Automated pipeline reconstruction using deep learning & instance segmentation

BIM is a powerful tool for the construction industry as well as for various other industries, so that its use has increased massively in recent years. Laser scanners are usually used for the measurement, which, in addition to the high acquisition costs, also cause problems on reflective surfaces. The use of photogrammetric techniques for BIM in industrial plants, on the other hand, is less widespread and less automated. CAD software (for point cloud evaluation) contains at best automated reconstruction algorithms for pipes. Fittings, flanges or elbows require a manual reconstruction. We present a method for automated processing of photogrammetric images for modeling pipelines in industrial plants. For this purpose we use instance segmentation and reconstruct the components of the pipeline directly based on the edges of the segmented objects in the images. Hardware costs can be kept low by using photogrammetry instead of laser scanning. Besides the autmatic extraction and reconstruction of pipes, we have also implemented this for elbows and flanges. For object recognition, we fine-tuned different instance segmentation models using our own training data, while also testing various data augmentation techniques. The average precision varies depending on the object type. The best results were achieved with Mask R–CNN. Here, the average precision was about 40%. The results of the automated reconstruction were examined with regard to the accuracy on a test object in the laboratory. The deviations from the reference geometry were in the range of a few millimeters and were comparable to manual reconstruction. In addition, further tests were carried out with images from a plant. Provided that the objects were correctly and completely recognized, a satisfactory reconstruction is possible with the help of our method.