Walking Through a Photo: 3D photography offers worlds of new possibilities

Since World War II, the U.S. military has relied on radar. The simplistic radar depictions of planes, boats and submarines has left something to be desired by the military, which wants to accurately determine the distance and size of targets.

Utah State University researcher Robert Pack is using the same technology to develop survey instruments that are far ahead of current military reconnaissance. Pack's research has the potential to revolutionize myriad industries, including engineering, medicine, architecture and entertainment.

Pack has been with USU since 1998 and specializes in geological and geomatics engineering. He and his team of engineers have been working on the development of advanced 3-D multispectral imaging, a technology that produces complex 3-D images in the same time it takes to snap a photo. It is based on lidar technology, which is similar to radar, but uses light in place of radio waves.

The possibilities have made Pack's technology a shining star among start-up companies. After moving his research to the USU Center for Advanced Imaging Ladar, a Utah Center of Excellence, he was awarded a patent for the basic technology and expects to have several more in the next few years.

USU has also licensed Pack's camera to a Salt Lake City-based company, RappidMapper, Inc.

This approach to 3-D photography started as a small idea by Pack and his brother, Brent, a retired electrical engineer. As they pursued it, he said they were amazed to find out no one else had come up with the idea before.

"Three-dimensional photography solves the problem of being able to characterize natural objects," Pack said. "It enables people to analyze, measure and better understand the objects when using a computer."

The camera created by Pack, is composed of three common technologies: lidar, digital photography and a global positioning system (GPS). The camera, called Texel, takes a normal digital photo of the scene in front of it, while the lidar and GPS are used at the same time to collect additional information. Once the 3-D photographic image is captured, it shows up on the screen like a normal digital photo. Unlike traditional digital photography, however, the scene is automatically embedded with distance, area and volume information.

When multiple Texel photos are combined, a complete 3-D scene is formed with views from every desirable position, Pack said. At this point, users can "walk-through" the photo, viewing it from a first-person perspective and seeing in 3-D.

Current 3-D processes use many of the same technologies as Pack's, but each one must be integrated with the others manually after the photos are taken and the information is collected. This takes a great deal of time and processing power. The Texel image, on the other hand, "comes out of the box in 3-D when it is downloaded onto a computer," Pack said. No configuration is needed, and the file is small enough to email, while achieving 10 times more accuracy than other techniques.

In addition to improving detection technology, Pack's camera could be used for a wide variety of other military applications, such as surveying a battlefield in real time and identifying tanks and artillery hidden under the cover of trees. Not only does 3-D visualization improve accuracy, it is also more cost efficient. The Department of Defense has granted a three-year contract to Pack to develop this camera for use in a cruise missile.

Three-dimensional visualization, however, isn't valuable for just the military. The technology is being investigated for use in many fields, including space exploration, crime investigation, engineering, architecture and entertainment, Pack said.

"We want to revolutionize the 3-D camera market and put these in the hands of photographers of all sorts who care about the dimensions and shapes of objects," he said.

In one possible use, a surveyor would be able to fly over a forest with the Texel camera and measure the height and species of trees, as well as the dimension and density of the forest.

The camera could also be used to document crime scenes in three dimensions, allowing investigators and jurors to walk through a scene long after critical evidence has been moved or cleaned up. Several federal and state agencies have already expressed interest in testing the technology for this purpose, he said.

Other industries that do extensive surveying, such as engineering and architecture, also stand to gain much from this technology. Buildings, construction sites and landscape designs could all be pre-visualized before they are completed.

The entertainment industry could also benefit from 3-D photography. Instead of spending millions of dollars to create digital scenes of physical sets, animators for movies and games could easily photograph the sets and locations and import them into a computer.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is interested in taking the camera to space by integrating the Texel camera into future Mars rovers, as well as in devices for more distant expeditions, Pack said.

In the meantime, Pack said there are many of avenues to explore. He hopes to make the tripod more easily airborne and eventually put the technology in unmanned aerial vehicles.

Pack said he is also working to increase the shots that can be taken per second from 600 to 200,000, as opposed to a typical digital camera that takes four to six shots per second. He also wants to improve the accuracy and range of the camera so it could take pictures of objects up to a little more than three miles or five kilometers away.

Pack said pictures are worth a thousand words, but an RMI image is worth a thousand pictures.

"I am really excited to see where this technology can take us," he said. "People have always needed to know what's out there. They need to know what sizes and shapes things are. This technology provides a new observation for us. Perhaps it allows us to discover things that have never been discovered."

Source: USU Vice President for Research Office, anna.mcentire@usu.edu.

Contact: Bob Pack, USU's Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, rtpack@cc.usu.edu, 435-797-7049.