Literally Lightning-Fast Video Capture

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera

Great research from TU Berlin!



link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th5zlUe6gOE

Spying for Profits

http://www.cnbc.com/id/38722872/

"Ott is volt egy!"

http://twitpic.com/662hqp/full

My new desktop picture.. :)

A shooting star photo taken from IIS by an astronaut.

GPS coordinates estimation and camera calibration from solar shadows

Today, I want to present a new research about GPS coordinates estimation. The geolocation calculation of the digital camera was accomplished by using the shadow trajectories. Video sequences were analyzed by this technique in downtown Washington DC and the camera calibration was feasible with the camera footage as well.
I think, this research offers a very useful method in the forensic science!You will find the full paper here: http://cil.cs.ucf.edu/pdf/Junejo_Foroosh_CVIU2010.pdf

source: http://cil.cs.ucf.edu/

Simple, reliable 2.5D photography

More and more people are experimenting with home-made, cheap 3D scanning devices, or something similar:

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/25d/

iPhone Camera for a 3D Project

I like PhotoModeler, you can create in this program excellent 3D model with texture!

You can use only iPhone with fixed lens as a survey instrument, sounds great... :)
Here is a good example:

".....The photos were loaded into PhotoModeler Scanner, marked for key points and oriented (PhotoModeler figures out where the iPhone was at the time of each exposure). Then the DSM (dense surface modeling) algorithm was run on the photos to produce dense point clouds - like a laser scan would do but all correctly tied together...."




Source and more information: http://www.photomodeler.com/applications/other/iPhone_Inukshuk.htm

Sunset

"Layers of Earth's atmosphere, brightly colored as the sun sets, are featured in this image taken by the STS-127 crew on the Earth-orbiting space shuttle Endeavour. This image was taken on July 29, 2009, one day before the shuttle landed, completing a 16-day, 6.5-million mile journey.

Image Credit: NASA"




link: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica

"The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) is the first true-color, high-spatial-resolution image of the seventh continent. It is constructed from nearly 1100 individually selected Landsat-7 ETM+ scenes. Each image was orthorectified and adjusted for geometric, sensor and illumination variations to a standardized, almost seamless surface reflectance product. Mosaicing to avoid clouds produced a high quality, nearly cloud-free benchmark data set of Antarctica for the International Polar Year from images collected primarily during 1999–2003...."

I like movies, one of my favorite is “The Thing” in the sci-fi/horror category. The story plays on an Antarctic research station. The man can feel on this place the weakness, it is impossible to get help. If I could choose between ice and desert, like extreme places on the earth, I would like to travel to Antarctica. Darkness and nothing (wintertime)…. It is peaceful!

link:

http://lima.usgs.gov/

1001 Wonders > Europe > Benelux > Netherlands > Rietveld Schröder : map

Nice work! Panorama pictures give us good solutions to create fine visualizations!

http://www.world-heritage-tour.org/europe/benelux/netherlands/rietveld-schroder/map.html

The Third & The Seventh

CG video:

http://vimeo.com/7809605

digital 210 king

A very good blog about Building Information Modeling (BIM) with Autodesk applications.


http://www.digital210king.org/blog.php?p=5&elq=nl

2008 AFE ANALYST OF THE YEAR

Save cost and save time with feature analyst! A very good ArcGIS extension.



http://www.featureanalyst.com/feature_analyst/publications/success/sansouci.ppt

Using Feature Analyst to Automate Counts of Photographed Indiana Bats

I like batman, one of my favorite heroes.... :) More about bat survey.....



Abstract:
"The Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) is a Federally listed endangered species found in the Midwest and eastern United States. Its population has profound implications for forest management throughout its range. Declining populations could lead to timber harvest restrictions and changes to other land management practices in Midwestern and eastern forests. The Forest Plan and Biological Opinion of the Hoosier National Forest (Indiana) require hibernacula (i.e., winter hibernation sites) occupied by the Indiana bat to be monitored regularly to assess changes in population numbers. State and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists survey the bats every other winter while the bats are hibernating. Because management decisions and recovery action priorities are based on the population estimates and trends determined from these surveys, it is critical that they are accurate. During the surveys, individual bats and small clusters are counted directly, but those in larger clusters are estimated by multiplying the approximate area of the cluster by an assumed bat packing density. Unfortunately, estimates derived by these techniques can be highly inaccurate. In many hibernacula, using a digital camera to document bat numbers could reduce stress to the bats and also increase the accuracy of the population estimate by allowing the bats to be counted manually on a computer screen in an office setting. Nevertheless, this is a very tedious and labor-intensive task that some state and federal agencies cannot afford. An accurate, rapid, and more cost-effective way to count photographed bats is needed. With sponsorship from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Remote Sensing Steering Committee, the Remote Sensing Applications Center conducted a study to investigate the feasibility of rapidly deriving accurate counts of photographed bats using Feature Analyst, an extension for ArcGIS. Counts derived with Feature Analyst were typically within one to nine percent of manually interpreted counts and processing times of less than four minutes per photo were achieved. This represents a significant improvement over traditional in-cave estimates and has the potential for high-volume use, which could further reduce the per photo processing time."

http://www.featureanalyst.com/feature_analyst/publications/success/bats.pdf

A New Way to 3D Scan Photo-based Scanning - Saves Time and Money

Paper by Alan Walford

I like it. Scanning with photos. :)



"Introduction
Do you need to create dense 3D point clouds and detailed surface models of physical objects, and do you want to do it in a cost-effective and efficient manner? A new class of 3D scanning technologies, called photo-based scanning, may be the solution you are looking for. This new technology uses a standard off-the-shelf digital camera in combination with specialized software that analyzes the digital images - there is no additional hardware required. The new technology is called photo-based scanning, or photogrammetric scanning. In this white paper we define 3D scanning, review the current methods for 3D scanning, introduce photo-based scanning, plus examine strengths and weaknesses of the various technologies."

"How Is Photo-Based Scanning Done?
These are typical steps for executing a 3D scan with a photo-based scanning system:
1. Ensure the object or scene has a suitable pattern or texture on the surface.
2. Ensure good and consistent lighting during photography.
3. If there are no suitable, easily-identifiable points around the scene or object, place some high contrast targets.
4. Take two or more photographs of the object or scene - these are often taken as pairs with the pair of photographs being close to parallel but separated horizontally.
5. Load the photographs into the photo-based scanning software.
6. In the software perform the orientation step - where the software, using the targets or sharp point markings, solves where the camera was during photography.
7. Initiate the software’s automated scanning/matching step on whole photos or selected sub-regions.
8. The resulting 3D point cloud can be filtered, meshed (to convert to a triangulated surface), or merged with other point clouds.
9. Export the result, perform measurements, or visualize with projected photo-textures.
"

Google maps for indoors

http://www.smartertechnology.com/c/a/Technology-For-Change/Charting-the-Final-FrontierGoogle-Maps-for-Indoors/

Night sky, milky way

http://www.sergebrunier.com/gallerie/pleinciel/360.swf

Private "laser shield"

I don`t believe it....that must be a very interesting system!




http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6841380.ece