Category Archives: YellowScan

New Step-by-Step Tutorial for Velodyne Drone LiDAR from Snoopy by LidarUSA

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The folks from Harris Aerial gave us LiDAR data from a test-flight of one of their drones, the Carrier H4 Hybrid HE (with a 5kg maximum payload and a retail price of US$ 28,000), carrying a Snoopy A series LiDAR system from LidarUSA in the countryside near Huntsville, Alabama. The laser scanner used by the Snoopy A series is a Velodyne HDL 32E that has 32 different laser/detector pairs that fire in succession to scan up to 700,000 points per second within a range of 1 to 70 meters. You can download the raw LiDAR file from the 80 second test flight here. As always, the first thing we do is to visualize the file with lasview and to generate a textual report of its contents with lasinfo.

lasview -i Velodyne001.laz -set_min_max 680 750

It becomes obvious that the drone must have scanned parts of itself (probably the landing gear) during the flight and we exploit this fact in the later processing. The information which of the 32 lasers was collecting which point is stored into the ‘point source ID’ field which is usually used for the flightline information. This results in a psychedelic look in lasview as those 32 different numbers get mapped to the 8 different colors that lasview uses for distinguishing flightlines.

In the point cloud colored by elevation we see that the drone must have scanned itself during flight.
The point cloud colored by intensity gives a clearer picture of what is on the ground.
The point cloud colored by point source ID looks psychedelic.

The lasinfo report we generate computes the average point density with ‘-cd’ and includes histograms for a number of point attributes, namely for ‘user data’, ‘intensity’, ‘point source ID’, ‘GPS time’, and ‘scan angle rank’.

lasinfo -i Velodyne001.laz ^
        -cd ^
        -histo user_data 1 ^
        -histo point_source 1 ^
        -histo intensity 16 ^
        -histo gps_time 1 ^
        -histo scan_angle_rank 5 ^
        -odir quality -odix _info -otxt

You can download the resulting report here and it will tell you that the information which of the 32 lasers was collecting which point was stored both into the ‘user data’ field and into the ‘point source ID’ field. The warnings you see below have to do with the fact that the double-precision bounding box stored in the LAS header was populated with numbers that have many more decimal digits than the coordinates in the file, which only have millimeter (or millifeet) resolution as all three scale factors are 0.001 (meaning three decimal digits).

WARNING: stored resolution of min_x not compatible with x_offset and x_scale_factor: 2171988.6475160527
WARNING: stored resolution of min_y not compatible with y_offset and y_scale_factor: 1622812.606925504
WARNING: stored resolution of min_z not compatible with z_offset and z_scale_factor: 666.63504345017589
WARNING: stored resolution of max_x not compatible with x_offset and x_scale_factor: 2172938.973065129
WARNING: stored resolution of max_y not compatible with y_offset and y_scale_factor: 1623607.5209975131
WARNING: stored resolution of max_z not compatible with z_offset and z_scale_factor: 1053.092674726669

Both the “return number” and the “number of returns” attribute of every points in the file is 2. This makes it appear as if the file would only contain the last returns of those laser shots that produced two returns. However, as the Velodyne HDL 32E only produces one return per shot we can safely conclude that those numbers should all be 1 instead of 2 and that this is just a small bug in the export software. We can easily fix this with las2las.

reporting minimum and maximum for all LAS point record entries ...
[...]
 return_number 2 2
 number_of_returns 2 2
[...]

The lasinfo report lacks information about the coordinate reference system as there is no VLR that stores projection information. Harris Aerial could not help us other than telling us that the scan was near Huntsville, Alamaba. Measuring certain distances in the scene like the height of the house or the tree suggests that both horizontal and vertical units are in feet, or rather in US survey feet. After some experimenting we find that using EPSG 26930 for NAD83 Alabama West but forcing the default horizontal units from meters to US survey feet gives a result that aligns well with high-resolution Google Earth imagery as you can see below:

lasgrid -i flightline1.laz ^
        -i flightline2.laz ^
        -merged ^
        -epsg 26930 -survey_feet ^
        -step 1 -highest ^
        -false -set_min_max 680 750 ^
        -o testing26930usft.png

Using EPSG code 26930 but with US survey feet instead of meters results in nice alignment with GE imagery.

We use the fact that the drone has scanned itself to extract an (approximate) trajectory by isolating those LiDAR returns that have hit the drone. Via a visual check with lasview (by hovering with the cursor over the lowest drone hits and pressing hotkey ‘i’) we determine that the lowest drone hits are all above 719 feet. We use two calls to las2las to split the point cloud vertically. In the same call we also change the resolution from three to two decimal digits, fix the return number issue, and add the missing geo-referencing information:

las2las -i Velodyne001.laz ^
        -rescale 0.01 0.01 0.01 ^
        -epsg 26930 -survey_feet -elevation_survey_feet ^
        -set_return_number 1 ^
        -set_number_of_returns 1 ^
        -keep_z_above 719 ^
        -odix _above719 -olaz

las2las -i Velodyne001.laz ^
        -rescale 0.01 0.01 0.01 ^
        -epsg 26930 -survey_feet -elevation_survey_feet ^
        -set_return_number 1 ^
        -set_number_of_returns 1 ^
        -keep_z_below 719 ^
        -odix _below719 -olaz

We then use the manual editing capabilities of lasview to change the classifications of the LiDAR points that correspond to drone hits from 1 to 12, which is illustrated by the series of screen shots below.

lasview -i Velodyne001_above719.laz
Right in lasview clicking opens a pop-up menu with an option to edit classifications.
We draw a polygon around the points that are from the drone hitting itself.
By pressing the hotkey ‘r’ we register the changes.
Maybe a few too many points were classified as 12 so we put them back into classification 1.
We draw another polygon.
And press the hotkey ‘r’ again to register the changes.
Here are two more points that need to go back to classification 1.
Once we are satisfied we hold the CRTL button down and press hotkey ‘s’ to save the changes as a LASlayers LAY file.

The workflow illustrated above results in a tiny LAY file that is part of the LASlayers functionality of LAStools. It only encodes the few changes in classifications that we’ve made to the LAZ file without re-writing those parts that have not changed. Those interested may use laslayers to inspect the structure of the LAY file:

laslayers -i Velodyne001_above719.laz

We can apply the LAY file on-the-fly with the ‘-ilay’ option, for example, when running lasview:

lasview -i Velodyne001_above719.laz -ilay

To separate the drone-hit trajectory from the remaining points we run lassplit with the ‘-ilay’ option and request to split by classification with this command line:

lassplit -i Velodyne001_above719.laz -ilay ^
         -by_classification -digits 3 ^
         -olaz

This gives us two new files with the three-digit appendices ‘_001’ and ‘_012’. The latter one contains those points we marked as being part of the trajectory. We now want to use lasview to – visually – find a good moment in time where to split the trajectory into multiple flightlines. The lasinfo report tells us that the GPS time stamps are in the range from 418,519 to 418,602. In order to use the same trick as we did in our recent article on processing LiDAR data from the Hovermap Drone, where we mapped the GPS time to the intensity for querying it via lasview, we first need to subtract a large number from the GPS time stamps to bring them into a suitable range that fits the intensity field as done here.

lasview -i Velodyne001_above719_012.laz ^
        -translate_gps_time -418000 ^
        -bin_gps_time_into_intensity 1
        -steps 5000

The ‘-steps 5000’ argument makes for a slower playback (press ‘p’ to repeat) to better follow the trajectory.

Hovering with the mouse over a point that – visually – seems to be one of the turning points of the drone and pressing ‘i’ on the keyboard shows an intensity value of 548 which corresponds to the GPS time stamp 418548, which we then use to split the LiDAR point cloud (without the trajectory) into two flightlines:

las2las -i Velodyne001_below719.laz ^
        -i Velodyne001_above719_001.laz ^
        -merged ^
        -keep_gps_time_below 418548 ^
        -o flightline1.laz

las2las -i Velodyne001_below719.laz ^
        -i Velodyne001_above719_001.laz ^
        -merged ^
        -keep_gps_time_above 418548 ^
        -o flightline2.laz

Next we use lasoverlap to check how well the LiDAR points from the flight out and the flight back align vertically. This tool computes the difference of the lowest points for each square foot covered by both flightlines. Differences of less than a quarter of a foot are mapped to white, differences of more than half a foot are mapped to saturated red or blue depending on whether the difference is positive or negative:

lasoverlap -i flightline1.laz ^
           -i flightline2.laz ^
           -faf ^
           -min_diff 0.25 -max_diff 0.50 -step 1 ^
           -odir quality -o overlap_025_050.png

We then use a new feature of the LAStools GUI (as of version 180429) to closer inspect larger red or blue areas. We want to use lasmerge and clip out any region that looks suspect for closer examination with lasview. We start the tool in the GUI mode with the ‘-gui’ command and the two flightlines pre-loaded. Using the new PNG overlay roll-out on the left we add the ‘overlap_025_050_diff.png’ image from the quality folder created in the last step and clip out three areas.

lasmerge -i flightline1.laz -i flightline2.laz -gui

You can also clip out these three areas using the command lines below:

lasmerge -i flightline1.laz -i flightline2.laz ^
         -faf ^
         -inside 2172500 1623160 2172600 1623165 ^
         -o clip2500_3160_100x005.laz

lasmerge -i flightline1.laz -i flightline2.laz ^
         -faf ^
         -inside 2172450 1623450 2172550 1623455 ^
         -o clip2450_3450_100x005.laz

lasmerge -i flightline1.laz -i flightline2.laz ^
         -faf ^
         -inside 2172430 1623290 2172530 1623310 ^
         -o clip2430_3290_100x020.laz

A closer inspection of the three cut out slices explains the red and blue areas in the difference image created by lasoverlap. We find a small systematic error in two of the slices. In slice ‘clip2500_3160_100x005.laz‘ the green points from flightline 1 are on average slightly higher than the red points from flightline 2. Vice-versa in slice ‘clip2450_3450_100x005.laz‘ the green points from flightline 1 are on average slightly lower than the red points from flightline 2. However, the error is less than half a foot and only happens near the edges of the flightlines. Given that our surfaces are expected to be “fluffy” anyways (as is typical for Velodyne LiDAR systems), we accept these differences and continue processing.

Zooming in on the 5 foot slice ‘clip2500_3160_100x005.laz’ colored by flightline.
There is a small shift between the two flightlines. This is flightline 1.
There is a small shift between the two flightlines. This is flightline 2.
Zooming in on the 5 foot slice ‘clip2450_3450_100x005.laz’ colored by flightline. The top and button representations have a half foot drop/rise line attached to each return to get a sense of scale.

The strong red and blue colors in the center of the difference image created by lasoverlap is easily explained by looking at slice ‘clip2430_3290_100x020.laz‘. The scanner was “looking” under a gazebo-like open roof structure from two different directions and therefore always seeing parts of the floor in one flightline that were obscured by the roof in the other.

The points from the 20 foot slice ‘clip2430_3290_100x020.laz’ colored by flightline.
The reason for the big difference is that during flightline 1 the scanner “looks” under the roof from the right.
Whereas during flightline 2 the scanner “looks” under the roof from the left.

While working with this data we’ve also implemented a new feature for lastrack that computes the 3D distance between LiDAR points and the trajectory and allows storing the result as an additional per point attribute with extra bytes. Those can then be visualized with lasgrid. Here an example:

lastrack -i flightline1.laz ^
         -i flightline2.laz ^
         -track Velodyne001_above719_012.laz ^
         -store_xyz_range_as_extra_bytes ^
         -odix _xyz_range -olaz ^
         =cores 2

lasgrid -i flightline*_xyz_range.laz -merged ^
        -drop_attribute_below 0 1 ^
        -attribute0 -lowest ^
        -false -set_min_max 20 200 ^
        -o quality/closest_xyz_range_020ft_200ft.png

lasgrid -i flightline*_xyz_range.laz -merged ^
        -drop_attribute_below 0 1 ^
        -attribute0 -highest ^
        -false -set_min_max 30 300 ^
        -o quality/farthest_xyz_range_030ft_300ft.png
Visualization of the closest distance of any return from the trajectory for every square foot with 20 ft (or less) being mapped to blue and 200ft (or more) being mapped to red.
Visualization of the farthest distance of any return from the trajectory for every square foot with 30 ft (or less) being mapped to blue and 300ft (or more) being mapped to red.

Below the complete processing pipeline for creating a median ground model from the “fluffy” Velodyne LiDAR data that results in the hillshaded DTM shown here. The workflow is similar to those we have developed in earlier blog posts for Velodyne Puck based systems like the Hovermap and the Yellowscan.

Hillshaded DTM with a resolution of 1 foot generated via a median ground computation by the LAStools processing pipeline detailed below.

lastile -i flightline1.laz ^
        -i flightline2.laz ^
        -faf ^
        -tile_size 250 -buffer 25 -flag_as_withheld ^
        -odir tiles_raw -o somer.laz

lasnoise -i tiles_raw\*.laz ^
         -step_xy 2 -step 1 -isolated 9 ^
         -odir tiles_denoised -olaz ^
          -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_denoised\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 1 -percentile 5 10 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned_1_foot -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_thinned_1_foot\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 2 -percentile 5 10 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned_2_foot -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_thinned_2_foot\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 4 -percentile 5 10 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned_4_foot -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_thinned_4_foot\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 8 -percentile 5 10 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned_8_foot -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasground -i tiles_thinned_8_foot\*.laz ^
          -ignore_class 1 7 ^
          -town -extra_fine ^
          -odir tiles_ground_lowest -olaz ^
          -cores 4

lasheight -i tiles_ground_lowest\*.laz ^
          -classify_between -0.05 0.5 6 ^
          -odir tiles_ground_thick -olaz ^
          -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_ground_thick\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 1 7 ^
        -step 1 -percentile 50 -classify_as 2 ^
        -odir tiles_ground_median -olaz ^
        -cores 4

las2dem -i tiles_ground_median\*.laz ^
        -keep_class 2 ^
        -step 1 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir tiles_dtm -obil ^
        -cores 4

blast2dem -i tiles_dtm\*.bil -merged ^
          -step 1 -hillshade ^
          -o dtm_hillshaded.png

We thank Harris Aerial for sharing this LiDAR data set with us flown by their Carrier H4 Hybrid HE drone carrying a Snoopy A series LiDAR system from LidarUSA.

Processing Drone LiDAR from YellowScan’s Surveyor, a Velodyne Puck based System

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Points clouds from UAVs have become a common sight. Cheap consumer drones equipped with cameras produce points from images with increasing quality as photogrammetry software is improving. But vegetation is always a show stopper for point clouds generated from imagery data. Only an active sensing technique such as laser scanning can penetrate through the vegetation and generate points on the ground under the canopy of a forested area. Advances in UAV technology and the miniaturization of LiDAR systems have allowed lasers-scanning solutions for drones to enter the market.

Last summer we attended the LiDAR for Drone 2017 Conference by YellowScan and processed some data sets flown with their Surveyor system that is built around the Velodyne VLP-16 Puck LiDAR scanner and the Applanix APX15 single board GNSS-Inertial solution. One common challenge observed in LiDAR data generated by the Velodyne Puck is that surfaces are not as “crisp” as those generated by other laser scanners. Flat and open terrain surfaces are described by a layer of points with a “thickness” of a few centimeter as you can see in the images below. This visualization uses a 10 meter by 5 meter cut-out of from this data set with the coordinate range [774280,774290) in x and [6279463,6279468) in y. Standard ground classification routines will “latch onto” the lowermost envelope of these thick point layers and therefore produce a sub-optimal Digital Terrain Model (DTM).

Triangulation of all last returns of mostly flat 10 meter by 5 meter area. Points are colored by flightline ID.
Zooming shows the vertical spread of the points. Points are colored by flightline ID.
Zooming further in and pink like with length of 8 cm for scale. Points are colored by flightline ID.
Triangulation of all last returns of mostly flat 10 meter by 5 meter area
Triangulation of highest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid and lowest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid with 5 cm “rise lines”
Triangulation of highest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid and lowest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid with 10 cm “rise lines”
Triangulation of lowest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid and highest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid with 5 cm “drop lines”
Triangulation of lowest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid and highest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid with 10 cm “drop lines”

In part this “thickness” can be reduced by using fewer flightlines as the “thickness” of each flightline by itself is lower but it is compounded when merging all flightlines together. However, deciding which (subset of) flightlines to use for which part of the scene to generate the best possible ground model is not an obvious tasks either and even per flightline there will be a remaining “thickness” to deal with as can be seen in the following set of images.

All returns from flightline 1 triangulated.
All returns from flightline 2 triangulated.
All returns from flightline 4 triangulated.
All returns from flightline 5 triangulated.
All returns from flightline 6 triangulated.
All returns from all flightlines triangulated.

In the following we show how to deal with “thickness” in a layer of points describing a ground surface. We first produce a “lowest ground” which we then widen into a “thick ground” from which we then derive “median ground” points that create a plausible terrain representation when interpolated by a Delaunay triangulation and rasterized onto a DTM. Step by step we process this example data set captured in a “live demo” during the LiDAR for Drone 2017 Conference – the beautiful Château de Flaugergues in Montpellier, France where the event took place. You can download this data via this link if you would like to repeat these processing steps:

Once you decompress the RAR file (e.g. with the UnRar.exe freeware) you will find six raw flight strips in LAS format and the trajectory of the UAV in ASCII text format as it was provided by YellowScan.

E:\LAStools\bin>dir Flaugergues
06/27/2017 08:03 PM 146,503,985 Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L1.las
06/27/2017 08:02 PM  91,503,103 Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L2.las
06/27/2017 08:03 PM 131,917,917 Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L3.las
06/27/2017 08:03 PM 219,736,585 Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L4.las
06/27/2017 08:02 PM 107,705,667 Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L5.las
06/27/2017 08:02 PM  74,373,053 Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L6.las
06/27/2017 08:03 PM   7,263,670 Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_traj.txt

As usually we start with quality checking by visual inspection with lasview and by creating a textual report with lasinfo.

E:\LAStools\bin>lasview Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L1.las

The raw LAS file “Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L1.las” colored by elevation.

E:\LAStools\bin>lasinfo Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L1.las
lasinfo (171011) report for Flaugergues_test_demo_ppk_L1.las
reporting all LAS header entries:
 file signature: 'LASF'
 file source ID: 1
 global_encoding: 1
 project ID GUID data 1-4: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
 version major.minor: 1.2
 system identifier: 'YellowScan Surveyor'
 generating software: 'YellowReader by YellowScan'
 file creation day/year: 178/2017
 header size: 227
 offset to point data: 297
 number var. length records: 1
 point data format: 3
 point data record length: 34
 number of point records: 4308932
 number of points by return: 4142444 166488 0 0 0
 scale factor x y z: 0.001 0.001 0.001
 offset x y z: 774282 6279505 92
 min x y z: 774152.637 6279377.623 82.673
 max x y z: 774408.344 6279541.646 116.656
variable length header record 1 of 1:
 reserved 0
 user ID 'LASF_Projection'
 record ID 34735
 length after header 16
 description ''
 GeoKeyDirectoryTag version 1.1.0 number of keys 1
 key 3072 tiff_tag_location 0 count 1 value_offset 2154 - ProjectedCSTypeGeoKey: RGF93 / Lambert-93
reporting minimum and maximum for all LAS point record entries ...
 X -129363 126344
 Y -127377 36646
 Z -9327 24656
 intensity 0 65278
 return_number 1 2
 number_of_returns 1 2
 edge_of_flight_line 0 0
 scan_direction_flag 0 0
 classification 0 0
 scan_angle_rank -120 120
 user_data 75 105
 point_source_ID 1 1
 gps_time 219873.160527 219908.550379
 Color R 0 0
 G 0 0
 B 0 0
number of first returns: 4142444
number of intermediate returns: 0
number of last returns: 4142444
number of single returns: 3975956
overview over number of returns of given pulse: 3975956 332976 0 0 0 0 0
histogram of classification of points:
 4308932 never classified (0)

Nicely visible are the circular scanning patterns of the Velodyne VLP-16 Puck. We also notice that the trajectory of the UAV can be seen in the lasview visualization because the Puck was scanning the drone’s own landing gear. The lasinfo report tells us that point coordinates are stored with too much resolution (mm) and that points do not need to be stored using point type 3 (with RGB colors) because all RGB values are zero. We fix this with an initial run of las2las and also compress the raw strips to the LAZ format on 4 CPUs in parallel.

las2las -i Flaugergues\*.las ^
        -rescale 0.01 0.01 0.01 ^
        -auto_reoffset ^
        -set_point_type 1 ^
        -odir Flaugergues\strips_raw -olaz ^
        -cores 4

Next we do the usual check for flightline alignment with lasoverlap (README) which we consider to be by far the most important quality check. We compare the lowest elevation from different flightline per 25 cm by 25cm cell in all overlap areas. We consider a vertical difference of up to 5 cm as acceptable (color coded as white) and mark differences of over 30 cm (color coded as saturated red or blue).

lasoverlap -i Flaugergues\strips_raw\*.laz -faf ^
           -step 0.25 ^
           -min_diff 0.05 -max_diff 0.3 ^
           -odir Flaugergues\quality -o overlap.png
Color codes number of overlapping flightlines.
Color codes vertical difference between flightlines.

The vertical difference in open areas between the flightlines is slightly above 5 cm which we consider acceptable in this example. Depending on the application we recommend to investigate further where these differences come from and what consequences they may have for post processing. We also create a color-coded visualization of the last return density per 25 cm by 25 cm cell using lasgrid (README) with blue meaning less than 100 returns per square meter and red meaning more than 4000 returns per square meter.

lasgrid -i Flaugergues\strips_raw\*.laz -merged ^
        -keep_last ^
        -step 0.25 ^
        -point_density ^
        -false -set_min_max 100 4000 ^
        -odir Flaugergues\quality -o density_100_4000.png

Color coded density of last returns per square meter for each 25 cm by 25 cm cell. Blue means 100 or less last returns per square meter. Red means 4000 or more last returns per square meter

As usual we start the LiDAR processing by reorganizing the flightlines into square tiles. Because of the variability in the density that is evident in the visualization above we use lastile (README) to create an adaptive tiling that starts with 200 m by 200 m tiles and then iterate to refine those tiles with over 10 million points down to smaller 25 m by 25 m tiles.

lastile -i Flaugergues\strips_raw\*.laz ^
        -apply_file_source_ID ^
        -tile_size 200 -buffer 8 -flag_as_withheld ^
        -refine_tiling 10000000 ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_raw -o flauge.laz

lastile -i Flaugergues\tiles_raw\flauge*_200.laz ^
        -refine_tiles 10000000 ^
        -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lastile -i Flaugergues\tiles_raw\flauge*_100.laz ^
        -refine_tiles 10000000 ^
        -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lastile -i Flaugergues\tiles_raw\flauge*_50.laz ^
        -refine_tiles 10000000 ^
        -olaz ^
        -cores 4

Subsequent processing is faster when the points have a spatially coherent order. Therefore we rearrange the points into standard space-filling z-order using a call to lassort (README). We run this in parallel on as many cores as it makes sense (i.e. not using more cores than there are physical CPUs).

lassort -i Flaugergues\tiles_raw\flauge*.laz ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_sorted -olaz ^
        -cores 4

Next we classify those points as noise that are isolated on a 3D grid of 1 meter cell size using lasnoise. See the README file of lasnoise for a description on the exact manner in which the isolated points are classified. We do this to eliminate low noise points that would otherwise cause trouble in the subsequent processing.

lasnoise -i Flaugergues\tiles_sorted\flauge*.laz ^
         -step 1 -isolated 5 ^
         -odir Flaugergues\tiles_denoised -olaz ^
         -cores 4

Next we mark the subset of lowest points on a 2D grid of 10 cm cell size with classification code 8 using lasthin (README) while ignoring the noise points with classification code 7 that were marked as noise in the previous step.

lasthin -i Flaugergues\tiles_denoised\flauge*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 0.1 -lowest ^
        -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_lowest -olaz ^
        -cores 4

Considering only the resulting points marked with classification 8 we then create a temporary ground classification that we refer to as the “lowest ground”. For this we run lasground (README) with a set of suitable parameters that were found by experimentation on two of the most complex tiles from the center of the survey.

lasground -i Flaugergues\tiles_lowest\flauge*.laz ^
          -ignore_class 0 7 ^
          -step 5 -hyper_fine -bulge 1.5 -spike 0.5 ^
          -odir Flaugergues\tiles_lowest_ground -olaz ^
          -cores 4

We then “thicken” this “lowest ground” by classifying all points that are between 2 cm below and 15 cm above the lowest ground to a temporary classification code 6 using the lasheight (README) tool. Depending on the spread of points in your data set you may want to tighten this range accordingly, for example when processing the flightlines acquired by the Velodyne Puck individually. We picked our range based on the visual experiments with “drop lines” and “rise lines” in the lasview viewer that are shown in images above.

lasheight -i Flaugergues\tiles_lowest_ground\flauge*.laz ^
          -do_not_store_in_user_data ^
          -classify_between -0.02 0.15 6 ^
          -odir Flaugergues\tiles_thick_ground -olaz ^
          -cores 4
Lowest ground points triangulated. Other points colored by flightline ID.
Thick ground points in orange. Other points in black.
Zoom on lowest ground point triangulation. Other points colored by flightline ID.
Thick ground points in orange. Other points in black.

The final ground classification is obtained by creating the “median ground” from the “thick ground”. This uses a brand-new option in the lasthin (README) tool of LAStools. The new ‘-percentile 50 10’ option selects the point that is closest to the specified percentile of 50 of all point elevations within a grid cell of a specified size given there are at least 10 points in that cell. The selected point either survives the thinning operation or gets marked with a specified classification code or flag.

lasthin -i Flaugergues\tiles_thick_ground\flauge*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 0 1 7 ^
        -step 0.1 -percentile 50 10 ^
        -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_10cm -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_10cm\%NAME%*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 0 1 7 ^
        -step 0.2 -percentile 50 10 ^
        -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_20cm -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_20cm\%NAME%*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 0 1 7 ^
        -step 0.4 -percentile 50 10 ^
        -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_40cm -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_40cm\flauge*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 0 1 7 ^
        -step 0.8 -percentile 50 10 ^
        -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_80cm -olaz ^
         -cores 4

We now compare a triangulation of the median ground points with a triangulation of the highest and the lowest points per 10 cm by 10 cm cell to demonstrate that – at least in open areas – we really have computed a median ground surface.

Triangulating median ground returns into a TIN.
Triangulating lowest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid into a TIN.
Triangulating highest returns on 10 cm by 10 cm grid into a TIN.
Comparing triangulation of median ground points to lowest returns on a 10 cm by 10 cm grid with 5 cm rise lines.
Comparing triangulation of median ground points to highest returns on a 10 cm by 10 cm grid with 5 cm drop lines.

Finally we raster the tiles with the las2dem (README) tool onto binary elevation grids in BIL format. Here we make the resolution dependent on the tile size, giving the 25 meter and 50 meter tiles the highest resolution of 10 cm and rasterize the 100 meter and 200 meter tiles at 20 cm and 40 cm respectively.

las2dem -i Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_80cm\*_25.laz ^
        -i Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_80cm\*_50.laz ^
        -keep_class 8 ^
        -step 0.1 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_dtm -obil ^
        -cores 4

las2dem -i Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_80cm\*_100.laz ^
        -keep_class 8 ^
        -step 0.2 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_dtm -obil ^
        -cores 4

las2dem -i Flaugergues\tiles_median_ground_10_80cm\*_200.laz ^
        -keep_class 8 ^
        -step 0.4 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_dtm -obil ^
        -cores 4

Because all LAStools can read BIL files via on the fly conversion from rasters to points we can visually inspect the resulting elevation rasters with the lasview (README) tool. By adding the ‘-faf’ or ‘files_are_flightlines’ argument we treat the BIL files as if they were different flightlines which allows us to assign different color to points from different files to better inspect the transitions between tiles. The ‘-points 10000000’ argument instructs lasview to load up to 10 million points into memory instead of the default 5 million.

lasview -i Flaugergues\tiles_dtm\*.bil -faf ^
        -points 10000000

Final raster tiles in BIL format of three different sizes form seamless DTM.

For visual comparison we also produce a DSM and create hillshades. Note that the workflow for DSM creation shown below produces a “highest DSM” that will always be a few centimeter above the “median DTM”. This will be noticeable only in open areas of the terrain where the DSM and the DTM should coincide and their elevation should be identical.

highest DSM
median DTM 
lasthin -i Flaugergues\tiles_denoised\flauge*.laz ^
        -keep_z_above 110 ^
        -filtered_transform ^
        -set_classification 18 ^
        -ignore_class 7 18 ^
        -step 0.1 -highest ^
        -classify_as 5 ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_highest -olaz ^
        -cores 4

las2dem -i Flaugergues\tiles_highest\*_25.laz ^
        -i Flaugergues\tiles_highest\*_50.laz ^
        -keep_class 5 ^
        -step 0.1 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_dsm -obil ^
        -cores 4

las2dem -i Flaugergues\tiles_highest\*_100.laz ^
        -keep_class 5 ^
        -step 0.2 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_dsm -obil ^
        -cores 4

las2dem -i Flaugergues\tiles_highest\*_200.laz ^
        -keep_class 5 ^
        -step 0.4 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir Flaugergues\tiles_dsm -obil ^
        -cores 4

We thank YellowScan for challenging us to process their drone LiDAR with LAStools in order to present results at their LiDAR for Drone 2017 Conference and for sharing several example data sets with us, including the one used here.