Underwater photogrammetry
Underwater photogrammetry, like its counterpart in ‘air’, has gained an increasing diffusion thanks to the availability of easy-to-use, fast and often quite inexpensive software applications. Moreover, underwater equipments that allow the use in water of digital cameras normally designed to work in air are getting largely available. Our R&D activities aims to investigate open issues in underwater 3D surveying by means of photogrammetric methods. Use-cases include underwater enviornmental and heritage scenarios but also semi-submerged industrial structures.
Our R&D tasks and activities include:
understand the effect of underwater ports in front of the photographic lens, in particular the effect of dome or flat ports on image quality in 3D modelling applications
assuring accurate and reliable 3D modelling results a profound knowledge of the employed devices as well as physical and geometric principle is even more crucial than in air
development of a low-cost, lightweight, portable and modular prototype system, called Frog: it is based on stereo vision, runs a customized vSLAM approach and provide real-time guidance and feedback to the surveyor during the underwater image capturing phase about exposure control, motion blur and ground sample distance. This ensure a more reliable and effective photogrammetric data acquisition and processing.
Inclusion of AI methods for semantic image classification, point cloud classification, etc.
FROG - our developed portable stereo-vision SLAM-based system for underwater 3D documentation
Representative Publications:
- Chemisky, B., Menna, F., Nocerino, E., Drap, P., 2021. Underwater Survey for Oil and Gas Industry: A Review of Close Range Optical Methods. Remote Sensing, Vol.13(14), 2789
- Nocerino, E., Menna, F., Farella, E.M., Remondino, F., 2020: A cost-effective 3D Photogrammetric Approach for Semi-submerged Caves. CREG Journal, Vol. 112, 3-6
- Nocerino, E. and Menna, F., 2020: Photogrammetry: Linking the World Across the Water Surface. MDPI Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 8(2), p.128
- Menna, F., Agrafiotis, P., Georgopoulos, A., 2018: State of the art and applications in archaeological underwater 3D recording and mapping. Int. Journal of Cultural Heritage, Vol. 33, pp. 231-248
- Menna, F., Nocerino, E., Remondino, F., 2017: Flat versus hemispherical dome ports in underwater photogrammetry. ISPRS Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., Vol. XLII-2-W3, pp. 481-487
- Nocerino, E., Menna, F., Fassi, F., Remondino, F., 2016: Underwater calibration of dome port pressure housing. ISPRS Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. XL-3/W4, pp. 127-134
- Menna, F., Nocerino, E., Fassi, F., Remondino, F., 2016: Geometric and Optic Characterization of a Hemispherical Dome Port for Underwater Photogrammetry. MDPI Sensors, Vol.16(1), 48
- Menna, F., Nocerino, E., 2012: Hybrid survey method for 3D digital recording and documentation of maritime heritage. Applied Geomatics
Funding: internal