Automatic registration

A computer system for merging multiple point cloud scans comprising:

• (a) a computer;
• (b) a point cloud scanner communicatively coupled to the computer, wherein the point cloud scanner obtains a first raw scan file and a second raw scan file for a scene, wherein each raw scan file comprises multiple points;
• (c) an application executing on the computer that:
• (1) segments the first raw scan file and the second raw scan file by extracting first segments from the first raw scan file and second segments from the second raw scan file, wherein the extracting is based on geometry in the scene;
• (2) filters the first segments and the second segments to:
• (i) reduce a number of the first segments and second segments;
• and
• (ii) identify first features from the reduced number of first segments and second features from the reduced number of second segments;
• (3) coarsely registers one or more of the first features to one or more of the second features to acquire a set of candidate matching feature pairs;
• (4) refines the registering by improving alignment of the set of candidate matching feature pairs, wherein the application refines the registering based on points in the first raw scan file and the second raw scan file corresponding to the first features and the second features;
• (f) scores the candidate matching feature pairs;
• and
• (g) merges the first raw scan file with the second raw scan file based on the scoring, to create a merged scan file.