Simulate LiDAR Acquisitions with HELIOS

Did you ever consider planning and testing your LiDAR campaign in a computer simulation? Would you like a flexible means to generate 3D point cloud data for developing or testing methods? This is easily possible with the laser scanning simulation framework HELIOS (Heidelberg LiDAR Operations Simulator).

There have been major new developments since the first version of HELIOS (Bechtold & Höfle 2016), most importantly:

  • Support of full-waveform simulation (main developer: Niko Lukač, University of Maribor)
  • Advancement of the intensity simulation and significant performance improvements (main developer: Jorge Martínez Sánchez, CiTIUS)

A pre-compiled latest version can be downloaded here. The corresponding wiki contains detailed information on how to set up and handle HELIOS.

Hämmerle et al. 2017))
Visualization of HELIOS forest scan simulations on a (a) terrestrial and (b) UAV platform (Source: Hämmerle et al. 2017)

Missing features in HELIOS? Why not contribute to the project on GitHub – join as developer or submit “issues” you encounter!

Further reading:

Bechtold, S. & Höfle, B. (2016): HELIOS: A Multi-purpose LiDAR Simulation Framework for Research, Planning and Training of Laser Scanning Operations With Airborne, Ground-based Mobile and Stationary Platforms. In: ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, III-3, pp. 161-168. DOI: 10.5194/isprs-annals-III-3-161-2016

Hämmerle, M., Lukač, N., Chen, K.-C., Koma, Zs., Wang, C.-K., Anders, K., Höfle, B. (2017): Simulating various terrestrial and UAV LiDAR scanning configurations for understory forest structure modelling. ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, IV-2/W4, pp. 59-65. DOI: 10.5194/isprs-annals-IV-2-W4-59-2017

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