KITWARE INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: SOCOM173-003

Description

Special Forces need a clear, timely understanding of their operational environment.Imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles can familiarize a warfighter with a location but simply looking at videos or still imagery can be confusing.What direction is the UAV looking fromWhich of many similar buildings is in viewIn intelligence, speed of collection and processing can be just as important as accuracy. 3D reconstruction from imagery can facilitate scene understanding, but unfortunately, state-of-the-art 3D reconstruction software operates in batch mode and its running time is too long to derive actionable intelligence in the field.Kitware proposes TeleSculptor Live:Real-time, streaming, texture-mapped 3D modelling from reconnaissance imagery.TeleSculptor Live extends Kitwares established software tools (Burn-Out for metadata burn-in detection, MAP-Tk TeleSculptor for camera calibration, Super3D for dense reconstruction) with ideas from the latest 3D simultaneous localization and mapping and real-time dense surface reconstruction research.Kitwares extensive experience in visualization (VTK etc.) will support the development of a live textured model viewer.This viewer will continuously overlay imagery on the live 3D model giving the warfighter an unparalleled understanding of the battlespace. TeleSculptor Live will convert a UAV from a video collection platform to a real-time, textured 3D model source.