A method of detecting objects from terrestrial based
mobile mapping data is disclosed, wherein the terrestrial based
mobile mapping data has been captured by way of a terrestrial based
mobile mapping vehicle driving on a road having a driving direction, the mobile mapping data including
laser scanner data, source images obtained by at least one camera and position and orientation data of the vehicle, wherein the
laser scanner data includes
laser points, each laser point having associated position and orientation data, and each
source image comprises associated position and orientation data. In at least one embodiment, the method includes: retrieving a position and orientation of the vehicle; filtering the laser
scanner data in dependence of the position and orientation of the vehicle to obtain laser points corresponding to regions of interest; retrieving a
source image associated with the position and orientation of the vehicle; mapping the laser points corresponding to regions of interest to image coordinates of the
source image to generate a recognition
mask; combining the recognition
mask and the source image to obtain candidate 3D images representative of possible objects within the regions of interest; and, detecting a group of objects from the candidate 3D images. By combining image recognition and laser scanner recognition the
detection rate can be increased to a very high percentage, thereby substantially reducing human effort. Furthermore, the generating of regions of interest in the
laser data, enables a significant reduction of the
processing power and / or the
processing time needed to detect the objects in the images.