Viewing the Forest in 3D: How Spherical Stereo Videos Enable Low-Cost Reconstruction of Forest Plots
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Date
2024
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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Abstract
Understanding and monitoring the surrounding environment increasingly rely on its 3D representations. However, the often high costs of 3D data equipment limit its wide usage, and low-cost solutions are in demand. Here, we propose a novel approach based on spherical stereo videos captured with a known baseline (distance between the cameras) for a low-cost and efficient 3D point cloud reconstruction. In a forest environment, we evaluated 1) the influence of baseline length on point cloud quality and 2) the suitability of the generated point clouds for extracting primary forest attributes (tree position and diameter). Our results show that the proposed approach allows for feasible 3D reconstruction of complex forest plots. The highest point cloud quality was achieved with a baseline of 60 cm. This setup enabled the correct detection of more than 65% of the trees within the forest plots, producing an average tree position error between 30 and 50 cm and clearly outperforming other setups. A Multiscale Model-to-Model Cloud (M3C2) analysis showed signed distances between the generated point cloud and the reference data with zero mean and 1 m standard deviation. We demonstrate that the proposed approach can be a valuable low-cost solution for 3D point cloud reconstruction, facilitating forest assessment and monitoring.
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published
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Volume
17
Pages / Article No.
17612 - 17625
Publisher
IEEE
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Software
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Subject
3D reconstruction; low-cost; point cloud; stereo video; spherical camera; forest; tree diameter; tree position
Organisational unit
09723 - Griess, Verena C. / Griess, Verena C.