This article explains how to configure automatic people masking, the Aura 2.2 feature that detects and removes people from colorized point clouds and 360 panoramic images during processing.
For an overview of what the feature does and the outcomes it produces, see Understanding automatic people masking.
What you will need
Scan data captured with an Emesent scanner and offloaded to a processing computer
Aura 2.2 or later
Procedure
Step 1: Open processing settings for the scan
In Aura, select the scan to process.
Select Colorize or Extract 360 images depending on the output required.
The Processing Settings panel opens.
Step 2: Configure automatic people masking
In the Processing Settings panel, locate the Image masking section.
Confirm Automatic people masking is enabled. The setting is enabled by default in Aura 2.2.
To disable detection for this scan, set Automatic people masking to off.
For 360 image extraction, set Blur masked regions to on if blurred output is required instead of a solid mask.
Step 3: Start processing
Confirm all other processing settings are correct for the scan.
Select Start.
Aura processes the scan and applies the configured masking to the output.
Outcome
Detected people are removed from colorization and 360 panoramic image outputs according to the selected settings. People masking does not remove people from the point cloud itself. Their points may remain, colored from background frames where they were not present. To remove people from the point cloud, enable the Moving object filter.
Additional information
Automatic people masking detects people only. Vehicles, equipment, and other objects are not masked.
Detection accuracy depends on lighting, distance from the scanner, image resolution, and how much of the person is visible in the source frames. GX1 detection performs better at higher image resolution settings. Partially occluded people may not always be detected.
Operator masking templates (right-handed, left-handed, centre) remain available when automatic people masking is disabled. Use a template to mask the operator with a fixed region instead of automatic detection.
Enabling automatic people masking increases processing time by approximately 30-50%, depending on scan size and the masking settings selected. Processing time on ST-X scans is typically longer than on GX1 scans.