“Smartphone RGB-LiDAR Sensing for Merchantable Tree Trunk Height Measurement Using Panorama Based Method “

W. Xiang, Z. Yin, S. Fei, and S. Zhang, “Smartphone RGB-LiDAR Sensing for Merchantable Tree Trunk Height Measurement Using Panorama Based Method ,“ Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 209, 110180 (2027)

Abstract

This paper presents a cylindrical-panorama-based method for true-scale tree trunk height measurement using smartphone red-green-blue (RGB) and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensing beyond the LiDAR’s effective range. The approach combines feature-based sparse three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction with LiDAR-assisted global scale recovery, followed by cylindrical panorama generation for trunk localization, segmentation, and measurement. A frustum model regularizes trunk geometry, and target points selected in the panorama are mapped back to 3D via ray–surface intersection to estimate height. Experiments on 248 trees in outdoor environments achieved a mean error of −0.001m and an RMSE of 0.189m, demonstrating that smartphone RGB-LiDAR sensing can provide accurate and practical trunk height measurements in forestry.