3-D Scans From Drone Photos Can Build Incredible Digital Models

(Source: technologyreview.com)  

The 30-meter tall statue of Christ overlooking Rio de Janeiro from a nearby mountain was under construction for nine years before its opening in 1931. It took just hours to build the first detailed 3-D scan of the monument late last year, using more than 2,000 photos captured by a small drone that buzzed all around it with an ordinary digital camera. The statue’s digital double was unveiled last month, and is accurate to between two and five centimeters, enough to capture individual mosaic tiles.+

The project was intended to help efforts to preserve the statue and to demonstrate how drones could lead to a dramatic increase in high-resolution 3-D replicas of buildings, terrain, and other objects. Being able to easily and frequently capture detailed 3-D imagery could have many uses, such as speeding up construction projects and helping Hollywood make better special effects, says Christoph Strecha, CEO and cofounder of Pix4D, the Swiss company that led the project. It collaborated with drone manufacturer Aeryon Labs and researchers at PUC University of Rio de Janeiro.

Mapping tools from companies including Google and Apple have made outdoor 3-D imagery commonplace in recent years. But they are mostly built with 3-D data from aircraft carrying expensive equipment. The 3-D shape of buildings and terrain is most often captured using a technique called lidar, which uses lasers. The photo-real 3-D models of cities in Apple’s “flyover” mode are made by processing images captured by a complex and expensive array of cameras (see “Ultrasharp 3-D Maps”). Both techniques rely on very accurate GPS technology.+

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