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Highlights

  • Low-cost LiDAR enables precise, accessible cave mapping
  • Open-source tools streamline cave surveying workflows
  • Mobile mapping provides detailed, reproducible cave models
  • Automation simplifies generating cave ground plans and profiles
  • Community-driven innovation advances speleological research

Abstract

The paper examines the potential use of low-cost LiDAR for cave surveying. Mobile mapping using LiDAR complements traditional speleological surveying using a polygonal traverse. These methods assist each other, with one serving as an independent control measurement for the other, ultimately resulting in a more accurate 3D model. The testing results show that achieving high accuracy and detailed cave representation is possible using open hardware and open-source software. Both spacious and well-indented cave sections and narrow passages barely passable by humans were successfully mapped. The surveying process is significantly faster than traditional cave mapping, as drawing cave sketches by hand is unnecessary, being the most time-consuming task on site. This paper also presents a procedure for automated ground plan generation and profile generation from 3D point clouds, further expediting and simplifying the work for speleologists using scanning systems. Also, it is confirmed that the results are reproducible and do not depend on the subjective interpretation of the cartographer, as is the case with traditional speleological drawings.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5038/1827-806X.53.3.2535

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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