13 June 2011 - Monday - 7th ISMMT`11

1. Prof. Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, The Ohio State University, USA

Title: Mobile mapping technology: paradigm shift and future trends

Abstract: Since the outsets of Mobile Mapping in the last 1980s the technology has evolved, expanded and advanced to near real-time operations, and is now quite widespread and widely accepted primarily for highway mapping, asset inventory, corridor mapping and even emergency response “rapid” mapping. This workshop will provide a brief overview of the Mobile Mapping Technology, its historical evolution, expansion, and transition to various engineering and planning applications, as well as the recent technological and operational paradigm shift due to advances in sensors, sensor integration and processing algorithms. Navigation and imaging components will be defined and the current trends in technological and algorithmic advances will be discussed.


2. Prof. Naser El-Sheimy, University of Calgary, Canada

Title: Land-based MMT: State of the Art and Future Trends

Abstract: Land based mobile mapping, the methodology that integrates digital imaging with direct geo-referencing, has developed rapidly over the twenty years. What used to be a topic of academic study has become a commercially viable industry. In this presentation the major steps in this development are traced, the current state-of-the-art is reviewed, and a look at the future will be presented. The presentation concludes with a few examples of MMS and a look into the future of some non-traditional land Mobile Mapping systems.


3. Dr. Vassilis Gikas and Mr. Kyriakos Fragkos

Title: Applications of MMT in land transportation systems and infrastructure from planning through operation

Abstract: Technological advances in mobile mapping in the past three decades have found a wide range of applications in the transportation sector, leading to considerable improvements in the performance, cost and safety of transportation systems and infrastructure. The primary focus of this workshop will be on usage and ultimate implications of mobile mapping technologies for planning, design, construction, maintenance and operation of modern transportation infrastructures. More specifically, the technical requirements and details, such as, observation types, data quality, etc., the acquisition processes, as well as data analysis and interpretation issues will be addressed towards specific road/railway engineering applications. Specific topics include, but are not limited to, emerging mobile mapping technologies for road/railway geometry extraction for road safety/reconstruction works, advanced ITS applications and traffic management studies; highway pavement maintenance and performance; tunnel construction operations for geometric documentation, support of geological analysis, etc. Examples will be given to cover as complete as possible spectrum of application areas discussed in the tutorial.


4. Dr. Alberto Guarnieri, University of Padova, Italy and Dr. Domenico Visintini, University of Udine, Italy

Title: Algorithms for autonomous vehicle navigation

Abstract: Unmanned vehicles, both airborne (UAV) and terrestrial, require sensors and procedures for autonomous navigations. The starting point for a unmanned system to behave properly is to sense its own state (position, orientation, velocity etc.) and the surrounding environment. This information is necessary for successive actions following predefined procedures that take into account the sensors response stream. The integration of different kinds of sensors and the responses to the data that they provide are, therefore, crucial for successful operations of an unmanned system. However, these aspects raise two issues: first, of all sensors are affected by measurement noise and drifts, and second, the measured variable is not retrievable in real time but has to be partly estimated. To solve these problems several algorithms were tested to date and were found suitable for certain study cases. In this tutorial these algorithms will be introduced and their role in a unmanned system will be explained. The following approaches are presented: Kalman filter, position and attitude control systems, horizon detection with Canny edge filter and Hough filter, as well as roll pitch estimation.


5. Prof. Ayman Habib, University of Calgary, Canada

Title: QA/QC of Imaging and LiDAR Systems

Abstract: Recent developments in digital imaging and the direct geo-referencing technologies are having positive impact on the wide-spread adoption of optical and LiDAR systems for geo-spatial data acquisition. To guarantee the users’ confidence in such technologies, the mapping community must have well defined standards for the Quality Assurance of the utilized systems and Quality Control of the delivered products. In this tutorial, the term “Quality assurance – QA” is used to denote activities focusing on ensuring that a process/technology will provide the quality needed by the user. QA mainly deals with creating management controls including the calibration, mission planning, implementation, and review of data collection activities and are usually conducted prior to the surveying mission. The term “Quality control – QC”, on the other hand, is used to denote post-mission procedures, which aim at providing consistent checks to ensure data integrity, correctness, and completeness. In other words, the main objective of QC procedures is to verify whether the desired quality has been achieved or not.

In this tutorial, the calibration component of QA activities for optical and LiDAR imaging systems will be introduced. The discussion will deal with potential alternatives for the system calibration while considering the nature of the available data as well as the possibility of increasing the level of automation of the calibration process. Then, the geometric QC of the delivered products will be introduced. Procedures for evaluating the internal/relative as well as the external/absolute quality of the delivered products will be introduced. Similar to QA activities, the introduced QC procedures will be evaluated according to the nature of the delivered data, the manipulation procedure of the system measurements to produce such data, and the automation level. The tutorial will finally conclude by investigating the possibility of combining the QA/QC activities for optical and LiDAR imaging systems.


6. Dr. Charles Toth, The Ohio State University, USA

Title: LiDAR Waveform in Mobile Mapping

Abstract: Full waveform recording is becoming increasingly affordable and, consequently, available in today's state-of-the-art LiDAR systems. Therefore, there is no practical limitation to the complexity of pulse detection and other methods that can be applied in post-processing mode. Analyzing the entire return signal, the full waveform, can provide additional geometrical and physical information about the reflecting surfaces. Currently, most LiDAR applications are based on utilizing only the geometry of the point cloud, where both the precision and density of these points primarily depend on the peak detection method used in real-time during data acquisition. Analyzing the properties of the full waveform in post-processing, additional information can be obtained that can provide better geometrical description of the surface (point cloud) and object classification information that can be used, for example, for land cover classification. Since the storage requirements for waveform is quite significant for modern LiDAR systems because of the high-pulse rate, compression is an obvious choice to reduce storage and data transmission requirements. Though, the original waveform can be fully reconstructed from the compressed format and used for waveform analysis in post-processing mode, an interesting question is whether the compressed format can be directly exploited for classification and/or peak detection. The objective of this workshop is to investigate the feasibility of using the compressed domain waveform data for land cover classification and peak detection.