Real‐Time Mobile Transmission and Rendering of UAV LiDAR Massive Point Cloud

Abstract

ABSTRACT To address the limitations of existing UAV‐mounted LiDAR systems, this paper proposes an innovative real‐time transmission and rendering technology for massive point cloud data. The technology utilises an onboard LiDAR placed on the front of the UAV to collect 3D spatial point cloud data, which is transmitted to an onboard Intel NUC for critical processing steps such as data analysis and lossy compression. The compressed data are then transmitted via the UAV's video transmission link to a mobile control app, enabling real‐time transmission and rendering of massive point cloud data on Android terminals. This approach effectively overcomes the portability drawbacks of traditional methods that rely on bulky computers, requiring only an Android mobile terminal. A well‐designed lossy compression strategy significantly improves data transmission efficiency and reduces computational pressure for point cloud rendering on low‐memory mobile devices. Integrated with the SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping) algorithm on a flight test platform composed of a DJI M350 RTK UAV, Velodyne VLP16 LiDAR, Intel NUC onboard computer and DJI RC Plus Android controller, the system achieves high‐precision 3D point cloud real‐time transmission and rendering, enabling real‐time Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) UAV control. Experimental results demonstrate that this technology can process millions of point cloud data per second on the UAV mobile controller, exhibiting excellent real‐time data transmission and rendering performance under various environmental conditions, including low latency and high frame rates, meeting stringent requirements for high precision and real‐time responsiveness.