Comparison of the Wearable Mobile Laser Scanner (WMLS) with Other Point Cloud Data Collection Methods in Cultural Heritage: A Case Study of Diokaisareia

For the protection of cultural heritage, modern techniques have been used alongside traditional methods in recent years. In addition to two modern measurement techniques (Unmanned aerial vehicle photogrammetry and terrestrial laser scanner) that have been the subject of much research as a three-dimensional (3D) data collection technique for the documentation of cultural heritage, the Wearable Mobile Laser Scanner (WMLS) technique has also recently been included in the research. Especially in cultural heritage documentation, it is essential to obtain accurate and precise data as well as fast and high-quality data. This study includes the visual and statistical comparison of the WMLS measurement method, which enables fast data collection, working with the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm, in terms of accuracy and precision. To assess the accuracy of the three measurement approaches, eighteen (18) checkpoints (ChP) considered absolute values were measured using total-station techniques. With these data, the root means square error (RMSE) of each point were determined according to all three measurement techniques, and the directional and statistical errors were calculated. As a result of this research, while the terrestrial laser scanner method with an RMSE of 0.8 cm provides the best value, the RMSE of 2.64 cm and 4.92 cm was calculated in unmanned aerial vehicle photogrammetry and WMLS methods, respectively. At the end of the study, theories and limitations were taken into consideration for all three approaches. It was observed that the obtained accuracy of all three provide the measurement principles of cultural heritage and that a modern measurement tool such as WMLS was a significant innovation.