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PointReg Software v2.0

Developed by Michael Olsen 
Oregon State University
michael.olsen@oregonstate.edu

Copyright (C) 2011 Michael J. Olsen

    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Please let me know if you find this software useful and reference at least one of the following publications if you use it:

Olsen, M.J., Johnstone, E., Kuester, F., Ashford, S.A., & Driscoll, N. (2011). “New automated point-cloud alignment for ground based LIDAR data of long coastal sections,” Journal of Surveying Engineering, 137(1), 14-25. 

Olsen, M.J., Johnstone, E., Driscoll, N., Ashford, S.A., & Kuester, F. (2009). “Terrestrial laser scanning of extended cliff sections in dynamic environments: a parameter analysis,” Journal of Surveying Engineering, 135(4), 161-169.

Olsen, M.J., (2011). "Putting the pieces together, terrestrial laser scan geo-referencing”, LiDAR Magazine 1(2). http://www.lidarnews.com/PDF/LiDAR_Magazine_Vol1No2_Olsen.pdf

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This program finds the angles of rotations (about Z axis) required for the best fits of point clouds obtained from laser scans two at a time.  These point clouds should initially be within about 1-2 degrees of each other.  
It evaluates the RMS at various rotation combinations and picks the rotations that provide the best RMS for those scans.
It outputs those rotational values.

This directory contains:
Point Reg program
And a Sample dataset

A complete user manual is currently being developed.  

Tips to get you started.

See the sample dataset for file formats.
The csv database should contain:
X Y Z Roll Pitch Yaw PointID BackSightID and LevelingID

note that in some cases, you may not have BacksightID and LevlingID and you just need to put in a value in those fields.  

Note that Point Reg will use those last 3 fields to form the names to automatically import all files.  hence, the naming convention is important so that point reg can automatically determine the names of all files to process.

Although point reg can work directly off of the txt files with X Y Z values (#= comment), 
It is recommended that you convert them to binary uisng the PointCloudConverter.exe.  This mini program can convert RXP files from Riegl V-line scanners.  It also can convert text files.  

The pointcloud files need to be formatted in the order X Y Z.  The rest of the line shouldn't matter.  For example, a common format is:
x y z r g b i
A space is recommended for a delimter, but any non-numeric character (except a "-" or a "." should work.
where x,y,z are doubles, r,g,b are unsigned char (0-255) and i is an integer value.

Point Reg can either be launched from the GUI or by manually dropping a csv file into the executable for the 32 or 64 bit version.  

Icpreg.txt contains all of the settings that are run with PointReg.  Everytime you call the GUI, it will overwrite what is in icpreg.txt

The GUI was developed in QT Creator, and, as such, source code is provided for the GUI.  The actual program, however, was not developed in QT.  

Finally, a GPS offset program is included.  This inputs the CSV and offsets the GPS height correction for the case that the scanner was not level and the correction is not straight vertical.