Antonio Vettore

• University of Padua

Discriminating laser scanner data points belonging to ground from points above-ground (vegetation or buildings) is a key issue in research. Methods for filtering points into ground and non-ground classes have been widely studied mostly on datasets derived from airborne laser scanners, less so for terrestrial laser scanners. Recent developments in t...

We tested metrics from full-waveform (FW) LiDAR (light detection and ranging) as predictors for forest basal area (BA) and aboveground biomass (AGB), in a tropical moist forest. Three levels of metrics are tested: (i) peak-level, based on each return echo; (ii) pulse-level, based on the whole return signal from each emitted pulse; and (iii) plot-le...

This paper considers the problem of indoor navigation by means of low-cost mobile devices. The required accuracy, the low reliability of low-cost sensor measurements and the typical unavailability of the GPS signal make indoor navigation a challenging problem. In this paper, a particle filtering approach is presented in order to obtain good navigat...

The possibility to identify with significant accuracy the position of a vehicle in a mapping reference frame for driving directions and best-route analysis is a topic which is attracting a lot of interest from the research and development sector. To reach the objective of accurate vehicle positioning and integrate response events, it is necessary t...

Abstract This article presents a methodology for designing a WebGIS framework intended for automatically analyzing spatial data and updating statistics of interest with new information inserted daily by multiple users via a Web portal. A practical example is used on vehicle accident data for assessing risk in specific road segments. Two main blocks...

Despite GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) enables positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) almost everywhere, the development of applications like self-driving vehicles and indoor navigation requires extending accurate positioning to scenarios where GNSS either is not reliable or does garantee a sufficiently precise solution. Integrating in...

The development of autonomous vehicles, both terrestrial and aerial ones (unmanned aerial system (UAS)), is causing the need of properly formulating appropriate solutions for ensuring a safe interaction between them, human beings and the infrastructures and environment in their operating area. To such aim, the knowledge of the positions of differen...

Massive point clouds have now become a common product from surveys using passive (photogrammetry) or active (laser scanning) technologies. A common question is what is the difference in terms of accuracy and precision of different technologies and processing options. In this work four ultra-dense point-clouds (PCs) from drone surveys are compared....

Despite the availability of GNSS on consumer devices enabled personal navigation for most of the World population in most of the outdoor conditions, the problem of precise pedestrian positioning is still quite challenging when indoors or, more in general, in GNSS-challenging working conditions. Furthermore, the covid-19 pandemic also raised of pede...

3D building modeling is becoming an important support in civil engineering, architecture and cultural heritage applications. Despite static laser scanning can be considered as the state-of-the-art in such kind of applications, mobile mapping techniques can be considered as a suitable alternative to quickly gather geospatial information. Outdoor mob...

Nowadays, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles represent a very popular tool used in dramatically wide range of applications: indeed, their high flexibility, ease of use, and in certain cases quite affordable price make them a very attractive solutions in a number of applications, including surveying and mapping. Despite such a wide range of uses, their usage...

The development and availability on consumer devices of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have dramatically changed the everyday-life of most of the human population, enabling real time navigation on almost any smart device produced in the last years. However, such strong dependence on the availability of the GNSS limits the further sp...

Tree detection has been considered in a number of forest-related applications, mostly related to the need of determining the presence and position of trees, and, in certain cases, the associated biomass. Most of the tree detection methods are typically based on the use of LiDAR surveys, and they often aim either at determining tree crowns or stems....

Nowadays time-of-flight (ToF) cameras and multiple RGB cameras are being embedded in an increasing number of high-end smartphones: despite their integration in mobile devices is mostly motivated by photographic applications, their availability can be exploited to enable 3D reconstructions directly on smartphones. Furthermore, even when a ToF camera...

The number of applications involving unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) grew dramatically during the last decade. Despite such incredible success, the use of drones is still quite limited in GNSS denied environment: indeed, the availability of a reliable GNSS estimates of the drone position is still fundamental in order to enable most of the UAV appli...

The demand for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is massively increasing these days, due to the wide variety of applications utilizing such vehicles to perform tasks that may be dangerous or just to save time, effort, or cost. Small UAVs navigation system mainly depends on the integration between Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and I...

The recent introduction of new technologies such as augmented reality, machine learning and the worldwide spread of mobile devices provided with imaging, navigation sensors and high computational power can be exploited in order to drammatically change the museum visit experience. Differently from the traditional use of museum docents or audio guide...

Thanks to the recent worldwide spread of drones and to the development of structure from motion photogrammetric software, UAV photogrammetry is becoming a convenient and reliable way for the 3D documentation of built heritage. Hence, nowadays, UAV photogrammetric surveying is a common and quite standard tool for producing 3D models of relatively la...

Despite photogrammetry has been longly used for 3D model production, the recent development of structure from motion based reconstructions and the spread of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are increasing its usage even further. Actually, the combined use of nadir and oblique UAV photogrammetry allows to cross the bridge between close range and aeria...

The Worldwide spread of relatively low cost mobile devices embedded with dual rear cameras enables the possibility of exploiting smartphone stereo vision for producing 3D models. Despite such idea is quite attractive, the small baseline between the two cameras restricts the depth discrimination ability of this kind of stereo vision systems. This pa...

During the last decade, the number of applications of UAVs has continuously increased, making the global UAV market one of those with the highest rate of growth. The worldwide increasing usage of UAVs is causing an ever-growing demand for efficient solutions in order to make them usable in every kind of working condition. In fact, nowadays the main...

The subject of photogrammetric surveying with mobile devices, in particular smartphones, is becoming of significant interest in the research community. Nowadays, the process of providing 3D point clouds with photogrammetric procedures is well known. However, external information is still typically needed in order to move from the point cloud obtain...

Photogrammetry has been widely used in the recent years in a number of applications, e.g. cultural heritage, surveying buildings and infrastructures. Despite nowadays its use is quite common, most of the used photogrammetric softwares are commercial. This paper aims at comparing the use of a free Matlab tool that is being developed at the Universit...

This paper considers Leica backpack and photogrammetric surveys of a mediaeval bastion in Padua, Italy. Furhtermore, terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) survey is considered in order to provide a state of the art reconstruction of the bastion. Despite control points are typically used to avoid deformations in photogrammetric surveys and ensure correct...

During the last decade several Mobile Mapping Systems (MMSs), i.e. systems able to acquire efficiently three dimensional data using moving sensors (Guarnieri et al., 2008, Schwarz and El-Sheimy, 2004), have been developed. Research and commercial products have been implemented on terrestrial, aerial and marine platforms, and even on human-carried e...

It is a matter of fact that 3D visualisation and proper documentation of cultural objects helps to preserve the history and memories of historic buildings, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes, and supports economic growth by stimulating cultural tourism. Preservation, visualisation and recreation of valuable historical and architectural ob...

In the last decade advances in the fields of close-range photogrammetry, terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and computer vision (CV) have enabled to collect different kind of information about a Cultural Heritage objects and to carry out highly accurate 3D models. Additionally, the integration between laser scanning technology and Finite Element Anal...

Thanks to their flexibility and availability at reduced costs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been recently used on a wide range of applications and conditions. Among these, they can play an important role in monitoring critical events (e.g., disaster monitoring) when the presence of humans close to the scene shall be avoided for safety reaso...

This paper considers the use of a low cost mobile device in order to develop a mobile mapping system (MMS), which exploits only sensors embedded in the device. The goal is to make this MMS usable and reliable even in difficult environments (e.g. emergency conditions, when also WiFi connection might not work). For this aim, a navigation system able...

Thanks to the recent diffusion of low-cost high-resolution digital cameras and to the development of mostly automated procedures for image-based 3D reconstruction, the popularity of photogrammetry for environment surveys is constantly increasing in the last years. Automatic feature matching is an important step in order to successfully complete the...

In this paper we present the results of the development of a Web-based archiving and documenting system aimed to the management of multisource and multitemporal data related to cultural heritage. As case study we selected the building complex of Villa Revedin Bolasco in Castefranco Veneto (Treviso, Italy) and its park. Buildings and park were built...

In this paper we present the results of the development of a Web-based archiving and documenting system aimed to the management of multisource and multitemporal data related to cultural heritage. As case study we selected the building complex of Villa Revedin Bolasco in Castefranco Veneto (Treviso, Italy) and its park. Buildings and park were built...

Nowadays photogrammetry and laser scanning methods are the most wide spread surveying techniques. Laser scanning methods usually allow to obtain more accurate results with respect to photogrammetry, but their use have some issues, e.g. related to the high cost of the instrumentation and the typical need of high qualified personnel to acquire experi...

High resolution 3D models produced from photographs acquired with consumer-grade cameras are becoming increasingly common in the fields of geosciences. However, the quality of an image-based 3D model depends on the planning of the photogrammetric surveys. This means that the geometric configuration of the multi-view camera network and the control d...

High resolution 3D models produced from photographs acquired with consumer-grade cameras are becoming increasingly common in the fields of geosciences. However, the quality of an image-based 3D model depends on the planning of the photogrammetric surveys. This means that the geometric configuration of the multi-view camera network and the control d...

Nowadays photogrammetry and laser scanning methods are the most wide spread surveying techniques. Laser scanning methods usually allow to obtain more accurate results with respect to photogrammetry, but their use have some issues, e.g. related to the high cost of the instrumentation and the typical need of high qualified personnel to acquire experi...

Photo-based surface reconstruction is rapidly emerging as an alternative survey technique to lidar (light detection and ranging) in many fields of geoscience fostered by the recent development of computer vision algorithms such as structure from motion (SfM) and dense image matching such as multi-view stereo (MVS). The objectives of this work are t...

Photo-based surface reconstruction is rapidly emerging as an alternative survey technique to lidar (light detection and ranging) in many fields of geoscience fostered by the recent development of computer vision algorithms such as structure from motion (SfM) and dense image matching such as multi-view stereo (MVS). The objectives of this work are t...

Close-range photogrammetry based on Structure from Motion (SfM) and dense image matching algorithms is being rapidly adopted in the fields of geosciences thanks to its characteristics of low costs, portability of the instrumentation, high level of automation, and high levels of detail. However, special care should be taken while planning photogramm...

Close-range photo-based surface reconstruction from the ground is rapidly emerging as an alternative to lidar (light detection and ranging), which today represents the main survey technique in many fields of geoscience. The recent evolution of photogrammetry, incorporating computer vision algorithms such as Structure from Motion (SfM) and dense ima...

In recent years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are attracting more and more attention in both the research and industrial communities: indeed, the possibility to use them in a wide range of remote sensing applications makes them a very flexible and attractive solution in both civil and commercial cases (e.g. precision agriculture, security and co...

Due to the effect of climate factors, natural phenomena and human usage, buildings and infrastructures are subject of progressive degradation. The deterioration of these structures has to be monitored in order to avoid hazards for human beings and for the natural environment in their neighborhood. Hence, on the one hand, monitoring such infrastruct...

Recently, several works have been proposed in the literature to take advantage of the diffusion of smartphones to improve people experience during museum visits. The rationale is that of substituting traditional written/audio guides with interactive electronic guides usable on a mobile phone. Augmented reality systems are usually considered to make...

In the field of glaciology Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) are commonly used to map glacier structure, to analyse surface morphology, to measure changes in geometry and volume and hence to infer the mass balance. The development of the Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetric technique, which coupled with dense image matching algorithms (such as m...

In this chapter, we evaluate the movement of 6 points near a landslide body, which were surveyed with GNSS receivers over time. We apply Bayesian inference to identify the areas on the ground with statistically significant vertical (downwards) shifts. Traditional statistical methods work well only when point displacements between different survey e...

In accordance with recent studies, most of the observed natural hazards throughout the globe are related to the dynamics of hydrological variability. This determines the fundamental importance of studies related to hydrogeological risk assessment, in terms of both prevention and mitigation of damages; science shall provide the modelling and forecas...

This paper deals with the study of the dynamics of a landslide from two different but complementary point of views. The landslide is situated within the Miozza basin, an area of approximately 10.7 km² located in the Alpine region of Carnia (Italy). In the first part of the paper, the macro-scale analysis of volumetric changes occurred after the rea...

AGU Fall Meeting 2014

The continuous technological improvement of mobile devices opens the frontiers of Mobile Mapping systems to very compact systems, i.e. a smartphone or a tablet. This motivates the development of efficient 3D reconstruction techniques based on the sensors typically embedded in such devices, i.e. imaging sensors, GPS and Inertial Navigation System (I...

The objective of this report is to present and discuss a work-flow for extracting, from full-waveform (FW) lidar data, formats which are compatible with common information systems (GIS) and statistical software packages. Full-waveform, specifically for forestry, got attention from the scientific community because a more in-depth analysis can add va...

The development of Mobile Mapping systems over the last decades allowed to quickly collect georeferenced spatial measurements by means of sensors mounted on mobile vehicles. Despite the large number of applications that can potentially take advantage of such systems, because of their cost their use is currently typically limited to certain speciali...

Digital elevation models (DEMs) of glaciated terrain are commonly used to measure changes in geometry and hence infer the mass balance of glaciers. Different tools and methods exist to obtain information about the 3D geometry of terrain. Recent improvements on the quality and performance of digital cameras for close-range photogrammetry, and the de...

Digital elevation models (DEMs) of glaciated terrain are commonly used to measure changes in geometry and hence infer the mass balance of glaciers. Different tools and methods exist to obtain information about the 3D geometry of terrain. Recent improvements on the quality and performance of digital cameras for close-range photogrammetry, and the de...

This paper discusses a methodology where geo-spatial analysis tools are used to quantify risk derived from anthropic activities on habitats and species. The method has been developed with a focus on simplification and the quality of standard procedures set on flora and fauna protected by the European Directives. In this study case, the DPSIR (Drive...

This paper presents a methodology for risk assessment of anthropic activities on habitats and species. The method has been developed for Veneto Region, in order to simplify and improve the quality of EIA procedure (VINCA). Habitats and species, animals and plants, are protected by European Directive 92/43/EEC and 2009/147/EC but they are subject at...

In this article, we present an investigation regarding the differences between a full-waveform and a discrete-return terrestrial laser scanner employed in a survey of a mountain area with dense vegetation. The Riegl LMS-Z620 provides discrete returns whereas the Riegl VZ-400 provides multiple returns with associated width and amplitude of the peaks...

For a correct use of metrics derived from processing of the full-waveform return signal from airborne laser scanner sensors any correlation which is not related to properties of the reflecting target must be known and, if possible, removed. In the following article we report on an analysis of correlation between several metrics extracted from the f...

The demand for high-definition surveys within cultural heritage-related projects represents one of the main factors that promoted the use of laser scanning technology and photogrammetry. By measuring millions of points within relatively short time periods, terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) allows to researchers to derive complete and very detailed t...

In this paper we present the results related to several field campaigns conducted in the last three years in a small (4.4 km2) wilderness basin in Carnia, a tectonically active alpine region in northeast Italy. The study area is a typical alpine debris-flow dominated catchment where several landslides, including a significantly large one, were obse...

Laser scanner technology can be very useful for applications relative to surveying river-beds with high and very high resolution (sampling heights at one meter spacing or less). A 3D model of structures including the river-bed, sides and contiguous areas allows to develop rigorous hydraulic models relative to flooding predictions and to the estimat...

Full-waveform is becoming increasingly available in today's LiDAR systems and the analysis of the full return signal can provide additional information on the reflecting surfaces. In this paper we present the results of an assessment on full-waveform analysis, as opposed to the more classic discrete return analysis, for discerning vegetation cover...

In this paper we present the results of the comparison between two terrestrial laser scanners (TLS), a discrete return system (Riegl LMS-Z620) and an echo-digitizing system (Riegl VZ-400), employed for the survey of a dense forested area, in the italian Alps. The site is actually undergoing a strong debate among the inhabitants and local government...

Distinguishing vegetation characteristics in a terrestrial laser scanner dataset is an interesting issue for environmental assessment. Methods for filtering vegetation points to distinguish them from ground class have been widely studied mostly on datasets derived from airborne laser scanner, less so for terrestrial laser scanners (TLS). Recent dev...

Full waveform airborne laser scanning for mapping morphometric parameters in terrain with varying vegetation cover

Terrestrial laser scanning technique has represented one of the more advances occurred in the last years in the field of data acquisition. Time-of-Flight (TOF) systems provide a fast and reliable tool to measure millions of 3D points allowing a very effective and dense measurement of the surface geometry. Nowadays, the generation of high quality 3D...

This paper presents a method for color equalization of a n-number of images using a semi - automatic regression-based method. The images equalization will be based on contiguous images where one will be considered the "master" and the other the "slave" depending on which will be used as reference and which will be changed respectively. The idea beh...

Cultural heritage sites and artefacts get a significant added value from high-resolution 3D models. These models are increasingly available due to improvements in technology and to higher integration of survey techniques such as laser scanning and photogrammetry. In this paper we present a case study on the development of a web-based application fo...

This paper reports the results of a comparative analysis between airborne discrete return lidar and satellite waveform lidar. Morphological and vegetation indices extracted from the two types of lidar have been analyzed to assess correlation, considering the discrete return lidar as reference because of its higher resolution. For each waveform lida...

In recent years, the integration between laser scanning technology and photogrammetry has been proven to be a very effective methodology to provide high-resolution 3D models of heritage sites and cultural artifacts. Furthermore, the availability for faster connections to the Internet and for more performing servers and browsers have pushed the deve...

In the last years UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) systems are become very actractive for various commercial, industrial, public, scientific and military operations. The tasks include pipeline inspection, dam surveillance, photogrammetric survey, infrastructure maintenance, inspection of flooded areas, fire fighting, terrain monitoring, volcano observ...

Road accidents have a definite impact in terms of lives, welfare and traffic congestion, especially with increase in mobility and number of overall vehicles. Prevention policies can greatly benefit from data analysis of positions and accident characteristics. This work presents a practical integration of open source software for the implementation...

Marshes are ubiquitous landforms in estuaries and lagoons, where important hydrological, morphological and ecological processes take place. These areas attenuate sea action on the coast and act as sediment trapping zones. Due to their ecosystem functions and effects on coastal stabilization, marshes are crucial structures in tidal environments, bot...

Nowadays earth survey tends to get increasingly automated using mobile mapping systems integrated with Global Positioning System (OPS) geographic reference frame (WGS84). Very common cartographic representations are the ones which use an aphylactic because it represents the areas of objects with very little error and is thus very useful for the cad...

In the last years, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems have become very attractive for various commercial, industrial, public, scientific, and military operations. Potential tasks include pipeline inspection, dam surveillance, photogrammetric survey, infrastructure maintenance, inspection of flooded areas, fire fighting, terrain monitoring, volca...

This paper reports an analysis of results from processing return signals from canopy covers using a artificial neural network to find if there is an improvement on detecting tree height and position compared to a more classic local maximum filter approach. The hypothesis taken into consideration is that a neural network permits to insert several us...

The plenty of works presented in last two years about the use of 3D models in the field of Cultural Heritage witness the great interest of surveyors, engineers, architects and archaeologists towards the laser scanning technique as an invaluable surveying mean for asbuilt documentation, digital archiving and restoration of important elements belongi...

Over the years, MMS systems have demonstrated that accuracies suitable for all but the most demanding cadastral and engineering applications can be achieved. This result, combined with a reduction in both the time and cost of data collection, made MMS a very interesting technology potentially able to meet the demand of GIS operators for rapid spati...

RIASSUNTO Negli anni recenti, la possibilità offerta dal laser scanner terrestre di acquisire grandi quantità di dati in tempi relativamente brevi, con un grado di precisione e dettaglio elevati, ha spinto l'interesse di topografi, ingegneri, architetti e archeologi a considerare il laser a scansione come uno strumento di rilevamento fondamentale p...

Observational fluvial geomorphology has greatly benefited in the last decades from the wide availability of digital terrain data obtained by orthophotos and by means of accurate airborne laser scanner data (LiDAR). On the contrary, the spatially-distributed study of the geomorphology of intertidal areas, such as tidal flats and marshes, remains pro...

Photogrammetry has dealt since many years with the 3D reconstruction of objects from images. It provides for accurate sensor calibration and object modeling using analog or digital imageries, it is very portable and many commercial software is available for image processing and 3D modeling. On the other hand, laser scanning technology and all the r...

The use of 3D digitization and modeling in documenting heritage sites has increased significantly over the past few years. This is mainly due to advances in laser scanning techniques, 3D modeling software, image-based-modeling techniques, computer power, and virtual reality. There are many approaches currently available. The most common remains bas...

this paper we report the results from the comparison between digital photogrammetry and laser scanning techniques applied to the survey of the outside of the ancient church of Pozzoveggiani, located in the sourrounding of Padua (Italy)

A joint project between the Interdept. Research Center of the University of Padova (CIRGEO), a research group of Istituto Tecnico per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (IRST) of Trento and the Visual Information Technology group (VIT) of the NRC Canada, in Ottawa, has been undertaken, with the main aim to create a set of 3D models of an historic...

The use of 3D digitization and modeling in documenting heritage sites has increased significantly over the past few years. This is mainly due to advances in laser scanning techniques, 3D modeling software, image-based-modeling techniques, computer power, and virtual reality. There are many approaches currently available. The most common remains bas...

Over the past few years, a remarkable increase has occurred in the demand for 3D models for cultural heritage applications. The techniques employed have evolved from surveying and CAD tools and/or traditional photogrammetry into laser scanning and more automated image-based techniques. However, selecting the most effective technique for a given pro...

The arising interest towards 3D modeling of both single objects and whole environments is strictly related with the availability of more and more powerful computing and surveying devices. A new set of issues has to be addressed in the 3D modeling of real objects. A lot of data are needed about the object surface or volume, which have then to be agg...

Recent advances in the field of laser scanning technology along with the availability of more powerful computing resources have favoured the increasing interest of surveyors, architects, archaeologists towards laser scanners as a very promising alternative for cultural heritage surveying. Thousands of points can be acquired in a few seconds with an...

The capability of measuring small crustal deformation by means of differential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry (DIFSAR) is investigated in this work. After outlining the mathematical background inherent to the principles of differential SAR interferometry and showing the potential and limits of the information content of spaceborne DI...

The visualization and interactive navigation of 3D models, like virtual visits of museums, churches or even whole cities (cybercity models), are gaining a more and more increasing use and importance with time. This has been accomplished in last years thank to the augmented power of modern CPUs, graphic hardware devices and thank to a wider access t...

We consider the general linear stochastic model in which the variance-covariance matrix of the observations is a linear function of the variance-covariance components. Hence, first, we derive the formulas for the BIQUE (Best Invariant Quadratic Unbiased Estimates) estimation of the variance-covariance components in the functional model of the condi...

The surveillance of the Neapolitan volcanic area (Mt. Vesuvius, the Phlegrean Fields and the island of Ischia) represents the principal activity of the Osservatorio Vesuviano. Such an activity is carried out also through the study of ground deformations. This study deals with the use of the GPS as a powerful topographic technique. In the last two y...

Phase correlation is a very robust technique to estimate image translations, but it works only for monochromatic images. If the input image is a color image, it must be first converted to monochrome, wasting part of the input information. In this work we extend the phase correlation algorithm to the case of multi-component images such as RGB and mu...