Benchmarking the Performance of Mobile Laser Scanning Systems Using a Permanent Test Field

The performance of various mobile laser scanning systems was tested on an established urban test field. The test was connected to the European Spatial Data Research (EuroSDR) project. "Mobile Mapping-Road Environment Mapping Using Mobile Laser Scanning". Several commercial and research systems collected laser point cloud data on the same test field. The system comparisons focused on planimetric and elevation errors using a filtered digital elevation model, poles, and building corners as the reference objects. The results revealed the high quality of the point clouds generated by all of the tested systems under good GNSS conditions. With all professional systems properly calibrated, the elevation accuracy was better than 3.5 cm up to a range of 35 m. The best system achieved a planimetric accuracy of 2.5 cm over a range of 45 m. The planimetric errors increased as a function of range, but moderately so if the system was properly calibrated. The main focus on mobile laser scanning development in the near future should be on the improvement of the trajectory solution, especially under non-ideal conditions, using both improvements in hardware and software. Test fields are relatively easy to implement in built environments and they are feasible for verifying and comparing the performance of different systems and also for improving system calibration to achieve optimum quality.