constraints is a fundamental problem in the representation of objects. Related keywords are graph augmentation from the field of graph algorithms and mesh generation from the field of computational geometry. We consider the triangulation problem for planar graphs under the constraint to satisfy 4-connectivity. A 4-connected planar graph has no separating triangles, i.e., cycles of length 3 which are not a face. We show that triangulating embedded planar graphs without introducing new separating triangles can be solved in linear time and space. If the initial graph had no separating triangle, the resulting triangulation is 4-connected. If the planar graph is not embedded, then deciding whether there exists an embedding with at most k separating triangles is NP-complete. For biconnected graphs a linear-time approximation which produces an embedding with at most twice the optimal number is presented. With this algorithm we can check in linear time whether a biconnected planar graph can be made 4-connected while maintaining planarity. Several related remarks and results are included. Received August 1, 1995; revised July 8, 1996, and August 23, 1996.     

Parallel Globally Consistent Normal Orientation of Raw Unorganized Point Clouds

A mandatory component for many point set algorithms is the availability of consistently oriented vertex‐normals (e.g. for surface reconstruction, feature detection, visualization). Previous orientation methods on meshes or raw point clouds do not consider a global context, are often based on unrealistic assumptions, or have extremely long computation times, making them unusable on real‐world data. We present a novel massively parallelized method to compute globally consistent oriented point normals for raw and unsorted point clouds. Built on the idea of graph‐based energy optimization, we create a complete kNN‐graph over the entire point cloud. A new weighted similarity criterion encodes the graph‐energy. To orient normals in a globally consistent way we perform a highly parallel greedy edge collapse, which merges similar parts of the graph and orients them consistently. We compare our method to current state‐of‐the‐art approaches and achieve speedups of up to two orders of magnitude. The achieved quality of normal orientation is on par or better than existing solutions, especially for real‐world noisy 3D scanned data.     

Curve skeleton extraction by coupled graph contraction and surface clustering

In this paper, we present a practical algorithm to extract a curve skeleton of a 3D shape. The core of our algorithm comprises coupled processes of graph contraction and surface clustering. Given a 3D shape represented by a triangular mesh, we first construct an initial skeleton graph by directly copying the connectivity and geometry information from the input mesh. Graph contraction and surface clustering are then performed iteratively. The former merges certain graph nodes based on computation of an approximate centroidal Voronoi diagram, seeded by subsampling the graph nodes from the previous iteration. Meanwhile, a coupled surface clustering process serves to regularize the graph contraction. Constraints are used to ensure that extremities of the graph are not shortened undesirably, to ensure that skeleton has the correct topological structure, and that surface clustering leads to an approximately-centered skeleton of the input shape. These properties lead to a stable and reliable skeleton graph construction algorithm.Experiments demonstrate that our skeleton extraction algorithm satisfies various desirable criteria. Firstly, it produces a skeleton homotopic with the input (the genus of both shapes agree) which is both robust (results are stable with respect to noise and remeshing of the input shape) and reliable (every boundary point is visible from at least one curve-skeleton location). It can also handle point cloud data if we first build an initial skeleton graph based on k-nearest neighbors. In addition, a secondary output of our algorithm is a skeleton-to-surface mapping, which can e.g. be used directly for skinning animation.Highlights(1) An algorithm for curve skeleton extraction from 3D shapes based on coupled graph contraction and surface clustering. (2) The algorithm meets various desirable criteria and can be extended to work for incomplete point clouds.