QUALITY ANALYSIS OF THE SPHERE PARAMETERS DETERMINATION IN TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNING

A point cloud is the result of laser scanning; in the case of terrestrial laser scanning, the point cloud is composed of points scanned from one or more positions. To register these points into one point cloud, so-called tie points are needed; these may be object points (natural targets) or selected stabilized targets (artificial targets). Spherical targets are often used as artificial targets; these must have their centre coordinates and radius determined. The centre coordinates of a sphere are calculated on the basis of scanned points on the spheres' surface. This paper presents two procedures for determining the best reflection region on the sphere to determine its parameters, and the procedure for determining the optimal distance between the scanner and sphere. The best reflection area on the sphere is determined in two ways. The first is based on minimizing the difference between sphere radii when, in the adjustment process, the radius of the sphere is treated as a known and unknown quantity. The second is based on the standard deviation of the sphere's centre coordinates at the independent determinations of sphere parameters from randomly chosen scanned points on the sphere surface. For each of the spheres, the best ratio between the laser beam footprint area and the target surface area is calculated for the optimal combination of scanning distance and region. For the best combination of scanning distance and region, we chose the one with the smallest standard deviation of the sphere centre coordinates.