A method for automated registration of unorganised point clouds

A registration method for unorganised point cloud datasets, the Geometric Primitive ICP with the RANSAC (GP-ICPR), which uses geometric primitives, neighbourhood search and the positional uncertainty of laser scanners is proposed. The change of geometric curvature and approximate normal vector of the surface formed by a point and its neighbourhood are used to search for possible corresponding points.The GP-ICPR was tested with terrestrial laser scanner datasets in terms of its precision and accuracy. It is shown that the GP-ICPR improved the precision of the estimated relative transformation parameters by as much as a factor of 5, which provides a window of opportunity to utilise this automated registration method in practical applications such as terrestrial surveying and deformation monitoring.