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Tsuru Kosuke 
  
AUTOMATIC COMPILATION OF ROAD FIGURE FROM THE PLOTTING DATA 
TSURU Kosuke, ICHINOKAWA hidenori, YASHIRO Takashi 
AERO ASAHI CORPORATION, JAPAN 
KEY WORDS: Feature extraction, Mapping, Data processing, Automation, CAD 
ABSTRACT 
The aspect of the automatic spatial data extraction is considered very difficult. This is commonly recognized in the field of image 
processing. Therefore, the main stream in the spatial data (vector) extraction so far has been done by human operators with application of 
an analytical plotter. However, the digital mapping performed by the analytical plotter requires much skill from the operators. The digital 
mapping itself takes a lot of time because of the manual extraction and compilation. 
In this paper we studied the speed of the manual road data acquisition and the automatic compilation. Our method on the acquisition the 
road data is taken straight preferentially. At this stage, crossing is ignored, and the other side of a road edge is created by a parallel copy 
of the original line. Shave of crossing or small changes such as road widths are ignored at the first stage. Finally, the automatic 
compilation composed of line merging, expansion, contraction, connection and code change is done to the original plotted data. 
According to our experiment, the total result of 93.2 % of 386 places, where compilation was necessary, involved all seven patterns and 
it has been successfully compiled. The processing time of the automatic road compilation including the failed place 
recovery is about 15 minutes. It is over 80% reduction of the processing time compared to the fully manual 
compilation (90 minutes). 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The aspect of the automatic spatial data extraction is considered very difficult. This is commonly recognized in the field of image 
processing. Therefore, the main stream of spatial data (vector) extraction is still done by human operators although many advanced 
studies are available for the automatic extraction of buildings, roads, road facilities, etc. Also the softcopy stereo plotter's capacity for the 
spatial data extraction is not larger than that of the analytical plotters. 
On the other hand, according to the fields of practical application of GIS, it is spreading widely; sale of the spatial data is increasing. At 
the initial stage of GIS, production method of the spatial data was digitized on the basis of the existing maps. Nowadays, it is replaced by 
plotting with application of the analytical plotters since many customers are building up GIS or accumulating the spatial data, when a 
new map is required, even in the case when a paper map can be sufficient. Therefore, at present the main stream in the spatial data 
extraction is done by the analytical plotters. 
The digital mapping based on the analytical plotter requires much skill from the operators. The digital mapping itself takes much time 
because of the manual extraction and compilation. Particularly, the compilation takes much time; because CAD dose has insufficient 
capacity for the map compilation. At present, the rectangle of buildings and drawing of straight lines is considered very easy. However, 
most of other figure compilation is considered very difficult to be used for automation. These are roads straightening, fine-drawn contour 
lines and relation between roads and buildings, or some other features. Since these subjects need to be resolved, some of the automatic 
compilation for plotting data is required. In this paper we studied the speed of manual acquisition of the road data and the automatic 
compilation. 
2. DATA ACQUISITION 
  
  
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B3. Amsterdam 2000. 515