Integrated system for auto-registered hyperspectral and 3D structure measurement at the point scale

Hyperspectral and 3D structure measurement are among the active research areas of remote sensing in recent years. The combination of these two kinds of information can provide improved outcomes distinctly, which is widely used in vegetation physiology, precision agriculture and radiative transfer modeling. However, the registration and synchronization has been overlooked in data acquisition. The mismatched characteristics have limited the potential application of the hyperspectral and 3D structure data as a complete data set. This paper proposes a laboratory prototype which can integrate the hyperspectral and 3D structure measurement at the point scale. The prism dispersion and laser triangulation ranging are performed in a common optical path as a result of the coplanar design of the critical optical devices. The hyperspectral data and depth data of the same object point are acquired from the same focal plane, which makes the data auto-registered spatially and temporally. Test experiment verifies the accuracy of the data provided by the prototype and the actual measurement experiment demonstrates the feasibility of the design in vegetation observation.