Rapid Synthetic Environment Tool for Virtual Battlespace 2 (VBS2)

This proposal is in response to rapid modeling need in our military force. We plan to develop and demonstrate a framework that will allow warfighters to rapidly acquire and edit geospecific terrain databases, including both building exterior and interiors. The output of our models will be in standard 3D format, which can be used in a variety of simulation and training software, including VBS2. We propose a two-pronged approach to achieve this goal. One is a novel hand-held 3D camera that supports many modes of operations, from passive stereo image to active 3D scanning, under a variety of operation conditions, from indoor to outdoor. The other is a novel reconstruction-by-recognition modeling pipeline. The outcome of our system is a visually complete 3D model consisting of common objects in a terrain database, such as houses, plants, street lights, mailbox, etc. These objects are also labeled with semantic information, allowing quick editing by novice users. Our team has combined experiences of over 25 years in hardware design and 3D modeling. We leverage our prior results in stereo matching, scene understanding, and model reconstruction to quickly achieve the technical goals by the end of this Phase I project.