Research Projects

The goal of the project is to develop methods for modeling and surveying large construction sites. The project will make use of unmanned aerial vehicles and existing stationary or pan-tilt zoom cameras at the construction site. The goal is to provide accurate 3D models on a regular basis of the whole site. This will generate a 4D data set (3D+time). This data can then be used for documentation, visualization (we will use a mobile augmented reality system to overlay e.g. the plan or a model of the building) as well as measurement (e.g., how much material has been transported). From a scientific point of view we will have to solve following tasks:

• Dense 3D reconstruction from highly overlapping data, we will use variational methods implemented on the GPU.
• Accurate registration of subsequent models over time. Since the 3D reconstruction is changing (per definition) the method needs to handle this. This is an instance of the highly relevant 3D model updating problem.
• Integration of multiple camera sources. Using the 3D model and additional cameras poses the problem of localization of the additional cameras with respect to the 3D model which is again an instance the registration problem.
• Development of a handheld AR platform for visualization. In order to use AR technology the pose of the platform with respect to the model and the reconstruction needs to be determined.

Smartphones have evolved considerably in processing power over the last years. They now feature multi-core CPUs as well as GPUs and consumer-quality cameras up to HD resolution. This makes them an interesting platform for graphics and vision and opens new opportunities for research.

The aim of AR4DOC is to facilitate the task of document inspection by a human operator. This requires the person to have detailed knowledge about the nature of a document, which may be outdated or even unavailable at the time of inspection.

We seek to provide this information in an interactive way using Mobile Augmented Reality (AR), so that a well-grounded decision on the vailidity of a document is possible. This involves several tasks such as document localization, recognition, tracking, presentation as well as interaction.

SMART VIDENTE focuses on research on the next-generation field information system for utility companies, providing mobile workforces with capabilities for on-site inspection and planning, data capture and as-built surveying. For achieving this aim, handheld Augmented Reality technology is used for on-site modification and surveying of geometric and semantic attributes of geospatial 3D models on the user’s handheld device. The project aims at providing a fully functional handheld Augmented Reality device for utility field workers. To achieve this goal, we require a software solution that can visualize registered three-dimensional underground models in real time. Registration in 3D requires being able to perform accurate global localization and posing tracking in real time without relying on unrealistic assumptions concerning prior scene knowledge. We will address this issue through fusion of vision, inertial and GPS sensors. Visualization requires the rendering of complex 3D models of underground infrastructure in a way that is easily comprehensible and useful to the mobile worker. This requires visualization techniques for geometric as well as non-geometric information from the geo-database, in particular of hidden objects through so-called “X-ray vision”. These visualization techniques need to be adaptive to scene complexity and environmental conditions. The three-dimensional geometry to be shown is not available per default, but must be extracted from a conventional database system and interpreted on-the-fly as a 3D visualization using procedural modeling techniques. We want to support annotation and even surveying tasks in the field, so the system must also allow to write information back to the geo-database. Finally, we will work with three large Austrian infrastructure companies to assess the usability of our solutions.