Point clouds for direct pedestrian pathfinding in urban environments

Pathfinding applications for the citizen in urban environments are usually designed from the perspective of a driver, not being effective for pedestrians. In addition, urban scenes have multiple elements that interfere with pedestrian routes and navigable space. In this paper, a methodology for the direct use of point clouds for pathfinding in urban environments is presented, solving the main limitations for this purpose: (a) the excessive number of points is reduced for transformation into nodes on the final graph, (b) urban static elements acting as permanent obstacles, such as furniture and trees, are delimited and differentiated from dynamic elements such as pedestrians, (c) occlusions on ground elements are corrected to enable a complete graph modelling, and (d) navigable space is delimited from free unobstructed space according to two motor skills (pedestrians without reduced mobility and wheelchairs). The methodology is tested into three different streets sampled as point clouds by mobile laser scanning (MLS) systems: an intersection of several streets with ground composed of sidewalks at different heights; an avenue with wide sidewalks, trees and cars parked on one side; and a street with a single-lane road and narrow sidewalks. By applying Dijkstra pathfinding algorithm to the resulting graphs, the correct viability of the generated routes has been verified based on a visual analysis of the generated routes on the point cloud and on the knowledge of the urban study area. The methodology enables the automatic generation of graphs representing the navigable urban space, on which safe and real routes for different motor skills can be calculated.