Significant study of scale factor in phase-based terrestrial laser scanner datum transformation

Abstract

Rapid, direct and dense three-dimensional (3D) data acquisitions have become compulsory requirement for most applications that demand complete 3D information. Though, it is impossible to obtain data that cover the whole surface of the object from single sensor position. In terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) measurement, this multi positions issue was resolved using similarity transformation. However, only six (6) parameters were employed while scale factor was neglected. Since TLS measurement were utilised in many applications especially that demand high accuracy data, thus, further study is necessity to ensure the significant of neglecting scale factor in TLS datum transformation. Utilising robust experiment which involves with multi network configurations and multi distances, all seven (7) parameters were computed and scale factors were extracted for the further assessment. Significant analysis was performed by comparing the ideal value of scale factor (i.e. 1) and values obtained from the experiments. Results obtained for all configurations have accepted null hypothesis which indicates that scale factor is not significant in phase-based scanner datum transformation.