IDS3D
Cargo Ship and Associated Animation
Harbour
Project funded in 2009 through the program AVANZA by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce.
Development of a platform, accessible through a web portal, to identify and track a set of events and targets taking place or moving in a controlled environment.
The objective of this project has been to develop a platform aiming at identifying events and tracking targets of interest taking place or moving into a controlled environment. On the top of this platform, a visual interface provides to its users a three-dimensional reconstruction of the environment, enriched with the relevant information associated to these targets and events. This way, it is possible to perform a thorough real-time monitoring of the controlled environment from different points of view. This interface has been integrated into a web portal to ease its access to the accredited users.
To achieve the general goal of the project, a new technological solution has been developed in order to build a dynamic virtual scene of the environment of reference (for instance, infrastructures, refineries, sea ports, security areas) from the data collected by some fixed cameras deployed in the area and other surveillance systems. Grid computing techniques has been applied for the fast generation and update of this information. Finally, a visualization layer allows its seamless representation to enhance the user understanding of the real environment.
Results:
The IDS3D system was conceived to monitor a sea port. Its development has been structured into three major lines:
- Processing of the video streams available in the environment;
- Analysis and integration of relevant data from different sources; and,
- Virtual 3D representation of the current situation at any point of the environment.
Besides other contributions, CeDInt led the development of the 3D Visualization Module, whose aim was to generate the 3D model supporting the unified user interface of the platform. This module allows to dynamically visualize (either in real time or using stored data) the monitored objectives and events that take place within the harbor, providing at the same time valuable information and critical data about them in an intuitive and graphical way. Likewise, it supports free space-temporal navigation as well as advanced user interaction with the represented elements.
The main components integrating the 3D Visualization Module are as follows:
- A realistic 3D model (base scene) of the maritime environment, including its topography and the earth infrastructures of the sea port;
Figure 1. Panoramic view of the 3D virtual representation of the seaport
- A dynamic object-relational database, containing 3D objects and animations associated to each type of monitored objective and critical event, plus generic objects/animations used to represent targets unidentified or pending of characterization;
- A rendering and Modelling System, whose functions are: to receive and process data from different sources (e.g. alert systems, analysis outputs); to guarantee the coherence and synchronization between real targets, events and critical characteristics and their corresponding, virtual representations; and, to support on-demand visualization of off-line sequences, contextual information, alerts and alarms.
Figure 2. A 3D object corresponding to a merchant ship (left) and a frame of an animation for the ship wake (right).
