Fully Automated Registration of 3D CAD Model with Point Cloud from Construction Site

In construction automation applications, registration between the 3D computer-aided design (CAD) model and the point cloud obtained by remote sensing technology is an important process such as progress monitoring and as-built modeling. However, the registration method to align the 3D CAD model and point cloud in construction automation has limitations because the registration is performed manually, which is less accurate and more time-consuming. In this paper, an automated registration method for a 3D CAD model with point cloud from the construction site is proposed. Preprocessing is presented to convert points into suitable representation for registration. Then, an automated registration method that determines transformation parameters is presented. Field experiments have been conducted to test the proposed registration method and the results show that the proposed method is useful for construction automation.