ABSTRACT
This chapter draws evolution in topographic data acquisition and describes the overviews of top-view light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data acquisition. A new era of remote sensing technologies allows surveyors to obtain topographic data from a remote distance without touching target objects. Amongst of these top-view topographic data acquisitions, an aerial LiDAR system has long received considerable attentions due to their reliabilities and precise measurement capabilities. Besides the aerial based surveying, the ground-based surveying is also imperative in top-view LiDAR data acquisition. Extracting key components of the raw top-view LiDAR point cloud data has been widely discussed in different fields and applications. Even though some top-view LiDAR point cloud data are available, most topographic data nowadays are still provided in the regular square-matrix structured grids. In top-view LiDAR data acquisition, errors can be caused by the surveying equipment also controllers and data loggers.
