A Lightweight Leddar Optical Fusion Scanning System (FSS) for Canopy Foliage Monitoring

A growing need for sampling environmental spaces in high detail is driving the rapid development of non-destructive three-dimensional (3D) sensing technologies. LiDAR sensors, capable of precise 3D measurement at various scales from indoor to landscape, still lack affordable and portable products fo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2019-09, Vol.19 (18), p.3943
Main Authors: Xi, Zhouxin, Hopkinson, Christopher, Rood, Stewart B, Barnes, Celeste, Xu, Fang, Pearce, David, Jones, Emily
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Algorithms
Bundle adjustment
Calibration
Canada
Canopies
canopy monitoring
Digital cameras
Environmental Monitoring - instrumentation
Environmental Monitoring - methods
Equipment Design
Foliage
Forests
Growth models
International conferences
Lasers
Leaf area index
Leddar
LiDAR
Light emitting diodes
Monitoring
monocular camera
Optical Devices
Parallax
Plant Leaves
Populus
Remote Sensing Technology - instrumentation
Remote Sensing Technology - methods
Robotics - instrumentation
Scanners
sensor fusion
Sensors
Spatio-Temporal Analysis
structure from motion
terrestrial laser scanning
Trees
Variables
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Summary:A growing need for sampling environmental spaces in high detail is driving the rapid development of non-destructive three-dimensional (3D) sensing technologies. LiDAR sensors, capable of precise 3D measurement at various scales from indoor to landscape, still lack affordable and portable products for broad-scale and multi-temporal monitoring. This study aims to configure a compact and low-cost 3D fusion scanning system (FSS) with a multi-segment Leddar (light emitting diode detection and ranging, LeddarTech), a monocular camera, and rotational robotics to recover hemispherical, colored point clouds. This includes an entire framework of calibration and fusion algorithms utilizing Leddar depth measurements and image parallax information. The FSS was applied to scan a cottonwood ( spp.) stand repeatedly during autumnal leaf drop. Results show that the calibration error based on bundle adjustment is between 1 and 3 pixels. The FSS scans exhibit a similar canopy volume profile to the benchmarking terrestrial laser scans, with an between 0.5 and 0.7 in varying stages of leaf cover. The 3D point distribution information from FSS also provides a valuable correction factor for the leaf area index (LAI) estimation. The consistency of corrected LAI measurement demonstrates the practical value of deploying FSS for canopy foliage monitoring.
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s19183943