HxMap: Simultaneous processing of airborne imagery & LiDAR data

Leica Geosystems airborne sensors, along with high quality and performance, all share another common aspect – they use HxMap, the unified high-performance multi-sensor workflow platform, to process the vast amounts of data captured. HxMap offers rapid data processing updates over large areas in the shortest possible time.

为了更深入地研究HXMAP数据处理的历史和好处，产品经理Felix Rohrbach解释了所有软件平台。

How does HxMap work?
Leica HxMap offers individual software modules based on customer’s processing needs. The modules intuitively guide you along a common processing workflow for LiDAR and image data. Data download, raw QC and data ingest are identical for LiDAR and imagery data sets throughout the pre-processing steps. Sensor-specific modules include further steps like aerial triangulation, radiometric adjustments and LiDAR point cloud registration. The modular approach of HxMap guides the users through the workflow step-by-step with only small variations between the processing of LiDAR and imagery data.

The final step of the HxMap workflow – product generation – allows to output a large number of products by the push of a button, such as:

• 引用的图像

• Orthophotos

• colorized and uncolourised point clouds

• textured and untextured 3D city models

These features lay the foundation for large oblique projects, country-wide orthophoto or LiDAR mapping and small engineering projects alike, and offer full scalability independently from the sensor model used to capture the data.

HXMAP是几种Leica Geosystems解决方案的关键要素。您能解释这些解决方案吗？
我们将机载现实捕获视为数据采集和数据处理的亚博ag真人规律组合。在Leica Geosystems，我们创建了空降现实捕获解决方案，将HXMAP与适当的机载亚博ag真人规律传感器捆绑在一起，用于特定应用。这使我们的用户能够独立于Leica GeoSystems空降传感器用于项目的最高效率和完全可扩展性。

RealCity是结合Leica CityMapper or CityMapper-2 hybrid oblique imaging and LiDAR sensor with HxMap. This solution is ideal for 3D city modelling applications and produces 2D imagery products, LiDAR point clouds as well as 3D city models.

RealWorld是结合Leica DMC III带有HXMAP的框架相机传感器。该配对最适合2D中的大型面积成像项目。

RealTerrain将HXMAP与任何一个结合在一起Leica Terrainmapperand Leica ALS80 linear-mode LiDAR sensors orLeica SPL100single photon LiDAR sensor. This combination is designed for regional and national LiDAR mapping projects.

Within HxMap, there are several modules for specific applications. Can you expand on these modules?
HxMap可以通过添加个性化modules to fit any user’s unique needs.

HxMap Provider Moduleoffers the user the essential functionality to load collected data, run ingest to pre-process, apply geo-referencing and then visualize the result to perform quality control. The provider module also includes the workflow manager, our main application that guides the user through the various processing steps. Data can either be loaded onto a map view or into a specific viewer module for further inspection.

HXMAP核心成像模块提供处理图像数据集必不可少的功能。强大的自动点匹配会生成所需的划分点，跨观看方向收集的图像之间。使用空中三角剖分，将使用测量值来优化图像方向。HXMAP为倾斜数据集提供了多种三角算法和分层过程模式，即使是客户看到的最大映射项目，也可以处理。HXMAP三角剖分还允许用户直接将任何未对准角度应用于相机校准。

HXMAP核心LIDAR模块完成功能集，具有LIDAR数据处理所需的所有功能。一个简单的一键式LIDAR校准计算对传感器参数的调整，并输出更新的项目校准以进行进一步处理。线到线的注册进一步提高了整个项目的匹配质量。在任何时候，用户可以运行内置的QA-Tool来评估单行或完整项目的数据质量。

HxMap 3D Modeller Module补充the previous modules. The 3D modelling algorithm takes imagery and LiDAR data either as standalone datasets or together as hybrid data and extracts 3D building geometries. HxMap allows the user to provide known building footprints to generate buildings or directly run building generation without any prior information. Additional information of provided data sets, like point classes or vegetation indices calculated from imagery data, are used to further improve the quality of the extracted buildings.

How does HxMap benefit the user?
HXMAP是一个快速，直观，高效的后处理平台，使用户能够在一个单个公共接口中生产所有已知的数据产品。亚搏彩票手机版下载这转化为

• Full scalability
  With HxMap being a unified processing workflow for airborne topographic LiDAR and imaging data, users can use the same processing infrastructure independently from the project deliverables, offering complete flexibility to scale the processing infrastructure when needed and produce all products. The modular functionality offers our customers the option to keep the initial investment low and scale up the infrastructure if needed, enabling the consistent use of their full processing capacity.

• Time and cost savings
  You and your staff only need to be proficient in one simple user interface to produce any known airborne data product, and your production workforce can process imagery and LiDAR data without additional training. Don’t waste time moving your data between software packages but benefit from one end-to-end workflow.

• Unprecedented data throughput
  Take advantage of the industry’s fastest data throughput and process any amount of data more efficiently. HxMap has been tried and tested to process SPL100 data, which captures 6 million points per second and therefore is known to consist of extremely large data sets.

What challenges are users facing in today’s field that HxMap helps them overcome?
Looking back to when I started, it was very common to see single workstation processing environments. The photogrammetry or LiDAR expert would sit in front of their machine that had all the data and software required to run all processing steps locally. Once launched it turned into a waiting game until the process was completed and the next step could be launched.

Challenge 1: Amount of data

Nowadays, any modern sensor will produce mega amounts of data. A rough rule-of-thumb for the original CityMapper was that 1 hour of data collection would produce 3TB of raw data. Even though the amount of data has multiplied throughout the past years, the delivery deadlines of our customers and their end customers have not changed. Despite the increased size, the data needs to be checked, processed and delivered in an acceptable time frame. Thanks to HxMap’s distributed processing capability, this is now possible.

Challenge 2: Data processing silos

Moving to distributed processing can also introduce new pain points. If you operate both imagery and LiDAR sensors, you may face the reality that both workflows require upscaling. Setting up siloed processing environments sounds easy enough, but lead to your resources not be used to their full capacity as soon as data input is halted (e.g. due to bad weather). Thanks to HxMap’s hybrid workflow, distributed processing is setup in one combined environment which can be configured to consume any available capacity independent of data type.

Challenge 3: Human workforce

The last challenge is refers to any of the workflow steps that cannot be handled by our processing cluster. Many of the quality control steps are still executed by humans as their expertise is required to assess if data matches the required quality. The first problem here is that with growing volume of data, more staff is needed to ensure throughput. Finding expert staff though is difficult and costly. HxMap addresses this by assisting the user to evaluate the quality of collected data through graphical representations and customer reports of quality indices that allow even the average user to assess data sets. The processing expert can become the team leader, who is only consulted in this critical edge cases.

当今市场上的重点是自动化。HXMAP如何支持下一个技术前沿？
对自动化的重点是上述挑战的逻辑结果。将以前的手动任务变成自动处理步骤，不仅可以在单个工作站上运行它，还可以将其直接发送到我们的处理集群中。除了节省时间，金钱和培训的精力外，这现在允许根据当前的工作量和交付时间表扩展生产步骤。HXMAP已经为处理任务（例如传感器校准，自动点匹配，线路对线注册，建筑物生成等）提供了这些好处。所有这些都是以前乏味的手动任务，现在可以在HXMAP工作流程中自动运行。

Where will HxMap take the industry in the future?
每个项目的像素数量和积分数量增加的最新趋势将继续。这不仅是由于以更高的分辨率进行的项目造成的，还归因于内容作为服务（CAAS）倡议（例如HXGN内容计划）的增长。虽然无人机开始涵盖对调查级的小规模数据获取的需求，但空降调查正在朝着区域，国家甚至大陆收购方向发展。

Finding innovating ways to automate processing steps without compromising data quality will be an essential task for turning manual work into scalable and distributable jobs. The use of hybrid data – like collected by the CityMapper sensors – looks promising to improve data quality by merging information from multiple sensor types. Our city modelling engine is a good example where the advantages of both LiDAR and imagery technology is used to efficiently create high-quality 3D products.

Besides making our current workflow more efficient, we are also looking into expanding the range of products our customer will be able to generate within HxMap. Hexagon-wide initiatives as well as acquisitions give us access to new technologies, and it is our task to turn these into innovative products for our customers.

Felix Rohrbach is the product manager for HxMap at Leica Geosystems.
在空中地图行业拥有十年的经验，他负责开发和采用摄影测量和激光雷达处理软件。