Skeleton-based 3D reconstruction of as-built pipelines from laser-scan data

•This study proposed an automated approach to generate the as-built 3D pipeline model.•The basic principle is that a pipeline is defined by its skeleton.•Two-step process is used to extract skeleton from the noisy and incomplete data.•Performance of the approach was evaluated by field experiments at an oil refinery.•The approach unlocks the potential to reconstruct the entire as-built 3D facility.

There has been a growing demand for an as-built 3D pipeline model. Although several studies on automation of the process of reconstruction of as-built 3D pipelines have been carried out, previous approaches have been limited to the generation of only a portion of an entire 3D pipeline. The aim of this study was to propose an automated approach to the generation of as-built 3D pipeline models of entire pipelines composed of straight pipes, elbows, and tee pipes from laser-scan data. First, the skeletons of individual pipelines are extracted. Then the extracted skeletons are segmented into their individual components, and a set of parameters for them are calculated. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is robust to incompleteness of the laser-scan data, as well as to noise and to density variations in the data. As a result, the proposed method enables the generation of reliable as-built 3D pipeline models.