MindSpaces:Art-driven Adaptive Outdoors and Indoors Design

MindSpaces provides solutions for creating functionally and emotionally appealing architectural designs in urban spaces. Social media services, physiological sensing devices and video cameras provide data from sensing environments. State-of-the-Art technology including VR, 3D design tools, emotion extraction, visual behaviour analysis, and textual analysis will be incorporated in MindSpaces platform for analysing data and adapting the design of spaces.</p

An Effective Camera-to-Lidar Spatiotemporal Calibration Based on a Simple Calibration Target

In this contribution, we present a simple and intuitive approach for estimating the exterior (geometrical) calibration of a Lidar instrument with respect to a camera as well as their synchronization shifting (temporal calibration) during data acquisition. For the geometrical calibration, the 3D rigid transformation of the camera system was estimated with respect to the Lidar frame on the basis of the establishment of 2D to 3D point correspondences. The 2D points were automatically extracted on images by exploiting an AprilTag fiducial marker, while the detection of the corresponding Lidar points was carried out by estimating the center of a custom-made retroreflective target. Both AprilTag and Lidar reflective targets were attached to a planar board (calibration object) following an easy-to-implement set-up, which yielded high accuracy in the determination of the center of the calibration target. After the geometrical calibration procedure, the temporal calibration was carried out by matching the position of the AprilTag to the corresponding Lidar target (after being projected onto the image frame), during the recording of a steadily moving calibration target. Our calibration framework was given as an open-source software implemented in the ROS platform. We have applied our method to the calibration of a four-camera mobile mapping system (MMS) with respect to an integrated Velodyne Lidar sensor and evaluated it against a state-of-the-art chessboard-based method. Although our method was a single-camera-to-Lidar calibration approach, the consecutive calibration of all four cameras with respect to the Lidar sensor yielded highly accurate results, which were exploited in a multi-camera texturing scheme of city point clouds

Creating a Story Map Using Geographic Information Systems to Explore Geomorphology and History of Methana Peninsula

Story maps are used as an interactive tool for communication and information dissemination. A web-based application using story mapping technology is presented to explore the Methana peninsula. This volcanic area is characterized by specific volcanic geoforms, unique flora and rich history. The story map combines maps, narrative texts and multimedia content. The spatial data produce thematic maps created by a Geographic Information System on geological data, historical monuments, biodiversity and hiking paths. The purpose is to highlight the distinguishing characteristics of the Methana peninsula, to enable users to interact with maps, texts and images and to inform professional and non-professional users about the particular aspects of volcanic areas

An Extended Reality System for Situation Awareness in Flood Management and Media Production Planning

Flood management and media production planning are both tasks that require timely and sound decision making, as well as effective collaboration between professionals in a team split between remote headquarter operators and in situ actors. This paper presents an extended reality (XR) platform that utilizes interactive and immersive technologies and integrates artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to support the professionals and the public involved in such incidents and events. The developed XR tools address various specialized end-user needs of different target groups and are fueled by modules that intelligently collect, analyze, and link data from heterogeneous sources while considering user-generated content. This platform was tested in a flood-prone area and in a documentary planning scenario, where it was used to create immersive and interactive experiences. The findings demonstrate that it increases situation awareness and improves the overall performance of the professionals involved. The proposed XR system represents an innovative technological approach for tackling the challenges of flood management and media production, one that also has the potential to be applied in other fields

Novel Virtual Reality Solutions for Captivating Virtual Underwater Tours Targeting the Cultural and Tourism Industries

The underwater environment beyond its natural unique beauties has a great scientific interest as it pertains all fields of marine research; despite this, it has not been adequately exploited for cultural and tourism purposes. Virtual and augmented reality technologies have advanced considerably in re-producing and representing unreachable large-scale environments. To this end, this work presents an integrated interactive framework for exploring the underwater world such as submerged cities, shipwrecks, sunken harbors, diving and marine parks, either in situ via augmented reality, or remotely via virtual reality. Firstly, the designed solution exploits high-resolution visual and range data acquired with state-of-the-art technologies (swath mapping systems, underwater vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles) and processed through novel approaches to create a synthetic topographic relief basemap and to analyze its geomorphology, as well as the anthropogenic interventions. Secondly, this framework allows to write narrative scenarios and produce interactive VR experiences, through a set of custom tools for multimedia content management. The developed framework, named VIRTUALDIVER, will enable domain experts to design immersive xReality experiences and users to experience environments that are typically accessed only by underwater vehicles in cost-intensive, scientific missions. This will promote the underwater cultural heritage, and natural environment through the development of innovative research, teaching, tourism and creative products

Creating a story map using geographic information systems to explore geomorphology and history of Methana Peninsula

Summarization: Story maps are used as an interactive tool for communication and information dissemination. A web-based application using story mapping technology is presented to explore the Methana peninsula. This volcanic area is characterized by specific volcanic geoforms, unique flora and rich history. The story map combines maps, narrative texts and multimedia content. The spatial data produce thematic maps created by a Geographic Information System on geological data, historical monuments, biodiversity and hiking paths. The purpose is to highlight the distinguishing characteristics of the Methana peninsula, to enable users to interact with maps, texts and images and to inform professional and non-professional users about the particular aspects of volcanic areas.Presented on

Robotic intelligent vision and control for tunnel inspection and evaluation - The ROBINSPECT EC project

International audienc