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ABSTRACT
With the rapid development of reality capture methods, such as laser scanning and oblique photogrammetry, point cloud data have become the third most important data source, after vector maps and imagery. Point cloud data also play an increasingly important role in scientific research and engineering in the fields of Earth science, spatial cognition, and smart cities. However, how to acquire high-quality three-dimensional (3D) geospatial information from point clouds has become a scientific frontier, for which there is an urgent demand in the fields of surveying and mapping, as well as geoscience applications. To address the challenges mentioned above, point cloud intelligence came into being. This paper summarizes the state-of-the-art of point cloud intelligence, with regard to acquisition equipment, intelligent processing, scientific research, and engineering applications. For this purpose, we refer to a recent project on the hybrid georeferencing of images and LiDAR data for high-quality point cloud collection, as well as a current benchmark for the semantic segmentation of high-resolution 3D point clouds. These projects were conducted at the Institute for Photogrammetry, the University of Stuttgart, which was initially headed by the late Prof. Ackermann. Finally, the development prospects of point cloud intelligence are summarized.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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The manuscript does not mention any specific data.
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Bisheng Yang
Bisheng Yang received the B.S. degree in engineering survey, the M.S. degree, and the Ph.D. degree in photogrammetry and remote sensing from Wuhan University, China, in 1996, 1999, and 2002, respectively. From 2002 to 2006, he held a post-doctoral position at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Since 2007, he has been a Professor with the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS), Wuhan University, where he is currently the vice-director of LIESMARS. His main research interests comprise 3-D geographic information systems, urban modeling, and digital city. He was a Guest Editor of the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and Computers \& Geosciences. His main research interests comprise 3-D geographic information systems, urban modeling, and digital city.
Nobert Haala
Norbert Haala is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Photogrammetry, the University of Stuttgart, where he is responsible for lectures in the field of photogrammetric image processing. His research interests include virtual city models and imagebased 3-D reconstruction.
Zhen Dong
Zhen Dong is a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS), Wuhan University. He received his B.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry from the Wuhan University in 2011 and 2018. His research interests lie in the field of 3D Computer Vision, particularly including 3D reconstruction, scene understanding, point cloud processing as well as their applications in intelligent transportation system, digital twin cities, urban sustainable development and robotics.