Researchers Find Use for Smartphones in 3D Model Creation
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh have
discovered they can use a simple smartphone as a measurement device in
the
creation of 3D models. By moving a smartphone from side to side or back
and
forth while either using video or simply switching the phone's screen
orientation from portrait to landscape, the user can get a sense of an
object's
real size.
While video from smartphones and other devices have
been used
in creating 3D models for some time, this is the first time they have
also been
used to determine the scale of models — by taking advantage of
relatively
inexpensive inertial measurement units (IMU).
"We've been able to get accuracies with
cheap sensors that we
hadn't imagined," said Simon Lucey, an assistant research professor at
the
Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, where the research
on using
smartphones in 3D model creation is being conducted.
For instance, Lucey pointed out, with a facetracker
program,
they have been able to measure the distance between a person's pupils
within
half a millimeter, making it possible to go virtual shopping for
eyeglass
frames.
More than 30 years ago, researchers at Carnegie
Mellon
pioneered the use of 2D images or video to build increasingly accurate
3D
models, but taking scale into account has always been a challenge.
But now, as smartphones incorporate higher frame-rate
video
cameras, the accuracy of the technique will become even better.
"With a high frame-rate camera," Lucey said, "we can
excite
the IMU by moving the phone faster, without corrupting the image."
Eventually, he said he believes, similar low energy-consuming
techniques
will be used with robots and self-driving cars rather than the
power-hungry
technologies like radar and laser rangefinders now being experimented
with.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.