Walking Through a Photo: Three-Dimensional Photos Offer New Possibilities

Robert Pack, Utah State University’s director for the Center for Space Engineering, will present “Walking Through A Photo: Three-Dimensional Photography Offers Worlds Of New Possibilities.” Pack will present as part of “Sunrise Sessions,” a USU lecture series designed to highlight timely and cutting-edge research conducted at the university.

The lecture is Friday, June 8, from 7:30-9 a.m., at the Little America Hotel, 500 South Main Street in Salt Lake City. RSVP to USU Salt Lake office at 801-961-1340

 

Since World War II, the U.S. military has relied on radar — a system of bounced radio signals — to detect moving objects and targets. 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.

 

Pack is using the same technology to develop survey instruments that are light years ahead of current military reconnaissance. Pack’s research has the potential to revolutionize myriad industries, including engineering, medicine, architecture and entertainment.

 

Pack and his team of USU 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.

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

The lecture is sponsored by Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah.

 

 For more information about Pack’s research, email him at rtpack@cc.usu.edu.

 

For more information about the Sunrise Sessions, contact Kent Clark [kent.clark@usu.edu], 435-797-2645.