Point cloud data alignment method in plant maintenance site

Abstract

The contractor (including the planner) of a plant maintenance site has to grasp the latest on-site situation before planning maintenance work. This information is necessary to create a draft operational plan and various drawings. To enable this understanding, measurements are conducted using local or convex viewing equipment. In addition, drawings are revised based on the measurement results. As 3D equipment such as total station (TS) or terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) has become more affordable, the use of metering equipment can be considered. A plant maintenance site includes many reference points (e.g., piping and piping support materials, and electric wire cables). Therefore, the TLS cannot be used at all locations. This results in blind spots in the measurement process. In that case, the TLS is moved to another on-site location. Thus, because it may be difficult to identify TLS settings in some cases, the introduction of different measurement procedures is important. Digital photogrammetry with Structure from Motion (SfM) is also expected to be introduced along with TLS. In such cases, it is necessary to use an effective alignment method with point cloud data relevant to the plant maintenance site. This paper presents a new alignment method, which considers the circumstances to a plant maintenance site.