Registration of Terrestrial Laser Scanning Surveys Using Terrain-Invariant Regions for Measuring Exploitative Volumes over Open-Pit Mines

Abstract

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) techniques have been widely used in open-pit mine applications. It is a crucial task to measure the exploitative volume of open-pit mines, within a specific time interval. One major challenge is posed, however, when conducting accurate registrations for temporal TLS surveys in continuously changing areas, created by excavation activities. In this paper, we propose a coarse-to-fine registration method, based on terrain-invariant regions (TIR), for temporal TLS surveys. More specifically, an approximate four-point congruent set (4PCS) of temporal TLS surveys is first identified, based on affine invariant rules. Second, a set of correspondences among temporal TLS surveys were collected by matching multi-scale sparse features of the 3D neighbors, centered at the approximate 4PCS. Third, the correspondences were used to estimate a rigid motion between the overlapping TLS surveys for the coarse registration, according to which the initial TIR from temporal TLS surveys were identified. Finally, the rigid motion between temporal TLS was iteratively optimized, based on the point clouds, only from the TIR. Based on the fine-level registered TLS surveys, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) can be generated to calculate the exploitative volume, through a DEM differential. We applied the proposed method to two open-pit mines in China, and also compared our method with five state-of-the-art methods for registering temporal TLS surveys. Experimental results indicated that the proposed method achieved a higher registration accuracy than the state-of-the-art methods. Based on the registered result, our method achieved a 98.03% overall accuracy for measuring the exploitative volume, compared to in-situ measurement.

The Use of Digital Terrain Models to Estimate the Pace of Filling the Pit of a Central European Granite Quarry with Water

“…The use of a 3D model of an open-cast mine (DTM, DSM, DEM), based on data obtained from LiDAR ALS, TLS MLS, or other photogrammetric measurements, including those from a UAV, allows for the analysis of changes in the deformations of the mine area, thereby determining the cubic capacity of the excavation pit and mining heaps, the course of the deposit of the excavated material and the ongoing determination of the exploitative volumes in quarries and other open-cast mines [75,78,80,81,123]. It may also be an efficient tool for calculating the potential retention capacity of the pit [23] and for estimating the pace of filling the pit with water, as has been presented in this article.…”

“…The geomorphological parameters of the pit (including its cubic capacity, surface area and depth) may be determined with the use of traditional geodetic methods (levelling) or modern ones, such as GNSS technology and the RTK method [74,75]. If LiDAR data are available or may be obtained, the geomorphological parameters may be determined based on data from terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), airborne laser scanning (ALS), mobile laser scanning (MLS) techniques, or other photogrammetric measurements (e.g., with use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)) [23,[75][76][77][78][79][80][81]. These methods can also be used to determine the parameters of their own catchments (direct catchments of the pit) that are necessary for hydrological calculations.…”

Fast and Automatic Registration of Terrestrial Point Clouds Using 2D Line Features

“…The cluster with the maximum number of the displacements is used to get the final displacement, which is the mean value of the displacements in the maximal cluster. Eventually, the 3D transformation is obtained by Equation (9). Because the lower parts of two cylindrical neighborhoods are applied to calculate the displacement, our method is not suitable for the aerial point clouds, for which the lower parts are always missed.…”

“…The terrestrial laser scanning technology has been extensively used in many practical applications such as the reconstruction of scenes [1,2], deformation monitoring [3][4][5][6], cultural heritage management [7,8], and the measurement of exploitative volumes over open-pit mines [9]. Due to the limited field of view of a laser scanner, the point cloud of one view is not enough to describe the complete scene.…”

Ground Control Point-Free Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Photogrammetry for Volume Estimation of Stockpiles Carried on Barges

“…In addition, terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has become a popular tool for obtaining the 3D points of a terrain surface [21,22]. TLS-based methods are also widely used to measure the volume of stockpiles because they can rapidly capture dense 3D point clouds for the modeling of irregularly shaped stockpile surfaces [23,24]. However, TLS-based methods still need surveyors to walk around the boundaries of stockpiles at the edge of the vessel or climb up stockpiles to afford full coverage of the surface.…”