THE GREAT WALL 3D DOCUMENTATION AND APPLICATION BASED ON MULTI-SOURCE DATA FUSION – A CASE STUDY OF NO.15 ENEMY TOWER OF THE NEW GUANGWU GREAT WALL

Abstract

Laser scanning or photogrammetry are useful individual techniques for digital documentation of cultural heritage sites. However, these techniques are of limited usage if cultural heritage such as the Great Wall is in harsh geographical conditions. The Great Wall is usually built on the ridge with cliffs on both sides, so it is very difficult to construct scaffolding. Therefore, the three-dimensional (3D) data obtained from the traditional 3D laser scanning is not complete. As UAV cannot enter the enemy tower, the 3D structure data inside the enemy tower with unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry is missing. In order to explore effective methods to completely collect the 3D data of cultural heritage under harsh geographical environment, this study focuses on establishing a 3D model and the associated digital documentation for the No.15 enemy tower of the New Guangwu Great Wall using a combination of terrestrial laser scanning and UAV photogrammetry. This paper proposes an integrated data collection method and reduces the layout of image control points using RTK-UAV technology, which improved work efficiency and reduced work risks as well. In this paper, the internal structure data of the Great Wall enemy tower was collected by laser scanning, the external structure data was collected by UAV photogrammetry, and data fusion was based on ICP algorithm. Finally, we obtained the complete and high quality 3D digital documentation of the Great Wall enemy tower, the data can be displayed digitally and help heritage experts complete the Great Wall's restoration. This study demonstrates the potential of integrating terrestrial laser scanning and UAV photogrammetry in 3D digital documentation of cultural heritage sites.