Monday 17 December 2007

Earthmine, a new approach to rapid 3D urban modelling

Recently I was made aware of a new, and seemingly incredibly effective, automatic rapid 3D virtual city modelling approach called Earthmine. In short, the system adopts use of stereo panoramas to extract 3D information thus presenting a rapid way to both create and populate a 3D model in a way that is easily understandable. The video below can take you through the process in a more detailed manner.

Earthmine has just put out a release that states: "earthmineinc., 3D street side mapping company today announced it has finalized an exclusive agreement with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to license 3D data generation software and algorithms created by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and utilized on the Mars Exploration Rover Missions. earthmine recently unveiled its ground-breaking technology for collecting and delivering street-level three dimensional geospatial information for cities. The agreement with JPL and Caltech includes an exclusive and perpetual license for photogrammetric technology that allows for the creation of very dense and accurate 3D data from stereo panoramic imagery."

I am eagerly awaiting a more developed proposition from Earthmine as this piece of news, plus of course the method demonstrated in their vid, definitely looks like the way forward for rapid urban modelling, till then keep checking their site at http://earthmine.com/.

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