Colourising Point Clouds Using Independent Cameras

We investigate the problem of colourising a point cloud using an arbitrary mobile mapping device and an independent camera. The loose coupling of sensors creates a number of challenges related to timing, point visibility, and colour determination. We address each of these problems and demonstrate our resulting algorithm on data captured using sensor payloads mounted to hand-held, aerial, and ground systems, illustrating the “plug-and-play” portability of the method.