3D Geospatial Data Processing Group

We are proud to present the newest HELIOS++ release, v1.0.6, with numerous bugfixes and support for the unique LiVOX scan pattern (using Risley prisms - the color indicates point indices and increases from blue to red): Furthermore, the Easter bunny left some Easter eggs in the ‘toyblocks’ scene: You can find the changlelog for the new release [...]

Lukas Winiwarter of the 3DGeo group was invited by the Austrian Society of Surveying and Geoinformation (OVG) to give a talk on the application of deep learning on point clouds, which took place on March 24. In his talk, Lukas presented four different state-of-the-art approaches to consider the irregular, unordered structure of point clouds, which [...]

On 1st March 2021, the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (SwissTopo) released all official geodata according to the principles of “Open Government Data (OGD)”. With this step, Swisstopo is making large volumes of high quality geodata freely accessible. We are most excited about the 3D data, which includes digital surface models, digital terrain models and [...]

The research of the 3DGeo group is featured in a press release about Understanding the Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Landscape Dynamics. The text illustrates how Heidelberg geoinformation scientists develop new computer-based method to analyse topographic changes. The described method is published in this article: Anders, K., Winiwarter, L., Mara, H., Lindenbergh, R., Vos, S. E., Höfle [...]

In collaboration with the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University, the 3DGeo group reconstructed underwater speleothems in a cave in Yucatán, Mexico. The so-called “Hells Bells” are fascinating formations in several sinkholes, at the boundary layer between fresh- and saltwater. The full 3D mesh model obtained from several thousand photographs taken by a [...]

When and where do changes occur in dynamic natural landscapes? A new method has been published that enables the automatic extraction of surface changes from entire time series of 3D point clouds. The developed method of spatiotemporal segmentation extracts changes regarding their surface change history, which makes it particularly useful for natural scenes that are [...]

A joint field campaign was conducted this week in the snow-covered black forest (Hundseck, 48.643°N, 8.228°E) by the research groups Hydrology and Climatology (Prof. Menzel) and 3DGeo (Prof. Höfle). Regular in-situ surveys are conducted at the site to investigate snow as crucial component of the hydrologic cycle, forest management, and evapotranspiration. Surveys comprise measurement of [...]

The 3DGeo Research Group is proud to announce the release of their novel ray-tracing based laser scanning simulator HELIOS++! HELIOS++ is a general-purpose simulation software for virtual laser scanning data acquisition. Such data can be used to complement real data in many use cases. Some examples include the generation of training data for machine learning, especially [...]

Time series of topographic point clouds offer great possibilities to advance our understanding of dynamic landscapes. To exploit the full information these 4D datasets contain on spatial and temporal properties of natural surface changes, the 3DGeo research group is developing methods for 4D change analysis. These methods are required to answer fundamental questions on the [...]

This new video by the 3DGeo group presents the challenges of 3D Earth observation and our advances in 4D change analysis in the frame of the Auto3Dscapes project: Direct link to the video: https://youtu.be/Fdwq-Cp0mFY Many thanks to Claudia Denis and David Jäger for helping to realize the video! We are also very happy about the fruitful ongoing [...]