The combined use of SLAM laser scanning and TLS for the 3D indoor mapping

Funding Information: This research was funded by Aalto University School of Engineering Tenure track (Digital Photogrammetry) funding, the Academy of Finland the Strategic Research Council projects, ?Competence-Based Growth Through Integrated Disruptive Technologies of 3D Digitalization, Robotics, Geospatial Information, and Image Processing/Computing?Point Cloud Ecosystem? (No. 293389, 314312), Academy of Finland project ?Quality4Roads? (No. 323783), project Profi5 ?Autonomous systems? (No. 326246), the European Social Fund (S21997) and the City of Helsinki Innovation fund. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.An efficient 3D survey of a complex indoor environment remains a challenging task, especially if the accuracy requirements for the geometric data are high for instance in building information modeling (BIM) or construction. The registration of non-overlapping terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds is laborious. We propose a novel indoor mapping strategy that uses a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) laser scanner (LS) to support the building-scale registration of non-overlapping TLS point clouds in order to reconstruct comprehensive building floor/3D maps. This strategy improves efficiency since it allows georeferenced TLS data to only be collected from those parts of the building that require such accuracy. The rest of the building is measured with SLAM LS accuracy. Based on the results of the case study, the introduced method can locate non-overlapping TLS point clouds with an accuracy of 18–51 mm using target sphere comparison.Peer reviewe