Scan Alignment and 3-D Surface Modeling with a Helicopter Platform

Sebastian Thrun, Mark Diel, Dirk Haehnel

This paper describes initial results for a laser-based aerial mapping system. Our approach applies a real-time laser scan matching algorithm to 2-D range data acquired by a remotely controlled helicopter. Results obtain for urban and natural terrain exhibit an unprecedented level of spatial detail in the resulting 3-D maps.

This paper won the best conference paper award at the 2003 International Conference on Field and Service Robotics (Japan, July 2003)

The full paper is available in gzipped Postscript and PDF

@INPROCEEDINGS{Thrun03c,
  AUTHOR	= {Thrun, S. and Diel, Mark and H\"{a}hnel, D.},
  TITLE		= {Scan Alignment and 3D Surface Modeling with a Helicopter Platform},
  YEAR		= {2003},
  BOOKTITLE	= {Proceedings of the International Conference on Field and Service Robotics},
  ADDRESS	= {Lake Yamanaka, Japan}
}