Thursday, January 31, 2013

Interesting and useful new tool


Centre for Image Analysis at Uppsala university has developed a very interesting tool that could be used for historical datasets. It is used to piece fragments of an object together and reconstruct the object. The obvius use could be for pottery or human bones, espacially sculls. The input to the system is 3d-scans of the different pieces. The software analysis the pieces and makes an rough alignment. Then with the help of a haptic device the researcher can put the pieces together and try to make them fit exactly.
This would be useful when working with very fragile objects that shouldn't be touched too much. Just 3d-scan them and then put the scans in this system and once it is there, they can be handled without risking any damage to the objects.
The Humanities lab sent them three pieces of a clay plate to test the system. Here is a video showing how the system is used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1EcVWRiPT0

We will soon send them 15 pieces of a scull that will be very interesting to see if the system can handle as well.

/Stefan

1 comment:

  1. Surely automatic fragment matching is the way to go in the future. We just need some affordable equipment solutions to quickly digitize the large number of artifacts that result from the average excavation.

    The Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project was pioneer and also achieved good results digitally reassembling big and heavy marble slabs that composed that old Rome map.

    http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forma_Urbis_Romae

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