Point cloud derivative products can be generated using what type of sensor?

• A. Either passive or active
• B. Only passive
• C. Only active
• D. Neither

Answer: (A)

Point cloud derivative products are built from 3D representations of the scene, and you can obtain them from different sensing approaches. Passive sensors, like cameras, can deliver point clouds through photogrammetry—by analyzing overlapping images and reconstructing depth with structure-from-motion and multi-view stereo. Active sensors, such as LiDAR, emit signals and measure their returns to directly compute 3D coordinates for every point. Because both methods produce 3D point data, derivatives like 3D models, meshes, and DSMs can be created from either type of sensor.