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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-109-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Optimal Path Planning for Kinematic Laser Scanning</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Knechtel</surname>
<given-names>Julius</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0000-8550-9700</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kordgholiabad</surname>
<given-names>Mohammad</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Haunert</surname>
<given-names>Jan-Henrik</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation, University of Bonn, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>03</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XI-2-2026</volume>
<fpage>109</fpage>
<lpage>116</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Julius Knechtel et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-2-2026/109/2026/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-109-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-2-2026/109/2026/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-109-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-2-2026/109/2026/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-109-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-2-2026/109/2026/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-109-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Prompted by the rapid advancements in software and hardware, 3D building data for numerous different applications is nowadays often captured via mobile or kinematic laser scanning. However, in contrast to other laser scanning methods, there exist only a few approaches tailored for the planning of a kinematic laser scan survey, and none of them provides an optimality guarantee. Therefore, we propose a novel approach based on Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) to find the optimal trajectory for such a survey. To obtain a high-quality point cloud, we account for scanner-related constraints that influence the quality of the resulting point cloud. Moreover, we enable the introduction of tie points to mitigate the effects of uncertainties in the position estimation that are propagated in the acquired data. In our problem formulation, we aim to find the best tour in a properly weighted graph. For this, we propose two different weight settings to either enable a purely length-based optimization or to increase the redundancy in the measurements by incorporating a &lt;em&gt;Visibility Ratio Factor&lt;/em&gt; (VRF) into the objective function.&lt;br /&gt;To prove the applicability of our approach for offline panning, we apply our formulation to three different scenarios. In this context, the VRF-based weighting enables a significant speed-up of the solving process while resulting in only slightly prolonged routes. This approach paves the way for applying exact algorithms with an optimality guarantee in the planning process for efficient kinematic laser scanning surveys.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="8"/></counts>
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