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05TÜBİTAK RUTE · 3D data

From pointsto meaning.

Separating the railway environment point by point. A study connecting data exploration, model choice, predictions and visible errors.

Data
Rail3D · HMLS
Processing
Open3D
Model
3DMASC + LightGBM

My contribution

I prepared the point clouds and carried out model experiments, feature extraction, classification and result visualization.

05Rail3D / Open3DHMLS
An Open3D view of a colored HMLS point cloud with rails, vegetation, a pole and wires.
Open3D exploration on HMLS · Actual output from the internship notebook.

01Point clouds

Dense data. Fine structures.

Rails, ground and vegetation share the same cloud. Fine structures such as wires are more sensitive to point density.

I used the HMLS subset of Rail3D. With Open3D, I explored the data from different angles, tried filtering and cropping, and examined how sampling choices affect its structure.

01HMLS_04 · RGBHMLS
The RGB view of the HMLS_04 point cloud showing railway tracks and surrounding vegetation.
HMLS_04 · Original RGB view from the internship notebook, without prediction overlays.

Data: Rail3D — Kharroubi and colleagues; Hungarian MLS — Mate Cserep (2022), Version 1, DOI: 10.17632/ccxpzhx9dj.1.

Rail3D · Hungarian MLS · CC BY-NC 3.0

Prediction and error overlays are outputs of my internship work. Images were re-encoded for the web, and comparison panels were cropped separately. Raw data is not distributed.

02Choosing a method

Preserve the structure first.

Data preparation matters alongside the model. The limits of early experiments informed the next approach.

  1. 01

    Exploring with Open3D

    I examined point density, cropping, filtering and geometric processing to understand the data.

  2. 02

    A PointNet experiment

    Aggressive downsampling removed information from wires and other fine structures. I examined sampling choices and class confusion.

  3. 03

    3DMASC + LightGBM

    I extracted geometric features at multiple scales and worked on classification with LightGBM.

02Processing experimentHMLS
An Open3D processing example with colored linear structures above a blue surface.
An Open3D processing experiment · Colors belong to this source output.
Method3DMASC · LightGBM
  1. HMLSPoint cloud
  2. ExploreOpen3D
  3. SampleData preparation
  4. FeaturesMulti-scale 3DMASC
  5. LightGBMClassification
  6. PredictClass colors
  7. Analyze errorsIncorrect points
The diagram summarizes the study steps; its animation does not measure processing time.

03Actual outputs

Make errors visible too.

Class predictions and error views across three HMLS examples. Pink points mark incorrectly predicted regions.

LightGBM · focus501 / 03
HMLS_04 · Class prediction
Class prediction
HMLS_04 · Error view
Error view

HMLS_04 · LightGBM prediction and error view · Source focus5 output; pink points show errors.

HMLS_12 · Class prediction
Class prediction
HMLS_12 · Error view
Error view

HMLS_12 · LightGBM prediction and error view · Source focus5 output; pink points show errors.

HMLS_20 · Class prediction
Class prediction
HMLS_20 · Error view
Error view

HMLS_20 · LightGBM prediction and error view · Source focus5 output; pink points show errors.

HMLS_04 · LightGBM prediction and error view · Source focus5 output; pink points show errors.
  • Ground
  • Vegetation
  • Rail
  • Wires
  • Building
  • Error

These figures focus on ground, vegetation, rails, wires and buildings. Poles are excluded from this five-class view.

One experiment’s test record

HMLS · Test split · 3DMASC + LightGBM

Accuracy
91.43%
mIoU
45.39%

These values belong to the test record of runs_3dmasc_lgbm. Class scope and point count are not specified in that record. The focus5 figures above are separate outputs and are not presented as visual evidence for the same run.

04The resulting work

From data to error analysis.

  1. 01

    3D data preparation

    Experience exploring point clouds and geometric processing.

  2. 02

    Model experiments

    Research from PointNet to classification with multi-scale features.

  3. 03

    Visible errors

    Outputs that bring class predictions and incorrect points together.

  4. 04

    Documentation

    Recorded experiments, limitations and evaluation results.

A point-cloud and machine-learning study carried out during the internship. It does not claim a live LiDAR system, completed clearance verification or field deployment.

Contact

Let’s buildthe next system together.

As an engineer focused on turning AI models into systems that work in the real world, I’m open to new opportunities and technical collaborations. If you work on computer vision, edge AI or applied machine learning, I’d be glad to connect.

Muhammed Ali Yıldırım

Applied AI / ML Engineering

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