Development of Optimized Point Clouds Merging Method for Rapid Processing to Generate Earthwork Site Model

As a continuation of the authors’ research presented in previous years (ISARC), these authors focus on the processing aspect of the 3D terrain models acquired from heterogeneous 3D scan sources. This includes a revision of the authors’ ICP-based merging algorithm to achieve better accuracy in the ever-changing shape of an earthwork site with acceptable penalty in speed, and the introduction of a new side-scanning fast laser to obtain accurate local shapes at a reasonably fast time. In conjunction with these issues, the data format for holding the terrain data was also taken into account, for faster processing.