Patent ID: 8682037
Filing Date: 2014-03-25
Classification: G01S

Abstract:
1. A method to produce a thinned point cloud from an original point cloud based upon a point of view of an imaging device used to generate the original point cloud, the method using a computing system, the method comprising the steps of: determining the point of view of the imaging device (“pov”); calculating a number of points in the original point cloud (“numPoints”); determining an amount of free memory of the computing system (“freeMem”); determining the minimum (“minDist”) and maximum (“maxDist”) distance from the point of view of the camera to the data points in the point cloud; calculating a difference between the minimum and maximum distance (“ΔDist”); calculating a mean number of points to keep based upon the amount of free memory (“numKeep”), whereby numKeep=numPoints/freeMem/constant(1); generating the empty thinned point cloud; and populating the thinned point cloud with a subset of data points from the original point cloud according to the following algorithm: