Building reconstruction from images and laser scanning

The automatic extraction of objects from laser scans and images has been a topic of research for decades. Nowadays, with new services expected, especially in the area of navigation systems, location based services, and augmented reality, the need for automated, efficient extraction systems becomes more urgent than ever. This paper reviews a number of automatic and semi-automatic reconstruction methods in more detail in order to reveal their underlying principles. It then discusses some general properties of reconstruction approaches which have evolved. This shows that, although research is still far from the goal of the initially envisioned fully automatic reconstruction systems, there is now a much better understanding of the problem and the ways it can be tackled.