Sensor trajectory estimation by triangulating lidar returns

Abstract

The paper describes how to recover the sensor trajectory for an aerial lidar collect using the data for multiple-return lidar pulses. This work extends the work of Gatziolis and McGaughey (2019) by performing a least-squares fit for multiple pulses simultaneously with a spline fit for the sensor trajectory. The method can be naturally extended to incorporate the scan angle of the lidar returns following Hartzell (2020). This allows the pitch and the yaw of the sensor to be estimated in addition to its position.