Optimisation of real‐scene 3D building models based on straight‐line constraints

Abstract

Due to the influence of repeated textures or edge perspective transformations on building facades, building modelling based on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry often suffers geometric deformation and distortion when using existing methods or commercial software. To address this issue, a real‐scene three‐dimensional (3D) building model optimisation method based on straight‐line constraints is proposed. First, point clouds generated by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry are down‐sampled based on local curvature characteristics, and structural point clouds located at the edges of buildings are extracted. Subsequently, an improved random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm, considering distance and angle constraints on lines, known as co‐constrained RANSAC, is applied to further extract point clouds with straight‐line features from the structural point clouds. Finally, point clouds with straight‐line features are optimised and updated using sampled points on the fitted straight lines. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively eliminate redundant 3D points or noise while retaining the fundamental structure of buildings. Compared to popular methods and commercial software, the proposed method significantly enhances the accuracy of building modelling. The average reduction in error is 59.2%, including the optimisation of deviations in the original model's contour projection.