A Model-Driven Approach for 3D Modeling of Pylon from Airborne LiDAR Data

Abstract

Reconstructing three-dimensional model of the pylon from LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) point clouds automatically is one of the key techniques for facilities management GIS system of high-voltage nationwide transmission smart grid. This paper presents a model-driven three-dimensional pylon modeling (MD3DM) method using airborne LiDAR data. We start with constructing a parametric model of pylon, based on its actual structure and the characteristics of point clouds data. In this model, a pylon is divided into three parts: pylon legs, pylon body and pylon head. The modeling approach mainly consists of four steps. Firstly, point clouds of individual pylon are detected and segmented from massive high-voltage transmission corridor point clouds automatically. Secondly, an individual pylon is divided into three relatively simple parts in order to reconstruct different parts with different strategies. Its position and direction are extracted by contour analysis of the pylon body in this stage. Thirdly, the geometric features of the pylon head are extracted, from which the head type is derived with a SVM (Support Vector Machine) classifier. After that, the head is constructed by seeking corresponding model from pre-build model library. Finally, the body is modeled by fitting the point cloud to planes. Experiment results on several point clouds data sets from China Southern high-voltage nationwide transmission grid from Yunnan Province to Guangdong Province show that the proposed approach can achieve the goal of automatic three-dimensional modeling of the pylon effectively.

Keywords

• airborne LiDAR
• model-driven three-dimensional modeling
• pylon modeling
• smart grid