Glossary


B

Blueprint: particular nadir x-ray orthophoto, specifically created for Heron®  surveys. It can enhance important features of a 3D point cloud such as edges, corners, walls... It emphasize points aligned in one direction of view.


C

Cloud: a single turn (rotation) of the Velodyne®  acquisition.

Cluster: in the Global Optimization process, group of connected Local Maps (also from different acquisitions) and/or static scans. 


G

Global Map: the whole survey, many maps joined together.


H

Heron Survey: In Reconstructor®, a group composed of one or more Heron® acquisitions, within the relative trajectory, cameras, targets and annotations, as they are in the imported Global Optimization. Other point clouds can be included, if the Constraints add-on is activated.


I

ICP: Iterative Closest Point. It is an algorithm to register two point clouds by minimizing the square errors between the corresponding entities.

The correspondences are reconsidered as the solution comes closer to the error local minimum.


L

Local Map: a 3D set of points consisting of several clouds joined together with specific parameters during the Create Maps process.


M

Map: a 3D set of points consisting of several clouds joined together with specific parameters.

Match: connection between two local maps, understood as the union of ICP connections between homologue points.


T

Tag: an item of the Heron® acquisition that defines the 3D position of a target, annotation, spherical target, ... in the Heron® point cloud.

Target: (in Reconstructor® , a 3D point directly linked to a point cloud that can be used to georeference it. 

Tracklet: a fragment of the trajectory followed by the Heron® system.


V

Voxel: abbreviation for 'volume element'. A voxel represents a value on a regular grid in three-dimensional space. Each voxel is a quantum unit of volume and has a numeric value (or values) associated with it that represents some measurable properties or independent variables of a real object.

Voxelization: it converts geometric objects into a set of voxels that best approximates the continuous object. All the points in each voxel will be approximated with the center of the voxel or another point obtained from the average position of the points inside of it.


W

Workspace: the environment in which the Heron®  projects are saved.