Evaluation of Geometric Error Sources for Terrestrial Laser Scanner

As 3D geospatial information is demanded, terrestrial laser scanners which can obtain 3D model of objects have been applied in various fields such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), structural analysis, and disaster management. To acquire precise data, performance evaluation of a terrestrial laser scanner must be conducted. While existing 3D surveying equipment like a total station has a standard method for performance evaluation, a terrestrial laser scanner evaluation technique for users is not established. This paper categorizes and analyzes error sources which generally occur in terrestrial laser scanning. In addition to the prior researches about categorizing error sources of terrestrial Laser scanning, this paper evaluates the error sources by the actual field tests for the smooth in-situ applications.The error factors in terrestrial laser scanning are categorized into interior error caused by mechanical errors in a terrestrial laser scanner and exterior errors affected by scanning geometry and target property. Each error sources were evaluated by simulation and actual experiments. The 3D coordinates of observed target can be distortedby the biases in distance and rotation measurement in scanning system. In particular, the exterior factors caused significant geometric errors in observed point cloud. The noise points can be generated by steep incidence angle, mixed-pixel and crosstalk. In using terrestrial laser scanner, elaborate scanning plan and proper post processing are required to obtain valid and accurate 3D spatial information.