CyberEurope

Abstract

In this feature, we will try to describe the characteristics of current cyberpsychology research in Europe. In particular, CyberEurope aims at describing the leading research groups and projects running on the other side of the Ocean.

Harvest4D: Creating Interactive 3D Scene

The FP7 FET Open project Harvest4D (https://harvest4d.org) deals with the acquisition, processing, and display of dynamic 3D data. The current acquisition process for visual models of 3D worlds requests:

• planning a specific scanning campaign;

• carefully selecting the (often costly) acquisition devices;

• performing the on-site acquisition at the required resolution; and

• post-processing the acquired data to produce a beautified triangulated and textured model.

Moreover, in the future, we will be faced with the widespread availability of sensing devices that deliver different data streams. These data need to be processed and displayed in a new way.

The Harvest4D project proposes a radical change in acquisition and processing technology. Instead of a goal-driven acquisition that determines the devices and sensors, the Harvest4D method lets the sensors and resulting available data determine the acquisition process. A variety of challenging problems need to be solved: huge amounts of data, different modalities, varying scales, and dynamic, noisy, and colorful data.

One application scenario of Harvest4D is infrastructure data acquisition, for example archaeological sites. In particular, one work package in the Harvest4D project deals with new visualization and interaction paradigms, for example visualization of large 3D data over the web. In the following, we describe our first results in that research direction.

Interactive 3D scene “San Silvestro”

The project proposes a method for remote navigation of complex archeological 3D environments especially tailored for web visualization. The intuitive navigation includes two modes, where the user can explore the model from the top (bird's-eye mode—left image) and walk inside the environment in a walk-through fashion (first-person mode—right image).

“Rocca San Silvestro” (IT) was a miner's medieval village built around the 10th century. The data set used for creating the 3D scene is composed of 308 images extracted from a full-HD video acquired with a drone. A point cloud has been generated with the Multi-View Environment (implementation of a complete end-to-end pipeline for image-based geometry reconstruction developed by partner TU Darmstadt; for more info, see http://goo.gl/pvKBDg). Several different flights around the village allowed more than 400 frames to be extracted. These were used to obtain a complete multiview stereo reconstruction of the village. The model of the village can be extremely valuable for several reasons. Moreover, the possibility to navigate a 3D model freely gives users the chance to overcome its peculiar placement on top of a hill.

The “interactive view” created from the captured data can be explored using at http://goo.gl/kWhL6u.

Harvesting Dynamic 3D Worlds from Commodity Sensor Clouds, Harvest4D involve six partners from five Member States: Austria, Germany, Italy, France, and Netherlands.