Adapt Lidar Tools is a GPL-Licensed set of C++11 Tools for Processing Full-Waveform Lidar Data

Developed by a team of students

Outline:

• Introduction
• Installation
  • Installation On Boise State's R2 Cluster
  • Installation On a Normal Machine
  • Installation With Docker
• Implemented Products
  • Amplitude
  • Elevation
  • Width
  • Rise Time
  • Backscatter Coefficient
  • Arguments
  • Examples
• Product Definitions
  • AR
  • AE
  • Full Width Half Maximum (fwhm)
  • Elevation
  • Peaks
  • Backscatter Coefficient
  • Rise Time
  • Total Energy
• Student Participants

Introduction

The PulseWaves format is a new, open, vendor-neutral, LGPL-licensed and LAS-compatible data exchange format that is aimed at storing the entire digitized waveform instead of discrete returns(like the LAS format) in a fully geo-referenced manner. The PulseWaves format consists of two binary files: pulse files(.pls) that describe the emitted laser pulses via a georeferenced origin and target point and waves files(.wvs) that contain the actual samples of the outgoing and returning waveform shapes for the digitized sections of the emitted and received waveforms.

This project aims at developing full waveform LiDAR processing tools based on the PulseWaves data exchange format

Installation

Installation on Boise State's R2 cluster

• Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/BoiseState-AdaptLab/adapt-lidar-tools.git
• After cloning the directory,
  • Load the following modules:
  • module load gsl/gcc/2.4
  • module load gdal/intel/2.2.2 this should automatically load other modules that are required
• Click for Continuation

Installation on a Local Machine

Requirements:

• g++ (Must Support C++11)
• GSL 2.4 or newer
• GDAL 2.2.2 or newer

Directions:

• Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/BoiseState-AdaptLab/adapt-lidar-tools.git
• Click for Continuation

Installation Continuation: (Only do this after following your appropiate installation instructions)

• Change directory into the adapt-lidar-tools repository.
• Run the install script ./install.sh to automatically download, update & build the dependencies, and make the executables.
  • For R2 users, if you had errors during the installation process you most likely have a module loaded that is causing a conflict. We recommend you remove all modules module purge and load only the ones required to make the executables.
• If the install script ran successfully, you can find the executables in either your choice of directory if you so chose during installation, or the bin/ folder of the adapt-lidar-tools directory.

Note: After running the install script to make sure the dependencies are built, you can at any time regenerate the executables by running make geotiff-driver or make pls-info. To cleanup and remove all executables and object files , run make clean.

The waveform samples of the pulses that are reported in the Pulse Records are stored in a separate Waves file that must be in the same directory and have the same base name as the .pls file, but have the ending .wvs.

Implemented Products

These are the properties the program can analyze currently. For each property of interest, a comma separated list of product numbers specifies the desired output.

Amplitude

• Short flag -a
• Long flag --amplitude

Elevation

• Short flag -e
• Long flag --elevation

Width

• Short flag -w
• Long flag --width

Rise Time

• Short flag -r
• Long flag --risetime

Backscatter Coefficient

• Short flag -b
• Long flag --backscatter

Arguments

Combine the property type flag above with one or more product types below to generate products

Sorted by Product Number

Examples

//generate max first elevation, min first elevation, mean first elevation
bin/geotiff-driver -f etc/test-file-1.pls -e 1,2,3

//generate std.dev first amplitude, min last amplitude, skew all amplitude
bin/geotiff-driver -f etc/test-file-1.pls -a 4,8,17

//generate max all width, skew last width, min all width
bin/geotiff-driver -f etc/test-file-1.pls -w 13,11,14

//combine the three above commands into a single run for efficiency
bin/geotiff-driver -f etc/test-file-1.pls -w 13,11,14 -a 4,8,17 -e 1,2,3

Product Definitions

AR

raw amplitude data

AE

Estimated amplitude using Gaussian fitting

Full Width Half Maximum (fwhm)

Estimated pulse width

Elevation

Height on Z axis(Elevation from mean sea level (MSL))

Peaks

Number of peaks

Backscatter Coefficient

The backscatter coefficient compares the emitted pulse to the returning pulse within a plane normal to the path of the emitted pulse centered at the location of the peak of the returning pulse.

Rise time

Leading edge (Time between the activation point and maximum amplitude at the rising edge of each pulse)

Total Energy

Total energy from the estimated wave (summation of all amplitudes from wave triggering location to the wave end). Wave triggering location is found by the location that has amplitude value of max amplitude * 1/e(1).

Student Participants (alphabetical)

• Nicholas Chapa
• Floriana Ciaglia
• Brandon Echols
• Jason Egbert
• Spencer Fleming
• Ahmad Hojatimalekshah
• Nayani Ilangakoon
• Ariel Marvasti
• Aaron Orenstein
• Nicholas Prussen
• Ahmad Rezaii
• Ravi Shankar
• Jared White