Building-Scale Virtual Reality: Reconstruction and Modification of Building Interior Extends Real World

Building-Scale Virtual Reality: Reconstruction and Modification of Building Interior Extends Real World

Katashi Nagao (Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan), Menglong Yang (Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan) and Yusuke Miyakawa (Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan)
Copyright: © 2019 |Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/IJMDEM.2019010101

Abstract

A method is presented that extends the real world into all buildings. This building-scale virtual reality (VR) method differs from augmented reality (AR) in that it uses automatically generated 3D point cloud maps of building interiors. It treats an entire indoor area a pose tracking area by using data collected using an RGB-D camera mounted on a VR headset and using deep learning to build a model from the data. It modifies the VR space in accordance with its intended usage by using segmentation and replacement of the 3D point clouds. This is difficult to do with AR but is essential if VR is to be used for actual real-world applications, such as disaster simulation including simulation of fires and flooding in buildings. 3D pose tracking in the building-scale VR is more accurate than conventional RGB-D simultaneous localization and mapping.
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2.1. Augmented Reality

AR is a common means of visually extending the real world. Examples include Microsoft’s HoloLens headset (Microsoft Corporation, 2018) and Apple’s ARKit (Apple Inc., 2018). AR technology is used to display all the real-world information and superimpose on it virtual-world information. As with the research reported here, the real-world information is used as is. This makes AR technology difficult to use if some of the real-world information is to be replaced with virtual information (i.e., by deforming or transparentizing the 3D point cloud). In contrast, with building-scale VR, the virtual information can be converted as necessary while still displaying the real-world information almost as is.

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