Automatic Registration of Mobile Mapping System Lidar Points and Panoramic-Image Sequences by Relative Orientation Model

To register mobile mapping system (MMS) lidar points and panoramic-image sequences, a relative orientation model of panoramic images (PROM) is proposed. The PROM is suitable for cases in which attitude or orientation parameters are unknown in the panoramic-image sequence. First, feature points are extracted and matched from panoramic-image pairs using the SURF algorithm. Second, these matched feature points are used to solve the relative attitude parameters in the PROM. Then, combining the PROM with the absolute position and attitude parameters of the initial panoramic image, the MMS lidar points and panoramic-image sequence are registered. Finally, the registration accuracy of the PROM method is assessed using corresponding points manually selected from the MMSlidar points and panoramic-image sequence. The results show that three types of MMSdata sources are registered accurately based on the proposed registration method. Our method transforms the registration of panoramic images and lidar points into image feature-point matching, which is suitable for diverse road scenes compared with existing methods.