This indiegogo looks rather interesting https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/wunder360-s1-first-3d-scanning-360-ai-camera?utm_content=campaigns_one_column7_title&utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=#/

I did a bunch of research and thought into using 360 cameras for surveying recently but came to the conclusion that it just won't work for 2 reasons.

Photogrammetry the process they are using to build a point cloud has no scale data. So its great for telling you this part is x unit away and this part is y units away but the units are just relative to other points in the point cloud. You would still need to take a few shots and then overlay then to figure out the scale factor.

Photogrammetry to an extent relies on the light source not moving as its looking for points that are same from image to image. If your lights are moving around its going to struggle to match points up and calculate parallax.

I hadn't considered how the light source moving would affect these things. With enough training data IF the camera where attached to the light source.  Given the current state of the object mapping coming from mobile systems with the IR beams combined with visible this is clearly the future its now a question of how long before its usable and when its going to get small enough and cheap enough for use.

mountainpenguin said:

I hadn't considered how the light source moving would affect these things. With enough training data IF the camera where attached to the light source.  Given the current state of the object mapping coming from mobile systems with the IR beams combined with visible this is clearly the future it's now a question of how long before its usable and when it's going to get small enough and cheap enough for use.

Click to expand...

It's not something I could see happening for a very long time. Basically, all object tracking at a basic level is using groups of contrasting pixels. It works great on peoples faces or cars etc because they have a lot of contrast from the area around them. However, a bit of rock in a cave is very similar to all the rock around it add in the constantly moving light source it's going to be very difficult for it to track.

Personally, I think the better path for cave surveying is some kind of lidar. Small handheld lidar is really easy to build using off the shelf components plus its a known technology in cave surveying. The issue is tracking the movement of the device between shots if that can be cracked using IMU's then the rest is easy.

Have a look at the zebedee 3d scanner, it has been used in caves

Lots of lidar scanning has already gone on in caves.

Tseralo said:

The issue is tracking the movement of the device between shots if that can be cracked using IMU's then the rest is easy.

Click to expand...

....Things have come a long way since Zebedee; GeoSLAM has WAY faster handheld devices now. With Zebedee you have to slowly walk, but with the new stuff you can almost run/fly. Watching these devices doing real-time Prometheus-style modelling while progressing at a good pace through a cave was awesome.

https://geoslam.com/

Cap'n Chris said:

Tseralo said:

The issue is tracking the movement of the device between shots if that can be cracked using IMU's then the rest is easy.

Click to expand...

....Things have come a long way since Zebedee; GeoSLAM has WAY faster handheld devices now. With Zebedee you have to slowly walk, but with the new stuff you can almost run/fly. Watching these devices doing real-time Prometheus-style modelling while progressing at a good pace through a cave was awesome.

https://geoslam.com/

Click to expand...

Any more info I can read about this anywhere?

2xw said:

Any more info I can read about this anywhere?

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_localization_and_mapping  :tease:

Back in my day a Hand-Modified  DistoX2 was all we could afford...

Cap'n Chris said:

Tseralo said:

The issue is tracking the movement of the device between shots if that can be cracked using IMU's then the rest is easy.

Click to expand...

....Things have come a long way since Zebedee; GeoSLAM has WAY faster handheld devices now. With Zebedee you have to slowly walk, but with the new stuff you can almost run/fly. Watching these devices doing real-time Prometheus-style modelling while progressing at a good pace through a cave was awesome.

https://geoslam.com/

Click to expand...

Do they process in realtime.now ? Rented the Zeb Revo approximately two years ago and did some running tests in Gough's and it was too fast...