Revisiting a crime scene is a vital part of investigating a crime. When physically visiting a crime scene there is however always a risk of contaminating the scene, and when working on a cold case, chances are that the physical crime has been altered. This thesis aims to explore what tools a criminal investigator would need to investigate a crime in a virtual environment and if a virtual reconstruction of a crime scene can be used to aid investigators when solving crimes. To explore these questions, an application has been developed in Unreal Engine that uses virtual reality (VR) to investigate a scene, reconstructed from data that has been obtained through laser scanning. The result is an application where the user is located in the court of Stockholm city, which was scanned with a laser scanner by NFC in conjunction with the terror attack on Drottninggatan in April 2017. The user can choose between a set of tools, e.g. a measuring tool and to place certain objects in the scene, in order to draw conclusions of what has happened. User tests with criminal investigators show that this type of application might be of use in some way for the Swedish police. It is however not clear how or when this would be possible which can be expected since this is a new type of application that has not been used by the police before.

Nos últimos anos a utilização de pontos como primitiva gráfica básica vem mostrandose uma poderosa e versátil ferramenta para a computação gráfica. Considerável esforço de pesquisa vem sendo dedicado para encontrar formas eficientes de aquisição, representação, processamento, renderização e animação para conjuntos de pontos. As representações baseadas em pontos têm-se destacado como uma estratégia eficiente em computação desde que se tornou comum extrair modelos geométricos a partir de Scanners 3D, os quais geram grandes quantidades de pontos que aproximam a geometria do objeto. Este trabalho apresenta um conjunto de métodos para tratar a visibilidade aproximada para nuvens de pontos sem informação de conectividade e topologia. Primeiramente é proposto uma abordagem baseada em clusters para acelerar o operador de remoção de pontos proposto por Katz et al. A principal motivação para esta otimização é a possibilidade de conseguir um equilíbrio entre a velocidade e a qualidade do resultado. Também é apresentado uma técnica de renderização baseada em pontos acelerada por hardware chamada Surface Splatting. Esta abordagem utiliza mapeamento de textura com alpha blending para aproximar um filtro de reamostragem Elliptical Weighted Average no espaço de objeto. Juntamente com o Geometry Shader das modernas placas gráficas, produz de forma eficiente imagens de alta qualidade de superfícies amostradas por surfels. Por último é proposto um novo operador de remoção de pontos ocultos acelerado por hardware baseados na técnica de splatting juntamente com um operador morfológico de erosão modificado para reduzir o efeito de silhuetas no resultado final do operador. A motivação para a criação deste novo operador é a baixa eficiência demonstrada pelos métodos existentes para a utilização em aplicações em tempo real onde as nuvens de pontos são muito densas. Todas as técnicas apresentadas neste trabalho podem ser utilizadas em visualização científica com taxas interativas, em particular na visualização direta de geometria baseada em pontos. / In recent years the use of points as a fundamental graphics primitive has proved to be a powerful and versatile tool for computer graphics. Considerable research has been devoted to the efficient representation, modeling, processing, rendering and animation of point-sampled geometry. The point-based representation has gained increasing attention in computer graphics because 3D scanning systems easily extract large information from real-world objects. On the other hand, point sets are more flexible when compared to triangle meshes, because they are not required to maintain consistent topological information. This work presents a set of tools to determine the visibility and also to render a point-based geometry efficiently. Firstly, a cluster-based approach is proposed to speed up the hidden point removal operator proposed by Katz et al. The main idea of this study is to trade-off speed and quality in dynamic scenes of moving or deforming point clouds. After that, a hardware based point rendering technique called Surface Splatting is introduced. This approach uses the texture mapping with alpha blending and the Geometry Shader to approximate the Elliptical Weighted Average filter in object space. This efficient technique produces high quality images as surfel-based geometry. Finally, a new hidden point removal operator is presented. This operator, based on the splatting technique and also hardware accelerated, applies a morphological erosion operation in the depth buffer to reduce the silhouette effect in the final image. The motivation to develop a new operator is the low efficiency demonstrated by existing hidden point removal methods in real time applications, where the point cloud is very dense. All the techniques introduced in this work can be used in scientific visualization with interactive frame rates, particularly when visualizing point-based geometry sets.

Nos últimos anos a utilização de pontos como primitiva gráfica básica vem mostrandose uma poderosa e versátil ferramenta para a computação gráfica. Considerável esforço de pesquisa vem sendo dedicado para encontrar formas eficientes de aquisição, representação, processamento, renderização e animação para conjuntos de pontos. As representações baseadas em pontos têm-se destacado como uma estratégia eficiente em computação desde que se tornou comum extrair modelos geométricos a partir de Scanners 3D, os quais geram grandes quantidades de pontos que aproximam a geometria do objeto. Este trabalho apresenta um conjunto de métodos para tratar a visibilidade aproximada para nuvens de pontos sem informação de conectividade e topologia. Primeiramente é proposto uma abordagem baseada em clusters para acelerar o operador de remoção de pontos proposto por Katz et al. A principal motivação para esta otimização é a possibilidade de conseguir um equilíbrio entre a velocidade e a qualidade do resultado. Também é apresentado uma técnica de renderização baseada em pontos acelerada por hardware chamada Surface Splatting. Esta abordagem utiliza mapeamento de textura com alpha blending para aproximar um filtro de reamostragem Elliptical Weighted Average no espaço de objeto. Juntamente com o Geometry Shader das modernas placas gráficas, produz de forma eficiente imagens de alta qualidade de superfícies amostradas por surfels. Por último é proposto um novo operador de remoção de pontos ocultos acelerado por hardware baseados na técnica de splatting juntamente com um operador morfológico de erosão modificado para reduzir o efeito de silhuetas no resultado final do operador. A motivação para a criação deste novo operador é a baixa eficiência demonstrada pelos métodos existentes para a utilização em aplicações em tempo real onde as nuvens de pontos são muito densas. Todas as técnicas apresentadas neste trabalho podem ser utilizadas em visualização científica com taxas interativas, em particular na visualização direta de geometria baseada em pontos. / In recent years the use of points as a fundamental graphics primitive has proved to be a powerful and versatile tool for computer graphics. Considerable research has been devoted to the efficient representation, modeling, processing, rendering and animation of point-sampled geometry. The point-based representation has gained increasing attention in computer graphics because 3D scanning systems easily extract large information from real-world objects. On the other hand, point sets are more flexible when compared to triangle meshes, because they are not required to maintain consistent topological information. This work presents a set of tools to determine the visibility and also to render a point-based geometry efficiently. Firstly, a cluster-based approach is proposed to speed up the hidden point removal operator proposed by Katz et al. The main idea of this study is to trade-off speed and quality in dynamic scenes of moving or deforming point clouds. After that, a hardware based point rendering technique called Surface Splatting is introduced. This approach uses the texture mapping with alpha blending and the Geometry Shader to approximate the Elliptical Weighted Average filter in object space. This efficient technique produces high quality images as surfel-based geometry. Finally, a new hidden point removal operator is presented. This operator, based on the splatting technique and also hardware accelerated, applies a morphological erosion operation in the depth buffer to reduce the silhouette effect in the final image. The motivation to develop a new operator is the low efficiency demonstrated by existing hidden point removal methods in real time applications, where the point cloud is very dense. All the techniques introduced in this work can be used in scientific visualization with interactive frame rates, particularly when visualizing point-based geometry sets.

Submitted by Rafaela Soares Niemann (rafaelaniemann@gmail.com) on 2018-01-30T19:22:21Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_rafaela_soares_niemann.pdf: 20839099 bytes, checksum: 3e520cbdddb994f623e86eb596a2eeae (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Paula Santulo Custódio de Medeiros null (asantulo@rc.unesp.br) on 2018-01-31T11:10:28Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 niemann_rs_me_rcla.pdf: 19917697 bytes, checksum: f24581bad9ffd4cf3c683c92a81563b2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-01-31T11:10:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 niemann_rs_me_rcla.pdf: 19917697 bytes, checksum: f24581bad9ffd4cf3c683c92a81563b2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-12-07 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Os modelos digitais de elevação são importantes para a geração de informações sobre variáveis ambientais correlacionadas à topografia, principalmente como subsídio à análises geomorfométricas. O sensoriamento remoto pode contribuir com a geração de modelos digitais de elevação, principalmente através do uso de sensores de alta resolução espacial e tecnologias avançadas. Os VANTs – Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados – tem sido cada vez mais explorados no âmbito da cartografia e topografia, com atuação cada vez mais importante dentro da ciência, devido à capacidade de transportarem diferentes sensores e ao seu baixo custo de operação. Câmeras fotográficas simples acopladas aos VANTs podem ser combinadas com tecnologias de visão computacional, trazendo novas oportunidades para explorar a geração de modelos digitais de elevação. Algoritmos de visão computacional, como o Structure-from-Motion (SfM), permitem a extração de pontos tridimensionais a partir de imagens sobrepostas obtidas por VANTs. Esses pontos compõem nuvens de pontos capazes de subsidiar a geração de modelos digitais de superfície (MDS), quando combinadas com algoritmos de interpolação de dados. Contudo, os modelos gerados desta maneira nos retornam informações relacionadas à superfície dos objetos presentes sobre o terreno, incluindo por exemplo construções e dosséis vegetais. A filtragem e classificação das nuvens de pontos se faz assim necessária para geração de modelos digitais que descrevam mais fielmente a superfície do terreno, sem estes elementos. Nesta dissertação, avaliamos dois métodos para a filtragem e interpolação de modelos digitais de terreno (MDT) a partir de nuvens de pontos geradas por imageamento ótico baseado em VANTs. A área de estudo escolhida foi a região da Serra do Cipó-MG, caracterizada por relevo acidentado e cobertura vegetal variada. O primeiro método consistiu na filtragem (classificação) direta da nuvem de pontos, e o segundo na filtragem do modelo digital de superfície em formato raster, ambos seguidos de interpolação. Os métodos avaliados se mostraram adequados, com coeficientes de determinação da ordem de R² = 0,98 em relação a dados de referência tomados por DGPS. A filtragem foi bastante eficiente para áreas íngremes e com vegetação baixa, e menos eficiente em áreas de vegetação arbórea densa. Os métodos avaliados no presente trabalho contribuirão para a melhoria da geração de MDTs com base na tecnologia emergente oferecida pelos VANTs, que poderão ser utilizados como subsídios a estudos ambientais diversos. / Digital elevation models are important for producing information on different environmental variables correlated to topography, especially for geomorphometric analyses. Remote sensing can contribute to the generation of digital elevation models, mainly through high spatial resolution sensors and advanced technologies. UAVs - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - have been increasingly employed in the fields of cartography and topography, and have had an increasingly prominent role in science, as they can carry different sensors and have low-cost operation. Simple cameras attached to UAVs can be combined with computer vision technologies, bringing new opportunities to explore the production of digital elevation models. Computer vision algorithms such as Structure-from-Motion (SfM) allow the extraction of threedimensional points from superimposed images obtained by UAVs. These points make up points clouds capable of supporting the production of digital surface models (DSM) when combined with interpolation algorithms. However, models generated this way give us information related to the surface of objects present on the ground, including buildings and plant canopies. Point cloud filtering and classification is thus necessary for producing digital models that more accurately describe the bare terrain surface. In this dissertation, we evaluated two methods for filtering and interpolating digital terrain models (DTM) from point clouds generated by UAVbased optical imaging. The chosen study area was the Serra do Cipó region (Minas Gerais, Brazil), characterized by rugged relief and heterogeneous vegetation cover. The first method consisted of direct filtering (classification) of the point cloud, and the second method was based on filtering the digital surface model in raster format, both followed by interpolation. The evaluated methods were adequate, with determination coefficients of the order of R² = 0.98 in relation to reference data taken by DGPS. Filtering was quite efficient for steep areas with low vegetation, and less efficient in areas of dense arboreal vegetation. The methods evaluated in the present work will contribute to the improvement and generation of DTMs based on the emerging technology offered by UAVs, which can be used as subsidies to diverse environmental studies.

Detecção automática de regiões planares em nuvens de pontos é um importante passo para muitas aplicações gráficas, de processamento de imagens e de visão computacional. Enquanto a disponibilidade de digitalizadores a laser e a fotografia digital tem nos permitido capturar nuvens de pontos cada vez maiores, técnicas anteriores para detecção de planos são computacionalmente caras, sendo incapazes de alcançar desempenho em tempo real para conjunto de dados contendo dezenas de milhares de pontos, mesmo quando a detecção é feita de um modo não determinístico. Apresentamos uma abordagem determinística para detecção de planos em nuvens de pontos não estruturadas que apresenta complexidade computacional O(n log n) no número de amostras de entrada. Ela é baseada em um método eficiente de votação para a transformada de Hough. Nossa estratégia agrupa conjuntos de pontos aproximadamente coplanares e deposita votos para estes conjuntos em um acumulador esférico, utilizando núcleos Gaussianos trivariados. Uma comparação com as técnicas concorrentes mostra que nossa abordagem é consideravelmente mais rápida e escala significativamente melhor que as técnicas anteriores, sendo a primeira solução prática para detecção determinística de planos em nuvens de pontos grandes e não estruturadas. / Automatic detection of planar regions in point clouds is an important step for many graphics, image processing, and computer vision applications. While laser scanners and digital photography have allowed us to capture increasingly larger datasets, previous techniques are computationally expensive, being unable to achieve real-time performance for datasets containing tens of thousands of points, even when detection is performed in a non-deterministic way. We present a deterministic technique for plane detection in unorganized point clouds whose cost is O(n log n) in the number of input samples. It is based on an efficient Hough-transform voting scheme and works by clustering approximately co-planar points and by casting votes for these clusters on a spherical accumulator using a trivariate Gaussian kernel. A comparison with competing techniques shows that our approach is considerably faster and scales significantly better than previous ones, being the first practical solution for deterministic plane detection in large unorganized point clouds.

Computer vision is a research field in which images are the main object of study. One of its category of problems is shape description. Object classification is one important example of applications using shape descriptors. Usually, these processes were performed on 2D images. With the large-scale development of new technologies and the affordable price of equipment that generates 3D images, computer vision has adapted to this new scenario, expanding the classic 2D methods to 3D. However, it is important to highlight that 2D methods are mostly dependent on the variation of illumination and color, while 3D sensors provide depth, structure/3D shape and topological information beyond color. Thus, different methods of shape descriptors and robust attributes extraction were studied, from which new attribute extraction methods have been proposed and described based on 3D data. The results obtained from well known public datasets have demonstrated their efficiency and that they compete with other state-of-the-art methods in this area: the RPHSD (a method proposed in this dissertation), achieved 85:4% of accuracy on the University of Washington RGB-D dataset, being the second best accuracy on this dataset; the COMSD (another proposed method) has achieved 82:3% of accuracy, standing at the seventh position in the rank; and the CNSD (another proposed method) at the ninth position. Also, the RPHSD and COMSD methods have relatively small processing complexity, so they achieve high accuracy with low computing time. / Visão computacional é uma área de pesquisa em que as imagens são o principal objeto de estudo. Um dos problemas abordados é o da descrição de formatos (em inglês, shapes). Classificação de objetos é um importante exemplo de aplicação que usa descritores de shapes. Classicamente, esses processos eram realizados em imagens 2D. Com o desenvolvimento em larga escala de novas tecnologias e o barateamento dos equipamentos que geram imagens 3D, a visão computacional se adaptou para este novo cenário, expandindo os métodos 2D clássicos para 3D. Entretanto, estes métodos são, majoritariamente, dependentes da variação de iluminação e de cor, enquanto os sensores 3D fornecem informações de profundidade, shape 3D e topologia, além da cor. Assim, foram estudados diferentes métodos de classificação de objetos e extração de atributos robustos, onde a partir destes são propostos e descritos novos métodos de extração de atributos a partir de dados 3D. Os resultados obtidos utilizando bases de dados 3D públicas conhecidas demonstraram a eficiência dos métodos propóstos e que os mesmos competem com outros métodos no estado-da-arte: o RPHSD (um dos métodos propostos) atingiu 85:4% de acurácia, sendo a segunda maior acurácia neste banco de dados; o COMSD (outro método proposto) atingiu 82:3% de acurácia, se posicionando na sétima posição do ranking; e o CNSD (outro método proposto) em nono lugar. Além disso, os métodos RPHSD têm uma complexidade de processamento relativamente baixa. Assim, eles atingem uma alta acurácia com um pequeno tempo de processamento.

3D-Punktwolken haben die Objektvermessung in den letzten 25 Jahren signifikant verändert. Da Einzelpunktmessungen durch flächenhafte Messungen in Form von Punktwolken bei vielen Anwendungen ersetzt wurden, spricht man auch von einem Paradigmenwechsel in der Vermessung. Ermöglicht wurde diese Änderung in der Messmethodik durch die Innovationen im Instrumentenbau und die rasanten Entwicklungen der Computertechnologie. Luftgestützte und terrestrische Laserscanner sowie handgeführte 3D-Scanner liefern heute direkt dichte Punktwolken, während dichte 3D-Punkt-wolken aus Fotos bildbasierter Aufnahmesysteme indirekt abgeleitet werden, die zur detaillierten 3D-Objektrekonstruktion zunehmend eingesetzt werden. In dieser Arbeit werden Untersuchungen vorgestellt, mit denen das geometrische Genauigkeitsverhalten verschiedener scannender Messsysteme evaluiert und geprüft wurde. Während bei den untersuchten terrestrischen Laserscannern in den Untersuchungen die Genauigkeitsangaben (1 Sigma) der technischen Spezifikationen der Systemhersteller von 3-5 mm für den 3D-Punkt und die Distanzmessung eingehalten wurden, zeigten sich dagegen bei vielen untersuchten 3D-Handscannern signifikante Abweichungen gegenüber den technischen Spezifikationen. Diese festgestellten Abweichungen deuten auf eine gewisse geometrische Instabilität des jeweiligen Messsystems hin, die entweder durch die Bauweise und/oder durch eine ungenaue Systemkalibrierung (besonders hinsichtlich der Maßstäblichkeit) verursacht werden. Daher ist davon auszugehen, dass diese handgeführten 3D-Scanner offensichtlich erst am Anfang ihrer Entwicklungsphase stehen und dass noch genügend Optimierungspotential vorhanden ist. Als flexible und effiziente Alternativen zu den scannenden Messsystemen haben sich seit ca. 10 Jahren die bildbasierten Aufnahmesysteme zunehmend im Markt etabliert. Die in dieser Arbeit vorgestellten Untersuchungen des bildbasierten Aufnahme- und Auswertungsverfahren haben gezeigt, dass diese (mit Farbattributen versehene) 3D-Punktwolken, je nach Bildmaßstab und Oberflächenmaterial des Objektes, durchaus den Genauigkeiten der Laserscanner entsprechen. Gegenüber den Ergebnissen vieler 3D-Handscanner weisen die durch bildbasierte Aufnahmeverfahren generierten Punktwolken qualitativ bessere Resultate auf. Allerdings zeigte der Creaform HandySCAN 700, der auf einem photogrammetrischen Aufnahmeprinzip beruht, als einzige Ausnahme bei der handgeführten 3D-Scannern sehr gute Ergebnisse, die mit Durchschnittswerten besser als 30 Mikrometern sogar in den Bereichen der Referenzsysteme (hier Streifenprojektionssysteme) lagen. Die entwickelten Prüfverfahren und die entsprechenden durchgeführten Untersuchungen haben sich als praxistauglich erwiesen, da man auch unter zur Hilfenahme der VDI/VDE Richtlinie 2634 ver-gleichbare Ergebnisse erzielt, die dem praxisorientierten Anwender Aussagen über die Leistungsfä-higkeit des Messsystems erlauben. Bei den im statischen Modus erfassten Scans kommen noch Fehlereinflüsse durch die Registrierung der Scans hinzu, während bei kinematisch erfassten Scans die Genauigkeiten der verschiedenen (absoluten) Positionierungssensoren auf dem Fehlerhaushalt der Punktwolke addiert werden. Eine sorgfältige Systemkalibrierung der verschiedenen im kinematischen Modus arbeitenden Positionierungs- und Aufnahmesensoren des mobilen Multi-Sensor-Systems ermöglicht eine 3D-Punktgenauigkeit von ca. 3-5 cm, die unter guten Bedingungen mit höherwertigen Sensoren ggf. noch verbessert werden kann. Mit statischen Scans kann eine höhere Genauigkeit von besser als 1 cm für den 3D-Punkt erreicht werden, jedoch sind bei größeren aufzunehmenden Flächen mobile Aufnahmesysteme wesentlich effizienter. Die Anwendung definiert daher das zum Einsatz kommende Messverfahren. 3D-Punktwolken dienen als Grundlage für die Objektrekonstruktion auf verschiedenen Wegen: a) Engineering Modelling als generalisierte CAD-Konstruktion durch geometrische Primitive und b) Mesh Modelling durch Dreiecksvermaschung der Punktwolken zur exakten Oberflächenbeschreibung. Durch die Generalisierung bei der CAD-Konstruktion können sehr schnell Abweichungen vom Sollmaß von bis zu 10 cm (und größer) entstehen, allerdings werden durch die Anpassung auf geometrische Primitive eine signifikante Datenreduktion und eine topologische Strukturierung erreicht. Untersuchungen haben jedoch auch gezeigt, dass die Anzahl der Polygone bei der Dreiecksvermaschung je nach Oberflächenbeschaffenheit des Objektes auf 25% und sogar auf 10% der Originaldatenmenge bei intelligenter Ausdünnung (z.B. krümmungsbasiert) reduziert werden kann, ohne die visuelle und geometrische Qualität des Ergebnisses zu stark zu beeinträchtigen. Je nach Objektgröße können hier Abweichungen von unter einem Millimeter (z.B. bei archäologischen Fundstücken) bis zu 5 cm im Durchschnitt bei größeren Objekten erreicht werden. Heute können Punktwolken eine wichtige Grundlage zur Konstruktion der Umgebung für viele Virtual Reality Anwendungen bilden, bei denen die geometrische Genauigkeit der modellierten Objekte im Einzelfall keine herausragende Rolle spielt. / 3D point clouds have significantly changed the surveying of objects in the last 25 years. Since in many applications, the individual point measurements were replaced through area-based measurements in form of point clouds, a paradigm shift in surveying has been fulfilled. This change in measurement methodology was made possible with the rapid developments in instrument manufacturing and computer technology. Today, airborne and terrestrial laser scanners, as well as hand-held 3D scanners directly generate dense point clouds, while dense point clouds are indirectly derived from photos of image-based recording systems used for detailed 3D object reconstruction in almost any scale. In this work, investigations into the geometric accuracy of some of these scanning systems are pre-sented to document and evaluate their performance. While terrestrial laser scanners mostly met the accuracy specifications in the investigations, 3-5 mm for 3D points and distance measurements as defined in the technical specifications of the system manufacturer, significant differences are shown, however, by many tested hand-held 3D scanners. These observed deviations indicate a certain geometric instability of the measuring system, caused either by the construction/manufacturing and/or insufficient calibration (particularly with regard to the scale). It is apparent that most of the hand-held 3D scanners are at the beginning of the technical development, which still offers potential for optimization. The image-based recording systems have been increasingly accepted by the market as flexible and efficient alternatives to laser scanning systems for about ten years. The research of image-based recording and evaluation methods presented in this work has shown that these coloured 3D point clouds correspond to the accuracy of the laser scanner depending on the image scale and surface material of the object. Compared with the results of most hand-held 3D scanners, point clouds gen-erated by image-based recording techniques exhibit superior quality. However, the Creaform HandySCAN 700, based on a photogrammetric recording principle (stereo photogrammetry), shows as the solitary exception of the hand-held 3D scanners very good results with better than 30 micrometres on average, representing accuracies even in the range of the reference systems (here structured light projection systems). The developed test procedures and the corresponding investigations have been practically proven for both terrestrial and hand-held 3D scanners, since comparable results can be obtained using the VDI/VDE guidelines 2634, which allows statements about the performance of the tested scanning system for practice-oriented users. For object scans comprised of multiple single scan acquired in static mode, errors of the scan registration have to be added, while for scans collected in the kine-matic mode the accuracies of the (absolute) position sensors will be added on the error budget of the point cloud. A careful system calibration of various positioning and recording sensors of the mobile multi-sensor system used in kinematic mode allows a 3D point accuracy of about 3-5 cm, which if necessary can be improved with higher quality sensors under good conditions. With static scans an accuracy of better than 1 cm for 3D points can be achieved surpassing the potential of mobile recording systems, which are economically much more efficient if larger areas have to be scanned. The 3D point clouds are the basis for object reconstruction in two different ways: a) engineering modelling as generalized CAD construction through geometric primitives and b) mesh modelling by triangulation of the point clouds for the exact representation of the surface. Deviations up to 10 cm (and possibly higher) from the nominal value can be created very quickly through the generalization in the CAD construction, but on the other side a significant reduction of data and a topological struc-turing can be achieved by fitting the point cloud into geometric primitives. However, investigations have shown that the number of polygons can be reduced to 25% and even 10% of the original data in the mesh triangulation using intelligent polygon decimation algorithms (e.g. curvature based) depending on the surface characteristic of the object, without having too much impact on the visual and geometric quality of the result. Depending on the object size, deviations of less than one milli-metre (e.g. for archaeological finds) up to 5 cm on average for larger objects can be achieved. In the future point clouds can form an important basis for the construction of the environment for many virtual reality applications, where the visual appearance is more important than the perfect geometric accuracy of the modelled objects.

Detecção automática de regiões planares em nuvens de pontos é um importante passo para muitas aplicações gráficas, de processamento de imagens e de visão computacional. Enquanto a disponibilidade de digitalizadores a laser e a fotografia digital tem nos permitido capturar nuvens de pontos cada vez maiores, técnicas anteriores para detecção de planos são computacionalmente caras, sendo incapazes de alcançar desempenho em tempo real para conjunto de dados contendo dezenas de milhares de pontos, mesmo quando a detecção é feita de um modo não determinístico. Apresentamos uma abordagem determinística para detecção de planos em nuvens de pontos não estruturadas que apresenta complexidade computacional O(n log n) no número de amostras de entrada. Ela é baseada em um método eficiente de votação para a transformada de Hough. Nossa estratégia agrupa conjuntos de pontos aproximadamente coplanares e deposita votos para estes conjuntos em um acumulador esférico, utilizando núcleos Gaussianos trivariados. Uma comparação com as técnicas concorrentes mostra que nossa abordagem é consideravelmente mais rápida e escala significativamente melhor que as técnicas anteriores, sendo a primeira solução prática para detecção determinística de planos em nuvens de pontos grandes e não estruturadas. / Automatic detection of planar regions in point clouds is an important step for many graphics, image processing, and computer vision applications. While laser scanners and digital photography have allowed us to capture increasingly larger datasets, previous techniques are computationally expensive, being unable to achieve real-time performance for datasets containing tens of thousands of points, even when detection is performed in a non-deterministic way. We present a deterministic technique for plane detection in unorganized point clouds whose cost is O(n log n) in the number of input samples. It is based on an efficient Hough-transform voting scheme and works by clustering approximately co-planar points and by casting votes for these clusters on a spherical accumulator using a trivariate Gaussian kernel. A comparison with competing techniques shows that our approach is considerably faster and scales significantly better than previous ones, being the first practical solution for deterministic plane detection in large unorganized point clouds.

Graph convolutional networks (GCNs) showed promising results in learning from point cloud data. Applications of GCNs include point cloud classification, point cloud segmentation, point cloud upsampling, and more. Recently, the introduction of Deep Graph Convolutional Networks (DeepGCNs) allowed GCNs to go deeper, and thus resulted in better graph learning while avoiding the vanishing gradient problem in GCNs. By adapting impactful methods from convolutional neural networks (CNNs) such as residual connections, dense connections, and dilated convolutions, DeepGCNs allowed GCNs to learn better from non-Euclidean data. In addition, deep learning methods proved very effective in the task of point cloud upsampling. Unlike traditional optimization-based methods, deep learning-based methods to point cloud upsampling does not rely on priors nor hand-crafted features to learn how to upsample point clouds. In this thesis, I discuss the impact and show the performance results of DeepGCNs in the task of point cloud part segmentation on PartNet dataset. I also illustrate the significance of using GCNs as upsampling modules in the task of point cloud upsampling by introducing two novel upsampling modules: Multi-branch GCN and Clone GCN. I show quantitatively and qualitatively the performance results of our novel and versatile upsampling modules when evaluated on a new proposed standardized dataset: PU600, which is the largest and most diverse point cloud upsampling dataset currently in the literature.

3D-Punktwolken haben die Objektvermessung in den letzten 25 Jahren signifikant verändert. Da Einzelpunktmessungen durch flächenhafte Messungen in Form von Punktwolken bei vielen Anwendungen ersetzt wurden, spricht man auch von einem Paradigmenwechsel in der Vermessung. Ermöglicht wurde diese Änderung in der Messmethodik durch die Innovationen im Instrumentenbau und die rasanten Entwicklungen der Computertechnologie. Luftgestützte und terrestrische Laserscanner sowie handgeführte 3D-Scanner liefern heute direkt dichte Punktwolken, während dichte 3D-Punkt-wolken aus Fotos bildbasierter Aufnahmesysteme indirekt abgeleitet werden, die zur detaillierten 3D-Objektrekonstruktion zunehmend eingesetzt werden. In dieser Arbeit werden Untersuchungen vorgestellt, mit denen das geometrische Genauigkeitsverhalten verschiedener scannender Messsysteme evaluiert und geprüft wurde. Während bei den untersuchten terrestrischen Laserscannern in den Untersuchungen die Genauigkeitsangaben (1 Sigma) der technischen Spezifikationen der Systemhersteller von 3-5 mm für den 3D-Punkt und die Distanzmessung eingehalten wurden, zeigten sich dagegen bei vielen untersuchten 3D-Handscannern signifikante Abweichungen gegenüber den technischen Spezifikationen. Diese festgestellten Abweichungen deuten auf eine gewisse geometrische Instabilität des jeweiligen Messsystems hin, die entweder durch die Bauweise und/oder durch eine ungenaue Systemkalibrierung (besonders hinsichtlich der Maßstäblichkeit) verursacht werden. Daher ist davon auszugehen, dass diese handgeführten 3D-Scanner offensichtlich erst am Anfang ihrer Entwicklungsphase stehen und dass noch genügend Optimierungspotential vorhanden ist. Als flexible und effiziente Alternativen zu den scannenden Messsystemen haben sich seit ca. 10 Jahren die bildbasierten Aufnahmesysteme zunehmend im Markt etabliert. Die in dieser Arbeit vorgestellten Untersuchungen des bildbasierten Aufnahme- und Auswertungsverfahren haben gezeigt, dass diese (mit Farbattributen versehene) 3D-Punktwolken, je nach Bildmaßstab und Oberflächenmaterial des Objektes, durchaus den Genauigkeiten der Laserscanner entsprechen. Gegenüber den Ergebnissen vieler 3D-Handscanner weisen die durch bildbasierte Aufnahmeverfahren generierten Punktwolken qualitativ bessere Resultate auf. Allerdings zeigte der Creaform HandySCAN 700, der auf einem photogrammetrischen Aufnahmeprinzip beruht, als einzige Ausnahme bei der handgeführten 3D-Scannern sehr gute Ergebnisse, die mit Durchschnittswerten besser als 30 Mikrometern sogar in den Bereichen der Referenzsysteme (hier Streifenprojektionssysteme) lagen. Die entwickelten Prüfverfahren und die entsprechenden durchgeführten Untersuchungen haben sich als praxistauglich erwiesen, da man auch unter zur Hilfenahme der VDI/VDE Richtlinie 2634 ver-gleichbare Ergebnisse erzielt, die dem praxisorientierten Anwender Aussagen über die Leistungsfä-higkeit des Messsystems erlauben. Bei den im statischen Modus erfassten Scans kommen noch Fehlereinflüsse durch die Registrierung der Scans hinzu, während bei kinematisch erfassten Scans die Genauigkeiten der verschiedenen (absoluten) Positionierungssensoren auf dem Fehlerhaushalt der Punktwolke addiert werden. Eine sorgfältige Systemkalibrierung der verschiedenen im kinematischen Modus arbeitenden Positionierungs- und Aufnahmesensoren des mobilen Multi-Sensor-Systems ermöglicht eine 3D-Punktgenauigkeit von ca. 3-5 cm, die unter guten Bedingungen mit höherwertigen Sensoren ggf. noch verbessert werden kann. Mit statischen Scans kann eine höhere Genauigkeit von besser als 1 cm für den 3D-Punkt erreicht werden, jedoch sind bei größeren aufzunehmenden Flächen mobile Aufnahmesysteme wesentlich effizienter. Die Anwendung definiert daher das zum Einsatz kommende Messverfahren. 3D-Punktwolken dienen als Grundlage für die Objektrekonstruktion auf verschiedenen Wegen: a) Engineering Modelling als generalisierte CAD-Konstruktion durch geometrische Primitive und b) Mesh Modelling durch Dreiecksvermaschung der Punktwolken zur exakten Oberflächenbeschreibung. Durch die Generalisierung bei der CAD-Konstruktion können sehr schnell Abweichungen vom Sollmaß von bis zu 10 cm (und größer) entstehen, allerdings werden durch die Anpassung auf geometrische Primitive eine signifikante Datenreduktion und eine topologische Strukturierung erreicht. Untersuchungen haben jedoch auch gezeigt, dass die Anzahl der Polygone bei der Dreiecksvermaschung je nach Oberflächenbeschaffenheit des Objektes auf 25% und sogar auf 10% der Originaldatenmenge bei intelligenter Ausdünnung (z.B. krümmungsbasiert) reduziert werden kann, ohne die visuelle und geometrische Qualität des Ergebnisses zu stark zu beeinträchtigen. Je nach Objektgröße können hier Abweichungen von unter einem Millimeter (z.B. bei archäologischen Fundstücken) bis zu 5 cm im Durchschnitt bei größeren Objekten erreicht werden. Heute können Punktwolken eine wichtige Grundlage zur Konstruktion der Umgebung für viele Virtual Reality Anwendungen bilden, bei denen die geometrische Genauigkeit der modellierten Objekte im Einzelfall keine herausragende Rolle spielt.:Erklärung I Kurzfassung II Inhaltsverzeichnis V 1. Einführung 1 1.1. Struktur der Arbeit 2 1.2. Punktwolken durch scannende Systeme 4 1.2.1. Technische Spezifikationen terrestrischer Laserscanner 4 1.2.2. Untersuchungen terrestrischer Laserscanner 6 1.2.3. Untersuchungen handgeführter 3D-Scanner 9 1.3. Geometrische Objektmodellierung auf Basis von Punktwolken statischer Scans 10 1.3.1. Automation in der geometrischen Objektmodellierung auf Basis von Punktwolken 11 1.3.2. Engineering Modelling – Objektrekonstruktion mithilfe geometrischer Primitive im CAD 12 1.3.3. Mesh Modelling – Objektrekonstruktion durch Dreiecksvermaschung 17 1.4. Geometrische Objektmodellierung auf Basis von Punktwolken kinematischer Scans 18 1.5. Punktwolken durch photogrammetrische Verfahren 22 2. Genauigkeitsuntersuchungen 25 2.1. Terrestrische Laserscanner 25 2.2. Handgeführte 3D-Scanner 41 3. Objektmodellierung auf Basis statischer Scans 55 3.1. Objektmodellierung durch CAD 55 3.2. Objektmodellierung durch Dreiecksvermaschung 72 4. Objektmodellierung auf Basis kinematischer Scans 85 4.1. Landbasiertes kinematisches Scanning 85 4.2. Wasserbasiertes kinematisches Scanning (Bonus-Artikel) 103 5. Alternative Verfahren für die Generierung von Punktwolken 111 6. Fazit und Ausblick 126 7. Literatur 135 / 3D point clouds have significantly changed the surveying of objects in the last 25 years. Since in many applications, the individual point measurements were replaced through area-based measurements in form of point clouds, a paradigm shift in surveying has been fulfilled. This change in measurement methodology was made possible with the rapid developments in instrument manufacturing and computer technology. Today, airborne and terrestrial laser scanners, as well as hand-held 3D scanners directly generate dense point clouds, while dense point clouds are indirectly derived from photos of image-based recording systems used for detailed 3D object reconstruction in almost any scale. In this work, investigations into the geometric accuracy of some of these scanning systems are pre-sented to document and evaluate their performance. While terrestrial laser scanners mostly met the accuracy specifications in the investigations, 3-5 mm for 3D points and distance measurements as defined in the technical specifications of the system manufacturer, significant differences are shown, however, by many tested hand-held 3D scanners. These observed deviations indicate a certain geometric instability of the measuring system, caused either by the construction/manufacturing and/or insufficient calibration (particularly with regard to the scale). It is apparent that most of the hand-held 3D scanners are at the beginning of the technical development, which still offers potential for optimization. The image-based recording systems have been increasingly accepted by the market as flexible and efficient alternatives to laser scanning systems for about ten years. The research of image-based recording and evaluation methods presented in this work has shown that these coloured 3D point clouds correspond to the accuracy of the laser scanner depending on the image scale and surface material of the object. Compared with the results of most hand-held 3D scanners, point clouds gen-erated by image-based recording techniques exhibit superior quality. However, the Creaform HandySCAN 700, based on a photogrammetric recording principle (stereo photogrammetry), shows as the solitary exception of the hand-held 3D scanners very good results with better than 30 micrometres on average, representing accuracies even in the range of the reference systems (here structured light projection systems). The developed test procedures and the corresponding investigations have been practically proven for both terrestrial and hand-held 3D scanners, since comparable results can be obtained using the VDI/VDE guidelines 2634, which allows statements about the performance of the tested scanning system for practice-oriented users. For object scans comprised of multiple single scan acquired in static mode, errors of the scan registration have to be added, while for scans collected in the kine-matic mode the accuracies of the (absolute) position sensors will be added on the error budget of the point cloud. A careful system calibration of various positioning and recording sensors of the mobile multi-sensor system used in kinematic mode allows a 3D point accuracy of about 3-5 cm, which if necessary can be improved with higher quality sensors under good conditions. With static scans an accuracy of better than 1 cm for 3D points can be achieved surpassing the potential of mobile recording systems, which are economically much more efficient if larger areas have to be scanned. The 3D point clouds are the basis for object reconstruction in two different ways: a) engineering modelling as generalized CAD construction through geometric primitives and b) mesh modelling by triangulation of the point clouds for the exact representation of the surface. Deviations up to 10 cm (and possibly higher) from the nominal value can be created very quickly through the generalization in the CAD construction, but on the other side a significant reduction of data and a topological struc-turing can be achieved by fitting the point cloud into geometric primitives. However, investigations have shown that the number of polygons can be reduced to 25% and even 10% of the original data in the mesh triangulation using intelligent polygon decimation algorithms (e.g. curvature based) depending on the surface characteristic of the object, without having too much impact on the visual and geometric quality of the result. Depending on the object size, deviations of less than one milli-metre (e.g. for archaeological finds) up to 5 cm on average for larger objects can be achieved. In the future point clouds can form an important basis for the construction of the environment for many virtual reality applications, where the visual appearance is more important than the perfect geometric accuracy of the modelled objects.:Erklärung I Kurzfassung II Inhaltsverzeichnis V 1. Einführung 1 1.1. Struktur der Arbeit 2 1.2. Punktwolken durch scannende Systeme 4 1.2.1. Technische Spezifikationen terrestrischer Laserscanner 4 1.2.2. Untersuchungen terrestrischer Laserscanner 6 1.2.3. Untersuchungen handgeführter 3D-Scanner 9 1.3. Geometrische Objektmodellierung auf Basis von Punktwolken statischer Scans 10 1.3.1. Automation in der geometrischen Objektmodellierung auf Basis von Punktwolken 11 1.3.2. Engineering Modelling – Objektrekonstruktion mithilfe geometrischer Primitive im CAD 12 1.3.3. Mesh Modelling – Objektrekonstruktion durch Dreiecksvermaschung 17 1.4. Geometrische Objektmodellierung auf Basis von Punktwolken kinematischer Scans 18 1.5. Punktwolken durch photogrammetrische Verfahren 22 2. Genauigkeitsuntersuchungen 25 2.1. Terrestrische Laserscanner 25 2.2. Handgeführte 3D-Scanner 41 3. Objektmodellierung auf Basis statischer Scans 55 3.1. Objektmodellierung durch CAD 55 3.2. Objektmodellierung durch Dreiecksvermaschung 72 4. Objektmodellierung auf Basis kinematischer Scans 85 4.1. Landbasiertes kinematisches Scanning 85 4.2. Wasserbasiertes kinematisches Scanning (Bonus-Artikel) 103 5. Alternative Verfahren für die Generierung von Punktwolken 111 6. Fazit und Ausblick 126 7. Literatur 135