SURFACE CLUSTERING FROM AIRBORNE LASER SCANNING DATA

This paper presents an algorithm for the extraction of surface clusters from airborne laser data. Surface structure analysis is fundamental to almost any application involving LIDAR data, yet most algorithms focus only on identifying planar segments. The proposed algorithm is more general insofar as it aims at extracting surface segments that exhibit an homogeneous behavior, without restriction to one specific pattern. The algorithm adopts a data clustering methodology for this purpose, which offers a very general and flexible way to identify homogeneous patterns in the data.