Improving Spherical Photogrammetry Using 360° omni-Cameras: Use Cases and New Applications

Abstract

During the last few years, there has been a growing exploitation of consumer-grade cameras allowing one to capture 360° images. Each device has different features and the choice should be entrusted on the use and the expected final output. The interest on such technology within the research community is related to its use versatility, enabling the user to capture the world with an omnidirectional view with just one shot. The potential is huge and the literature presents many use cases in several research domains, spanning from retail to construction, from tourism to immersive virtual reality solutions. However, the domain that could the most benefit is Cultural Heritage (CH), since these sensors are particularly suitable for documenting a real scene with architectural detail. Following the previous researches conducted by Fangi, which introduced its own methodology called Spherical Photogrammetry (SP), the aim of this paper is to present some tests conducted with the omni-camera Panono 360° which reach a final resolution comparable with a traditional camera and to validate, after almost ten years from the first experiment, its reliability for architectural surveying purposes. Tests have been conducted choosing as study cases <i>Santa Maria della Piazza</i> and <i>San Francesco alle scale Churches</i> in Ancona, Italy, since they were previously surveyed and documented with SP methodology. In this way, it has been possible to validate the accuracy of the new survey, performed by means an omni-camera, compared with the previous one for both outdoor and indoor scenario. The core idea behind this work is to validate if this new sensor can replace the standard image collection phase, speeding up the process, assuring at the same time the final accuracy of the survey. The experiment conducted demonstrate that, w.r.t. the SP methodology developed so far, the main advantage in using 360° omni-directional cameras lies on increasing the rapidity of acquisition and panorama creation phases. Moreover, in order to foresee the implications that a wide adoption of fast and agile tools of acquisition could bring within the CH domain, points cloud have been generated with the same panoramas and visualized in a WEB application, to allow a result dissemination between the users.

Procedures for Condition Mapping Using 360° Images

“…Multiple images can be processed following the typical workflow for image processing based on the spherical (equirectangular) camera model. For some examples of 3D modeling from 360 cameras, the reader is referred to the works in the literature [19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

Documentation of a Complex Cultural Heritage Asset With Integrated Geomatic Survey: The Montanaro Bell Tower

“…After its first development (D'Annibale & Fangi, 2009;Fangi, 2007;Fangi & Nardinocchi, 2013) spherical photogrammetry is facing a second development phase thanks to the enhancement of the Structure from Motion (SfM) approaches, as demonstrated by recent literature (Abate, Toschi, Sturdy-Colls, & Remondino, 2017;Barazzetti, Previtali, & Roncoroni, 2018;Fangi, Pierdicca, Sturari, & Malinverni, 2018;Gottardi & Guerra, 2018;Teppati Losè, Chiabrando, & Spanò, 2018).…”

360° Images for Uav Multisensor Data Fusion: First Tests and Results

“…In the following years, and till today, different tests and experiences on the use of these systems for photogrammetric application were further extended, in particular in the field of CH documentation (Barazzetti et al, 2018;Fangi, 2015;Fangi et al, 2018;Kwiatek & Tokarczyk, 2014) and more specifically toward the direction of developing Structure from Motion (SfM) approaches in the field of spherical photogrammetry. The development of these researches relates to different elements: the increasing availability of COTS 360° multi-cameras that allows to acquire in a rapid way spherical images, the implementation of more refined algorithms and solutions for the stitching of images and the enhancement of the photogrammetric solutions for the processing of these images.…”

“…During the last decade, the market of low-cost and consumer grade cameras has exponentially grown, and a wide range of new sensors is nowadays available. The possibility of exploiting the inherent metric information derivable from spherical and cylindrical images, obtained from non-metric cameras, has been one of the most recent and prolific research topics within the researchers in the photogrammetric community (Barazzettiet al, 2018;Fangi, 2006;Fangi et al, 2018). At the same time, the market of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) faced a sensible growth, allowing on one hand more affordable prices and, on the other hand, the possibility of deploying different types of payloads.…”