Abstract
- Rock detachment events along roadways pose public safety concerns but can be predicted and safely handled using geological measurements of discontinuities. With modern sensing technology, these measurements can be taken on 3D point clouds and 2D optical images that provide a high level of structural accuracy and visual detail. Doing so allows engineers to obtain needed data with relative ease while eliminating the biases and hazards inherent in taking manual measurements. This letter presents an approach for fusing 2D and 3D data in natural and unstructured scenes. This includes a novel method for visualizing imagery obtained with very different sensors to maximize their visual similarity making registration a more tangible task. To show the effectiveness of our registration methodology, we evaluate measurements taken manually and digitally on rock facet and cut discontinuity orientations in Rolla, Missouri. Our method is able to align 2D and 3D data with an accuracy of under 2 cm. The median difference between measurements manually obtained by a geological engineer and those obtained with our proposed software is 3.65 degrees.