US Patent 9508186 Pre-segment point cloud data to run real-time shape extraction faster

A method, apparatus, system, and computer readable storage medium provide the ability to pre-segment point cloud data. Point cloud data is obtained and segmented. The segment information is stored. An indexing structure is created and instantiated with the point cloud data and the segment information. Based on the segment information, a determination is made regarding points needed for shape extraction. Needed points are fetched from the indexing structure an used to extract shapes. The extracted shapes are used to cull points from the point cloud data.