Takehiko NAGAKURA / Daniel TSAI / Howard BURNS
(Department of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA)
Keywords: Palladio, Architectural Model, Reality Capture, Photogrammetry, UAV
Abstract:
This paper describes our lab’s experiments with digital capture equipment and techniques used to study the architecture of Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). One initial question is whether widely available technology can be used to create a snapshot of an entire building in terms of geometry, texture, and illumination — and what this ultimately means for the study, teaching, and conservation of architecture.
Since spring of 2013, multiple variations of equipment and techniques were tested and compared. The tests include (1) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs): low-cost stock drone versus custom-built equipment; (2) photogrammetry: cloud-based services versus local graphics computing solutions; (3) capture method: photogrammetry versus RGBD (Kinect) versus laser scanning techniques, and (4) panoramic video: single camera with reflector versus multiple-camera rig. The technical, comparative findings are described in terms of cost, processing time, and for use cases such as exterior facades, interior spaces, frescoes, and architectural details.
Evaluation of the experiments eventually altered our approach, away from an instant snapshot of an entire building, toward a composite, heterogeneous representation: e.g., UAVs capturing aerial views, high resolution photogrammetry for architectural details, and RGBD for tight staircases. This direction seems to be a more realistic and exciting contribution. Information gathered over time, from different digital capture techniques and various people can be combined into a dynamic building database. Such a building database may cover the building studied at various scales, the interior and exterior, the context and site, with and without furniture, in various weather and lighting conditions. As better versions of representations are created, the parts can be compared and selected.
Our ongoing research includes development of an online implementation of this idea, which may be open to public input, including crowd-sourced digital capture, as well as interactive visualization and navigation of the building database via game-engine environments.