Patent awarded to PDF3D for 3D point cloud processing

Visual Technology Services, owner of the PDF3D brand, has received a patent for point cloud simplification, supporting large point cloud reduction and report generation implementations in the PDF3D software systems, the company announced in a news release. The Grant of Patent GB2521452 for Point Cloud Simplification was awarded by the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office, and the technology is used for geospatial environmental survey, laser scanning and civil engineering.

“With the expanding use of terrestrial, UAV and airborne lidar, the volume of acquired 3D point cloud data is expanding rapidly,” said Ian Curington, CEO and co-author of the new patent. “Encoding point clouds into 3D PDF requires simplification to allow collaborative communication and email distribution. The granting of this critical patent strengthens our position as leader in 3D technical publishing technology using the 3D PDF standard.”

The patent covers methods used to reduce the number of samples in a large 3D point cloud, which results in optimum sample selection, minimizing distortions and preserving most feature relevant subsets of the original samples or by representative new point locations and attributes. The method achieves accuracy with computational expense compared to previous methods, the company said. The software implementation of this method is currently licensed to laser scanner manufacturers, 3D point cloud processing system vendors and to commercial survey companies.

“The company’s intellectual property strategy is very well aligned with commercial software license activities,” said Ian Bingham and Vicki Salmon, the founding partners of IP Asset LLP. “The IP strategy is closely following agile and responsive R&D as the 3D PDF use cases expand into new vertical markets. We look forward to further news of the growing PDF3D patent portfolio.”