International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B5, 2012 
XXII ISPRS Congress, 25 August - 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia 
483 
MULTI PLATFORM APPROACH TO MOBILE LASER SCANNING 
Antcro Kukko a ’ *, Harri Kaartinen 3 , Juha Hyyppä 3 , Yuwei Chen' 1 
a Dept, of Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry, Finnish Geodetic Institute, Masala, Finland - Antero.Kukko@fgi.fi, 
Harri.Kaartinen@fgi.fi, Juha.Hyyppä@fgi.fi 
www.fgi.fi/mobimap 
b Dept, of Navigation and Positioning, Finnish Geodetic Institute, Masala, Finland - Yuwei.Chen@fgi.fi, 
Inter-Commission Working Group V/I 
KEY WORDS: GPS/INS, Platforms, Laser scanning, Point Cloud, Mobile, Geometric 
ABSTRACT: 
Mobile laser scanning is an emerging technology for capturing three-dimensional information from the surrounding objects. With 
state of the art sensors the achieved point cloud could capture fine details of the surroundings with good accuracy and effectiveness. 
Many of the applications deal with the civil engineering purposes in urban areas for traffic and city planning and modelling. In this 
article we present multiplatform mobile laser scanning solutions for mapping applications that require mobility in various terrains 
and river environments but yet produce high density point clouds with good reliability and accuracy. The ROAMER mobile laser 
scanning system was deployed in multitude of tasks from urban areas to climate research. The paper also introduces a completely 
new backpack Akhka platform for mobile lidar mapping of areas where wheeled vehicles cannot operate. The sensor set is the same 
in all of the approaches, but the carrying vessel was selected according to the application. This was possible thanks to a relatively 
light and compact yet simple design of the system. ROAMER system is one of the few high-end MLS systems that are easily 
adaptable to various platforms. In addition to technical description of the system we discuss the practical performance of the 
solutions through various applications in the fields of urban mapping, fluvial geomorphology, snow cover characterization and 
climate change monitoring. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
There has been an increasing interest in vehicle-based (mobile) 
surveying applications of laser scanning since the beginning of 
the 21 st century as laser scanners started to be incorporated into 
the so called mobile mapping systems (MMS)(Lchtomaki et al., 
2011). Lidar based mobile mapping system, a.k.a. mobile laser 
scanning (MLS), produces three-dimensional points from the 
surrounding objects with two-dimensional profiling scanners, 
the third dimension is achieved by the movement of the vehicle 
and motion-tracking navigation devices. The survey is 
conducted as the ground vehicle moves around while the 
navigation system, typically based on global navigation satellite 
system (GNSS) and inertial navigation system (INS), tracks the 
vehicle trajectory and attitude for producing 3D point cloud out 
of the range information from the onboard scanners. Analogous 
to airborne laser scanning (ALS) the characteristics, e.g., 
density, point pattern and distribution, of the obtained point 
cloud depend largely on the sensor arrangement on the 
platform, and the sensor properties, such as point measurement 
rate, scan frequency, and wavelength (see e.g., Kukko and 
Hyyppa, 2009, Yoo et al., 2010, Cahalane et al., 2010). 
Different layouts and approaches can be found in numerous 
papers ( e.g., Yoo et al., 2010, Grafe, 2007, Hesse and Kuttere, 
2007, El-Sheimy, 2005, Kukko et al., 2007, Kukko et al., 2009, 
Petrie, 2010). The applications of MLS to environmental 
remote sensing have thus far been focused on vegetation studies 
and hydrology (Barber and Mills, 2007, Alho et al., 2009, Alho 
et al., 2011, Vaaja et al., 2011), while a number of applications 
have been presented for urban road environment (Lehtomaki et 
al. 2011, Kukko et al., 2009, Jaakkola et al, 2008, Lehtomaki et 
al., 2010). 
Mobile mapping is expected to provide ease in mobilization and 
low cost compared to airborne laser scanning. This is especially 
attractive in projects comprising small or limited areas and 
specific tasks. In addition, the sensor layout of a MMS and 
other surveying arrangement could be adjusted more freely in 
comparison to the airborne laser scanning (ALS) to meet task 
specific requirements. 3D models processed from the data 
collected by an MLS offer high resolution visualization and 
surface analysis, which cannot be achieved from ALS and/or 
aerial images since they provide coarser rendition with 
considerably less point density and precision. 
Considering the data acquisition compared to the data from 
stationary TLS, MLS provides high efficiency and precise way 
for generating dense point clouds, and mobility makes it more 
suitable for surveying and modelling of large areas. This is 
especially prominent in cases where ground validation is needed 
for, e.g., airborne experiments or in the areas covered by Earth 
observing satellites (see Kaasalainen et al., 2008, Connor et al., 
2009). Additionally, stationary data collection has several weak 
points; poor efficiency in data acquisition due to redundancy, 
difficult planning for viewpoints and directions in data 
acquisition when measuring large and complicated scenes, and 
the complexity of a registration method that could succeed in 
automated registering of all kinds of range data (Zhao and 
Shibasaki, 2003, Kukko, 2009). 
Most of the 3D mapping applications could benefit from the 
accuracy and efficiency of the mobile laser scanning technology 
compared to the traditional mapping methods utilizing digital 
aerial images and airborne laser scanning as well as geodetic 
measurements with totalstations and terrestrial lasers. The 
* Corresponding author.