Integrating data from 3D CAD and 3D cameras for Real-Time Modeling

In a reversal of historic trends, the capital facilities industry is expressing an increasing desire for automation of equipment and construction processes. Simultaneously, the industry has become conscious that higher levels of interoperability are a key towards higher productivity and safer projects. In complex, dynamic, and rapidly changing three-dimensional (3D) environments such as facilities sites, cutting-edge 3D sensing technologies and processing algorithms are one area of development that can dramatically impact those projects factors. New 3D technologies are now being developed, with among them 3D camera. The main focus here is an investigation of the feasibility of rapidly combining and comparing – integrating – 3D sensed data (from a 3D camera) and 3D CAD data. Such a capability could improve construction quality assessment, facility aging assessment, as well as rapid environment reconstruction and construction automation. Some preliminary results are presented here. They deal with the challenge of fusing sensed and CAD data that are completely different in nature

Real-time Spatial Detection and Tracking of Resources in a Construction Environment

Construction accidents with heavy equipment and bad decision making can be based on poor knowledge of the site environment and in both cases may lead to work interruptions and costly delays. Supporting the construction environment with real-time generated three-dimensional (3D) models can help preventing accidents as well as support management by modeling infrastructure assets in 3D. Such models can be integrated in the path planning of construction equipment operations for obstacle avoidance or in a 4D model that simulates construction processes. Detecting and guiding resources, such as personnel, machines and materials in and to the right place on time requires methods and technologies supplying information in real-time. This paper presents research in real-time 3D laser scanning and modeling using high range frame update rate scanning technology. Existing and emerging sensors and techniques in three-dimensional modeling are explained. The presented research successfully developed computational models and algorithms for the real-time detection, tracking, and three-dimensional modeling of static and dynamic construction resources, such as workforce, machines, equipment, and materials based on a 3D video range camera. In particular, the proposed algorithm for rapidly modeling three-dimensional scenes is explained. Laboratory and outdoor field experiments that were conducted to validate the algorithm’s performance and results are discussed

Stürme auf See und Dürren an Land: zur Wetter- und Witterungsrekonstruktion im frühmittelalterlichen Nordwest- und Westeuropa nach Schriftquellen

The article investigates the reliability primarily of historical annals for the reconstruction of the weather and atmospheric conditions in the period from the sixth to the tenth centuries, above all in north-western Europe. One chief focus lies here on reports pertaining to marine weather, whose representativeness regarding the overall chronicle sources is analyzed by means of references to insular and continental sources. It becomes evident that a periodically structured history of weather and atmospheric conditions is possible and can furthermore be placed in a context with scientific data cited here only summarily. Exceptional events such as the "St. Stephen's Flood" of 26 December 838 as well as references to weather in the Old Nordic historiography are treated separately in order to draw appropriate attention the mechanisms of literary reflections, and thus also to the reliability of these references for a history of weather in ge neral and of marine weather in particular

Arten und Inhalte der Gezeitenanalyse in der antiken Literatur

The tides have always been an impressive natural phenomenon that triggered various types of emotional and rational reactions on the ideological as well as the practical level. The article sketches ancient perceptions and explanations of the tides as found in scholarly scientific writings as well as belletristic litera­ture. The following characteristics can be observed: To begin with: in addition to the pure description of the facts, there is evi­dence of comprehensive and well-differentiated endeavours to examine the phenomenon from the scientific point of view, i.e. to find a natural explanation of a natural occurrence. Secondly: within that context, not only monocausal theories but also complex physical causal systems were developed, encompassing all of theearth's topographical areas - subterranean, epipolar, sublunar, lunar and side­ real. Third of all: as a rule, these explanation systems are integral elements of comprehensive methodological, philosophical and theological concepts which were regarded as pre-ordained laws, and from which the conceptions examined here were derived by a deductive nomological process. Fourthly: whereas in some cases problems were seen on the secular level with regard to the natural boundary between land and sea in flat coastal areas, the same does not seem to have played a role in the realm of religion, at least as far as we can tell from the sources. There is no mention of any crisis related to the conception of the jurisdictions of sea and land deities in the tideland areas because the Mediterranean was not particularly affected by the phenom­ enon physically. Fifthly: in the literary reflection on the tides on the southern coast of the North Sea as well as in the area of the Indus estuary, affective connotations of the natural phenomena are mirrored during a brief period. Associated with historical events and author-related projections, the tides here serve the pur­pose of describing psychological and cultural habitus of two figures considered at the time to be of great significance for world events. Sixthly and lastly: the concepts and conceptions of the tides could moreover serve as an instrument of the - at least latently negative - cultural-anthropo­logical assessment of the groups of the population confronted with the phe­nomenon of the tides

Von Island bis an Rhein und Donau: über die Darstellung von Hochsee- und Binnenschifffahrt im Nibelungenlied

Descriptions of ocean and inland navigation play a role in structuring the text of the Nibelungenlied. On the one hand, in a manner serving to guide the reader, over long stretches of the narration they provide anticipatory and retrospective references and create constitutive preconditions for phases of the plot. On the other hand, they characterize and codify important persons by means of direct nautical roles and functions. This also occurs within the framework of a possible juxtaposition with coeval writing on the part of both the author and reader, in which context ecclesiological symbolism may play an important role as a mode of contrast. Moreover, through the literary references to foreign - but to some extent real - places, the knowledge and conception of geography and oceanography of the time of the work's writing was treated in a complex and varied manner, also including allusions to the contemporary, i.e. Hohenstaufen, political and mental outlook. Caused in part by the varied accessibility of the respective sources, the Nibelungenlied reveals clear differences in knowledge about conditions in Central Europe on the one hand and the Lower Rhine region as well as Scandinavia and the North Sea region on the other. In addition, however, - precisely through the resulting reality-related attention to detail in the former case, and the more blurred but not entirely fictional depiction in the latter - there also arises a deliberate relationship of dramatic tension among the vast regions in which the Nibelungenlied is set

Seehäfen in der lyrischen Dichtung Roms zwischen später Republik und früher Kaiserzeit

This contribution undertakes to shed light on three facets: To begin with, the use of the seaport motif in Roman lyrical poetry of the two centuries around the birth of Christ covers a complex and variegated associative spectrum of human feeling. Within that spectrum, aspects such as protection, refuge or the end of a journey by no means always have positive connotations. What is more, the motif is assigned different functions from one genre to the next. It can serve as a multiply utilizable mirror of the author’s own literary production or of personal sensitivities with regard to interpersonal relationships or biographical crises. And it is a device used as much in praise of the times and the emperor as for the purposes of indignant cultural and social criticism. Finally, relationships to non-lyrical literary text types become evident, particularly with regard to prose literature of a historiographical, rhetorical and political-philosophical nature. In any case, when viewed from the out-side, the latter suggest a wide range of interdependencies and concretizations above all with regard to contemporary discourses. Late Republican and Early Imperial products and producers of lyrical poetry were thus not only recipients but also active participants in a system of intellectual debate. Within this context, the perception, conception, and literary processing of the maritime constitute a substantial and complex - but at the same time ambiguous analogue - element of the history of the maritime-oriented mentality of antiquity, a history highly complex with regard to form and content alike

Anmerkungen zur nautisch-maritimen Symbolik im altenglischen Gedicht "The Seafarer"

An example of native-language literature of the early Middle Ages, "The Seafarer" is a poem based on a seafaring population’s experiences and realities of life. In an additive manner, the work combines various motifs and strands of lore from non-Christian and Christian antiquity as well as from the Irish-Celtic tradition. The author moreover arrived at a complex texture through the creation of various levels of abstraction which nonetheless closely interweave the very different sections of the poem. The symbols and images of maritime life running through the work occupy an exceptional position in the Old English and European literature of the period in question. The range of levels of meaning would have provided the contemporary reader or listener with various means of access to the text, and were perhaps intended to do so. In analogy to heathen literature of antiquity, and despite formal differences, the "Seafarer" can also be read as a Christian "Periplus", a sea voyage at the end of which - after all the storms and dangers of shipwreck, the nemeses with which this-worldly life on the seas is constantly threatened - the soul reaches the safety of the home port in God’s realm