Determining the outline contour of vehicles in 3D-LIDAR-measurements

Abstract

This paper presents a novel and robust method to determine the outline contour of vehicles in 3D-LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) measurements. To calculate the outline contour, a vehicle is described by its geometrical properties. These properties are used as constraints to fit a surface to unordered, scattered and error-contaminated 3D measurements. The surface can be used to calculate a corresponding 2D outline contour. The algorithm is tested with two different laser scanners. One scanner has 64, the other only 4 layers.