A7-[FreePerspective] - Overview

Real-time Aggregation of Spatial Perceptions into a Renderable 3D Representation

 

The project aims at creating three-dimensional maps of unknown environments. The motivation is searching for earthquake victims with an actuated endoscope. Endoscopic images, which are used already, are spatially difficult to grasp, so we support the operator with an overview ("guardian angel") perspective. To ensure the usability of our system, we will conduct studies in cooperation with urban search and rescue (USAR) professionals.

The project uses range cameras (so called time-of-flight cameras) which measure a distance and intensity value for every pixel. The advantage of these cameras is that they give three-dimensional data at a high frequency requiring very little space. The scientific challenge lies in the heavily flawed range-camera data and the real-time requirements of the system. We will model the flaws of the camera probabilistically and pose the problem as maximum-likelihood estimation of a voxel-map. To achieve real-time performance we develop efficient data representations and algorithms which adapt the map as quickly as possible.