The paper presents different issues dealing with both the preservation of cultural heritage using Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies in a cultural context. While the VR/AR technologies are mentioned, the attention is paid to the 3D visualization and 3D interaction modalities illustrated through three different demonstrators: the VR demonstrators (Immersive and semi immersive) and the AR demonstrator including tangible user interfaces. To show the benefits of the VR and AR technologies for studying and preserving cultural heritage, we investigated the visualisation and interaction with reconstructed underwater archaeological sites. The base idea behind using VR and AR techniques is to offer archaeologists and general public new insights on the reconstructed archaeological sites allowing archaeologists to study directly from within the virtual site and allowing the general public to immersively explore a realistic reconstruction of the sites. Both activities are based on the same VR engine but drastically differ in the way they present information and exploit interaction modalities. The visualisation and interaction techniques developed through these demonstrators are the results of the ongoing dialogue between the archaeological requirements and the technological solutions developed.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

This paper introduces a Wearable SLAM system that performs indoor and outdoor SLAM in real time. The related project is part of the MALIN challenge which aims at creating a system to track emergency response agents in complex scenarios (such as dark environments, smoked rooms, repetitive patterns, building floor transitions and doorway crossing problems), where GPS technology is insufficient or inoperative. The proposed system fuses different SLAM technologies to compensate the lack of robustness of each, while estimating the pose individually. LiDAR and visual SLAM are fused with an inertial sensor in such a way that the system is able to maintain GPS coordinates that are sent via radio to a ground station, for real-time tracking. More specifically, LiDAR and monocular vision technologies are tested in dynamic scenarios where the main advantages of each have been evaluated and compared. Finally, 3D reconstruction up to three levels of details is performed.

No abstract

This paper assesses a monocular localization system for complex scenes. The system is carried by a moving agent in a complex environment (smoke, darkness, indoor-outdoor transitions). We show how using a short-wave infrared camera (SWIR) with a potential lighting source is a good compromise that allows to make just a slight adaptation of classical simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) techniques. This choice made it possible to obtain relevant features from SWIR images and also to limit tracking failures due to the lack of key points in such challenging environments. In addition, we propose a tracking failure recovery strategy in order to allow tracking re-initialization with or without the use of other sensors. Our localization system is validated using real datasets generated from a moving SWIR-camera in indoor environment. Obtained results are promising, and lead us to consider the integration of our mono-SLAM in a complete localization chain including a data fusion process from several sensors.