Framework for 3D data modeling and web visualization of underground caves using open source tools

Abstract

Terrestrial Laser Scanning is a very useful technique for cave studies. This surveying method creates point clouds with high detail levels for 3D model generation, which is indeed useful for either reconstruction, geomorphological studies or virtual visits of caves. The present work generated a 3D model of a cave chamber and developed a framework for 3D data visualization on the Web.Identifying geomorphological structures is one of the goals of this project. The generated 3D-mesh represents the surface model of the cave chamber, which is important to study its geomorphological features. A topological structure of the 3D-mesh was implemented to get an efficient algorithm to help determining stalactites. The recognition and positioning of cave stalactites can provide information on hidden cave features responsible for cave geomorphology.The possibility to publish 3D data on the Web is of particular interest for the geospatial field. For this reason, it was decided to make the cave model available in the Web by developing a 3D graphical interface where users can navigate and interact with the threedimensional models of the cave. For this Web framework, X3D, WebGL and X3DOM were used. Such solution does not require any additional plug-ins or components.

Underground astronauts: Understanding the sporting science of speleology and its implications for HCI

“…We found only five papers dealing with technology and caves, and none of them presents technology for improving or facilitating the activity of caving; rather, they focus on technology for documenting caves. One of the most popular approaches for caves documentation is to capture the internal parts of the cave through a laser scanner (Silvestre et al, 2013) and then reproduce them through 3D virtual representations, so to offer an immersive experience to tourists (Beraldin et al, 2006), students (Adcock et al, 2015), and experts of prehistorical art paintings (Wang et al, 2010). Among these five papers, only the one of Schuchardt et al (2007) presents an HCI study where 24 cavers assessed the effectiveness of Immersive…”

Using STOQS (The spatial temporal oceanographic query system) to manage, visualize, and understand AUV, glider, and mooring data

“…Besides providing more accurate representations of bathymetry, meshes can also represent overhangs and caves, whereas GeoElevationGrids cannot. The workflow for creating the x3dterrain files using open source tools GMT [19] and Meshlab [20] is similar to that used in [21]: These operations result in a static web page where the results can be tested for fidelity and performance. In order for the terrain model to be included in the STOQS UI, the Scene elements are extracted from the HTML into a separate scene X3D file, which is the URL in Fig.…”

A Topological Framework for Interactive Queries on 3D Models in the Web

“…The 3D model of a cave chamber was built from a point cloud with about 45 million points obtained from a terrestrial laser scan survey. In order to select a 3D mesh with a reasonable size that does not compromise performance in the Web, we simplified the original cave chamber mesh with 10 038 522 triangles ( Figure 2(a) ), executing mesh decimation operations, to build a new 3D mesh model of the cave chamber with 249 934 triangles ( Figure 2(b) ) [ 21 ].…”

“…The model of the cave chamber for the Web3D has 249 934 triangles and the original model of the cave chamber has 10 038 522 triangles. The original 3D model of the cave chamber was built from a point cloud with about 45 million points obtained from a terrestrial laser scan survey [ 21 ].…”