Category Archives: VUX1

No Sugarcoating: Sweet LiDAR from RiCOPTER carrying VUX-1UAV over Sugarcane

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Recently we saw an interesting LiDAR data set talked about on social media by Chad Netto from Chustz Surveying in New Roads, Louisiana and asked for a copy. It is a LiDAR scan of a sugarcane plantation in Assumption Parish, Louisiana carried out with the VUX-1UAV by RIEGL mounted onto a RiCOPTER and guided by an Applanix IMU and a Trimble base station. That is probably one of the sweetest (but also one of the most expensive) UAV LiDAR system you can buy today. I received this LiDAR file and this trajectory file. In the following we talk a detailed look at this data set.

First we run lasinfo to get an idea of the contents of the data set. We create various histograms as those can often help understand an unfamiliar data set:

lasinfo -i sugarcane\181026_163424.laz ^
        -cd ^
        -histo gps_time 5 ^
        -histo intensity 64 ^
        -histo point_source 1 ^
        -histo z 5 ^
        -odix _info -otxt

You can download the resulting report here. For the 84,751,955 points we notice that

  1. both horizontal and vertical coordinates are stored in US survey feet
  2. with scale factors of 0.00025 this means a resolution of 76 micrometer
  3. there is no explicit flight line information (all point source IDs are zero)
  4. gaps in the GPS time stamp histogram are suggesting multiple lines

First we use las2las to lower the insanely high resolution from 0.00025 US survey feet to something more reasonable for an airborne UAV scan, namely to 0.01 or 1 hundredths of a US survey foot or centi-US-survey-feet:

las2las -i sugarcane\181026_163424.laz ^
        -rescale 0.01 0.01 0.01 ^
        -odix _cft -olaz

I have already done this for you. The file that is online is already in “centi-US-survey-feet” because it reduced the file size from the original 678 MB file that we got from Netto to the 518 MB file that is online, meaning that you had 160 MB less data to download.

Next we use lassplit to recover the original flight lines as follows:

lassplit -i sugarcane\181026_163424.laz ^
         -recover_flightlines ^
         -odir sugarcane\0_recovered_strips ^
         -o assumption.laz

This results in 5 strips. We then use lassort to bring the strips back into their original acquisition order by sorting first based on the GPS time stamp (which brings all returns of one pulse together) and second on the return number (which sorts them in ascending order). We do this on 3 cores in parallel with this command:

lassort -i sugarcane\0_recovered_strips\*.laz ^
        -gps_time ^
        -return_number ^
        -odir sugarcane\1_sorted_strips -olaz ^
        -cores 3

We also create a spatial index for each of these strips using lasindex so that any area-of-interest query that we do later will be significantly accelerated. See the README file for the meaning of the parameters:

lasindex -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
         -tile_size 10 -maximum -100 ^
         -cores 3

Then we check for flight line alignment using lasoverlap by comparing – per 2 feet by 2 feet area – the lowest elevation value of points from different strips wherever there is overlap. Cells with an absolute vertical difference of less than a quarter of a foot are mapped to white. Cells with vertical differences of more (or less) than a quarter foot are mapped to an increasingly red (or blue) color that is saturated red (or blue) when one full foot is reached.

lasoverlap -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
           -files_are_flightlines ^
           -step 2.0 ^
           -min_diff 0.25 -max_diff 1.0 ^
           -o sugarcane\2_quality\overlap.png

The resulting image looks dramatic at first glance. But we have to remember that this is sugarcane. The penetration of the laser can vary greatly depending on the direction from which the beam hits the densely standing stalks. Large differences between flight lines can be expected where sugarcane stands tall. We need to focus our visual quality checks on the few open areas, namely the access roads and harvested areas.

Color-mapped highest vertical difference in lowest point per 2 feet by 2 feet area between overlapping flight lines.

We use las2las via its native GUI to cut out several suspicious-looking open areas with overly red or overly blue shading. By loading the resulting image into the GUI these areas-of-interest are easy to target and cut out.

las2las -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz -gui

Overlaying the difference image in the GUI of las2las to cut out suspicious areas for closer inspection.

We cut out four square 100 by 100 meter tiles in open areas that show a suspiciously strong pattern of red or blue colors for closer inspection. The command lines for these four square areas are given below and you can download them here:

  1. assumption_3364350_534950_100.laz
  2. assumption_3365600_535750_100.laz
  3. assumption_3364900_535500_100.laz
  4. assumption_3365500_535600_100.laz
las2las -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
        -merged -faf ^
        -inside_tile 3364350 534950 100 ^
        -o sugarcane\assumption_3364350_534950_100.laz

las2las -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
        -merged -faf ^
        -inside_tile 3365600 535750 100 ^
        -o sugarcane\assumption_3365600_535750_100.laz

las2las -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
        -merged -faf ^
        -inside_tile 3364900 535500 100 ^
        -o sugarcane\assumption_3364900_535500_100.laz

las2las -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
        -merged -faf ^
        -inside_tile 3365500 535600 100 ^
        -o sugarcane\assumption_3365500_535600_100.laz

In the image sequence below we scrutinize these differences which will lead us to notice two things:

  1. There are vertical miss-alignments of around one foot. These big difference can especially be observed between flight lines that cover an area with a very high point density and those that cover the very same area with a very low point density.
  2. There are horizontal miss-alignments of around one foot. Again these differences seem somewhat correlated to the density that these flight lines cover a particular area with.
Picking a square area with suspicious discoloration to clip into a separate file.
View down the access road. Points colored by elevation. Notice the lighter blue points.
One flight line only.
Another flight line. This one contributes those lighter blue points.
Picking a profile line in lasview (press ‘x’ and then select a line while holding down the ‘SHIFT’ key). Then press ‘x’ again.
The points of the sparser flight line are one foot above the denser one.
Picking another square area with suspicious discoloration. This one in the middle of an empty field.
The plow lines are clearly visible.
Hillshading only the points of one flight line.
Hillshading only the points of another flight line. Notice the horizontal shift.
Picking a profile line in lasview (press ‘x’ and then select a line while holding down the ‘SHIFT’ key). Then press ‘x’ again.
Profile line across the plow lanes of an empty sugarcane plantation.
Profile line for one flight line. The horizontal shift is about two thirds of a foot.
Profile line for another flight line. The horizontal shift is about two thirds of a foot.
Picking another square area with suspicious discoloration. This one includes an access road again.
Already the issue is visible in the miss-classification of the data. There is odd grass growing in the middle of the road.
Also the elevation coloring shows this pattern. Press ‘c’ to step through different coloring options.
The flight line coloring confirms that it is a miss alignment issue again. Press ‘c’ to step through different coloring options.
Picking a profile line in lasview (press ‘x’ and then select a line while holding down the ‘SHIFT’ key). Then press ‘x’ again.
The miss-alignment between the sparse points of one flight line and the dense points of the other is obvious.
The vertical difference is close to a foot.
Picking another suspicious area. We are mostly interested in the discoloration on the empty field..
Picking a profile line in lasview (press ‘x’ and then select a line while holding down the ‘SHIFT’ key). Then press ‘x’ again.
Profile line across the plow lanes of an empty sugarcane plantation.
Profile line with exaggerated z scale across the plow lanes of an empty sugarcane plantation. The horizontal shift is about one foot.
Picking a profile rectangle in lasview (press ‘x’ and then select a rectangle). Then press ‘x’ again.
Hillshading only the points of one flight line.
Hillshading only the points of another flight line. Notice the horizontal shift.
Using all flight lines together would give messy and incorrect results in this area.

For the most part the miss-aligned points come from a flight line that has only sparse coverage in that area. In a flat terrain the return density per area goes down the farther we are from the drone as those areas are only reached with higher and higher scan angles. Hence an immediate idea that comes to mind is to limit the scan angle to those closer to nadir and lower the range from -81 to 84 degrees reported in the lasinfo report to something like -75 to 75, -70 to 70, or -65 to 65 degrees. We can check how this will improve the alignment with these lasoverlap command lines:

lasoverlap -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
           -files_are_flightlines ^
           -keep_scan_angle -75 75 ^
           -step 2.0 ^
           -min_diff 0.25 -max_diff 1.0 ^
           -o sugarcane\2_quality\overlap75.png

lasoverlap -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
           -files_are_flightlines ^
           -keep_scan_angle -70 70 ^
           -step 2.0 ^
           -min_diff 0.25 -max_diff 1.0 ^
           -o sugarcane\2_quality\overlap70.png

lasoverlap -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
           -files_are_flightlines ^
           -keep_scan_angle -65 65 ^
           -step 2.0 ^
           -min_diff 0.25 -max_diff 1.0 ^
           -o sugarcane\2_quality\overlap65.png

lasoverlap -i sugarcane\1_sorted_strips\*.laz ^
           -files_are_flightlines ^
           -keep_scan_angle -60 60 ^
           -step 2.0 ^
           -min_diff 0.25 -max_diff 1.0 ^
           -o sugarcane\2_quality\overlap60.png

This simple technique significantly improves the difference image. Based on these images would suggest to only use returns with a scan angle between -70 and 70 degrees for any subsequent analysis. This seems to remove most of the discoloring in open areas without loosing too many points. Note that only using returns with a scan angle between -60 and 60 degrees means that some flight lines are no longer overlapping each other.

Note also that by limiting the scan angle we get suddenly get white areas even in incredible dense vegetation. The more horizontal a laser shoot is the more likely it will only hit higher up sugarcane plants and the less likely it will penetrate all the way to the ground. The white areas coincide with where laser pulses are close to nadir which is in the flight line overlap areas that directly below the drone’s trajectory.

Can we improve alignment further? Not with LAStools, so I turned to Andre Jalobeanu, a specialist on that particular issue, who I have known for many years. Andre has developed BayesStripAlign – a software by his company BayesMap that is quite complementary to LAStools and does exactly what the name suggests: it align strips. I gave Andre the five flight lines and he aligned them for me. Below the new difference images:

Before strip alignment (all returns).
After strip alignment (all returns).
Before strip alignment (returns with scan angle between -70 and 70 degrees)
After strip alignment (returns with scan angle between -70 and 70 degrees)

We cut out the very same four square areas from the realigned strips for closer inspection and you may investigate them on your own. You can download them here.

  1. assumption_3364350_534950_100_realigned.laz
  2. assumption_3365600_535750_100_realigned.laz
  3. assumption_3364900_535500_100_realigned.laz
  4. assumption_3365500_535600_100_realigned.laz

In the image sequence below we are just looking at the last of the four square areas and you can see that most of the miss-alignment we saw earlier between the flight lines was removed.

Profile line across the plow lanes of an empty sugarcane plantation.
Profile line with exaggerated z scale across the plow lanes of an empty sugarcane plantation.
Hillshaded plow lanes of the returns of one flight line.
Hillshaded plow lanes of the returns of another flight line.

We would like to thank Chad Netto from Chustz Surveying to make this data set available to us and Andre Jalobeanu from BayesMap to align the flight lines for us.

Removing Low Noise from RIEGL’s VUX-1 UAV LiDAR flown in the Philippines

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In this tutorial we are removing some “tricky” low noise from LiDAR point clouds in order to produce a high-resolution Digital Terrain Model (DTM). The data was flown above a tropical beach and mangrove area in the Philippines using a VUX-1 UAV based system from RIEGL mounted on a helicopter. The survey was done as a test flight by AB Surveying who have the capacity to fly such missions in the Philippines and who have allowed us to share this data with you for educational purposes. You can download the data (1 GB) here. It covers a popular twin beach knows as “Nacpan” near El Nido in Palawan (that we happen to have visited in 2014).

A typical beach fringed by coconut palms in Palawan, Philippines.

We start our usual quality check with a run of lasinfo. We add the ‘-cd’ switch to compute an average point density and the ‘-histo gps_time 1’ switch to produce a 1 second histogram for the GPS time stamps.

lasinfo -i lalutaya.laz ^
        -cd ^
        -histo gps_time 1 ^
        -odix _info -otxt

You can download the resulting lasinfo report here. It tells us that there are 118,740,310 points of type 3 (with RGB colors) with an average density of 57 last returns per square meter. The point coordinates are in the “PRS92 / Philippines 1” projection with EPSG code 3121 that is based on the “Clarke 1866” ellipsoid.

Datum Transform

We prefer to work in an UTM projection based on the “WGS 1984” ellipsoid, so we will first perform a datum transform based on the seven parameter Helmert transformation – a capacity that was recently added to LAStools. For this we first need a transform to get to geocentric or Earth-Centered Earth-Fixed (ECEF) coordinates on the current “Clarke 1866” ellipsoid, then we apply the Helmert transformation that operates on geocentric coordinates and whose parameters are listed in the TOWGS84 string of EPSG code 3121 to get to geocentric or ECEF coordinates on the “WGS 1984” ellipsoid. Finally we can convert the coordinates to the respective UTM zone. These three calls to las2las accomplish this.

las2las -i lalutaya.laz ^
        -remove_all_vlrs ^
        -epsg 3121 ^
        -target_ecef ^
        -odix _ecef_clark1866 -olaz

las2las -i lalutaya_ecef_clark1866.laz ^
        -transform_helmert -127.62,-67.24,-47.04,-3.068,4.903,1.578,-1.06 ^
        -wgs84 -ecef ^
        -ocut 10 -odix _wgs84 -olaz
 
las2las -i lalutaya_ecef_wgs84.laz ^
        -target_utm auto ^
        -ocut 11 -odix _utm -olaz

In these steps we implicitly reduced the resolution that each coordinate was stored with from quarter-millimeters (i.e. scale factors of 0.00025) to the default of centimeters (i.e. scale factors of 0.01) which should be sufficient for subsequent vegetation analysis. The LAZ files also compress better when coordinates a lower resolution so that the ‘lalutaya_utm.laz’ file is over 200 MB smaller than the original ‘lalutaya.laz’ file. The quantization error this introduces is probably still below the overall scanning error of this helicopter survey.

Flightline Recovery

Playing back the file visually with lasview suggests that it contains more than one flightline. Unfortunately the point source ID field of the file is not properly populated with flightline information. However, when scrutinizing the GPS time stamp histogram in the lasinfo report we can see an occasional gap. We highlight two of these gaps in red between GPS second 540226 and 540272 and GPS second 540497 and 540556 in this excerpt from the lasinfo report:

gps_time histogram with bin size 1
[...]
 bin 540224 has 125768
 bin 540225 has 116372
 bin 540226 has 2707
 bin 540272 has 159429
 bin 540273 has 272049
 bin 540274 has 280237
[...]
 bin 540495 has 187103
 bin 540496 has 180421
 bin 540497 has 126835
 bin 540556 has 228503
 bin 540557 has 275025
 bin 540558 has 273861
[...]

We can use lasplit to recover the original flightlines based on gaps in the continuity of GPS time stamps that are bigger than 10 seconds:

lassplit -i lalutaya_utm.laz ^
         -recover_flightlines_interval 10 ^
         -odir strips_raw -o lalutaya.laz

This operation splits the points into 11 separate flightlines. The points within each flightline are stored in the order that the vendor software – which was RiPROCESS 1.7.2 from RIEGL according to the lasinfo report – had written them to file. We can use lassort to bring them back into the order they were acquired in by sorting first on the GPS time stamp and then on the return number field:

lassort -i strips_raw\*.laz ^
        -gps_time -return_number ^
        -odir strips_sorted -olaz ^
        -cores 4

Now we turn the sorted flightlines into tiles (with buffers !!!) for further processing. We also erase the current classification of the data into ground (2) and medium vegetation (4) as a quick visual inspection with lasview immediately shows that those are not correct:

lastile -i strips_sorted\*.laz ^
        -files_are_flightlines ^
        -set_classification 0 ^
        -tile_size 250 -buffer 30 -flag_as_withheld ^
        -odir tiles_raw -o lalu.laz

Quality Checking

Next comes the standard check of flightline overlap and alignment check with lasoverlap. Once more it become clear why it is so important to have flightline information. Without we may have missed what we are about to notice. We create false color images load into Google Earth to visually assess the situation. We map all absolute differences between flightlines below 5 cm to white and all absolute differences above 30 cm to saturated red (positive) or blue (negative) with a gradual shading from white to red or blue for any differences in between. We also create an overview KML file that lets us quickly see in which tile we can find the points for a particular area of interest with lasboundary.

lasoverlap -i tiles_raw\*.laz ^
           -step 1 -min_diff 0.05 -max_diff 0.30 ^
           -odir quality -opng ^
           -cores 4

lasboundary -i tiles_raw\*.laz ^
            -use_tile_bb -overview -labels ^
            -o quality\overview.kml

The resulting visualizations show (a) that our datum transform to the WGS84 ellipsoid worked because the imagery aligns nicely with Google Earth and (b) that there are several issues in the data that require further scrutiny.

Illustration of vertical flightline differences. White means less than 5 cm difference. Saturated red or blue means 30 cm or more difference.
There is an unexpected set of blue lines on the open beach that are crossing in tile ‘lalu_765000_1252750.laz’.
These blue lines stretch all along the coast and more might hide under the vegetation.
Similar lines also exist farther inland in red. Note that the sign of the difference solely depends on the order the flightlines are numbered in.

In general the data seems well aligned (most open areas are white) but there are blue and red lines crossing the survey area. With lasview have a closer look at the visible blue lines running along the beach in tile ‘lalu_765000_1252750.laz’ by repeatedly pressing ‘x’ to select a different subset and ‘x’ again to view this subset up close while pressing ‘c’ to color it differently:

lasview -i tiles_raw\lalu_765000_1252750.laz

These lines of erroneous points do not only happen along the beach but also in the middle of and below the vegetation as can be seen below:

The erroneous points in this tile are clearly visible because of their overall higher intensity.
Some are from flightline 8.
Some are from flightline 6.
And those hiding in and below the vegetation are from flightline 4.

Our initial hope was to use the higher than usual intensity of these erroneous points to reclassify them to some classification code that we would them exclude from further processing. Visually we found that a reasonable cut-off value for this tile would be an intensity above 35000:

lasview -i tiles_raw\lalu_765000_1252750.laz ^
        -keep_intensity_above 35000 ^
        -filtered_transform ^
        -set_classification 23
Reclassifying points with an intensity value above 35000 successfully marks most of the erroneous points.
But also a number of points on the trunks of the coconut trees are reclassified.
Even in the middle of the vegetation this method successfully marks those lines of erroneous points.

However, while this method seems successful on the tile shown above it fails miserably on others such as ‘lalu_764250_1251500.laz’ where large parts of the beach are very reflective and result in high intensity returns to to the dry white sand:

lasview -i tiles_raw\lalu_764250_1251500.laz ^
        -keep_intensity_above 35000 ^
        -filtered_transform ^
        -set_classification 23
The RGB images taken simultaneously show where the sand was wet and where it was dry.
This results in ground with very different reflective properties and therefore drastically different intensity values.
The high-intensity returns from dry sand indicate that our “intensity fix” will not work for the entire survey.

Low Noise Removal

In the following we describe a workflow that can remove the erroneous points below the ground so that we can at least construct a high-quality DTM from the data. This will not, however, remove the erroneous points above the ground so a subsequent vegetation analysis would still be affected. Our approach is based on two obervations (a) the erroneous points affect only a relatively small area and (b) different flightlines have their erroneous points in different areas. The idea is to compute a set of coarser ground points separately for each flightline and – when combining them in the end – to pick higher ground points over lower ones. The combined points should then define a surface that is above the erroneous below-ground points so that we can mark them with lasheight as not to be used for the actual ground classification done thereafter.

The new huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only.bat example batch script that you can download here does all the work needed to compute a set of coarser ground points for each flightline. Simply edit the file such that the LAStools variable points to your LAStools\bin folder and rename it to end with the *.bat extension. Then run:

huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000001.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000001.laz
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000002.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000001.laz
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000003.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000001.laz
...
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000009.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000009.laz
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000010.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000010.laz
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000011.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000011.laz

The details on how this batch script works – a pretty standard tile-based multi-core processing workflow – are given as comments in this batch script. Now we have a set of individual ground points computed separately for each flightline and some will include erroneous points below the ground that the lasground algorithm by its very nature is likely to latch on to as you can see here:

The ground points of flightline 2 do not contain erroneous points in this area.
But the ground points of flightline 6 clearly do latch on to erroneous points.
Also the ground points of flightline 8 clearly do latch on to erroneous points.
By combining the ground points from all flightlines and giving preference to higher ones we can create a set of ground points free of erroneous points.

The trick is now to utilize the redundancy of multiple scans per area and – when combining flightlines – to pick higher rather than lower ground points in overlap areas by using the ground point closest to the 75th elevation percentile per 2 meter by 2 meter area with at least 3 or more points with lasthin:

lasthin -i strips_ground_only\*.laz -merged ^
        -step 2 -percentile 75 3 ^
        -o lalutaya_ground_only_2m_75_3.laz

There are still some non-ground points in the result as ground-classifying of flightlines individually often results in vegetation returns being included in sparse areas along the edges of the flight lines but we can easily get rid of those:

lasground_new -i lalutaya__ground_only_2m_75_3.laz ^
              -town -hyper_fine ^
              -odix _g -olaz

We sort the remaining ground points into a space-filling curve order with lassort and spatially index them with lasindex so they can be efficiently accessed by lasheight in the next step.

lassort -i lalutaya__ground_only_2m_75_3_g.laz ^
        -keep_class 2 ^
        -o lalutaya_ground.laz

lasindex -i lalutaya_ground.laz

Finally we have the means to robustly remove the erroneous points below the ground from all tiles. We use lasheight with the ground points we’ve just so painstakingly computed to classify all points 20 cm or more below the ground surface they define into classification code 23. Later we simply can ignore this classification code during processing:

lasheight -i tiles_raw\*.laz ^
          -ground_points lalutaya_ground.laz ^
          -do_not_store_in_user_data ^
          -classify_below -0.2 23 ^
          -odir tiles_cleaned -olaz ^
          -cores 4
All points of tile ‘lalu_765000_1252750.laz’.
The points marked as classification code 23 by lasheight.
Remaining points of tile ‘lalu_765000_1252750.laz’.

Rather than trying to ground classify all remaining points we run lasground on a thinned subset of all points. For this we mark the lowest point in every 20 cm by 20 cm grid cell with some temporary classification code such as 6.

lasthin -i tiles_cleaned\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 23 ^
        -step 0.20 -lowest -classify_as 6 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned -olaz ^
        -cores 4

Finally we can run lasground to compute the ground classification considering all points with classification code 6 by ignoring all points with classification codes 23 and 0.

lasground_new -i tiles_thinned\*.laz ^
              -ignore_class 23 0 ^
              -city -hyper_fine ^
              -odir tiles_ground_new -olaz ^
              -cores 4

And finally we can create a DTM with a resolution of 25 cm using las2dem and the result is truly beautiful:

las2dem -i tiles_ground_new\*.laz ^
        -keep_class 2 ^
        -step 0.25 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir tiles_dtm_25cm -obil ^
        -cores 4

We have to admit that a few bumps are left (see mouse cursor below) but adjusting the parameters presented here is left as an exercise to the reader.

We would again like to acknowledge AB Surveying whose generosity has made this blog article possible. They have the capacity to fly such missions in the Philippines and who have allowed us to share this data with you for educational purposes.