| Two-dimensional block facility layout design models cannot address problems such as clearances around equipment, operator conveniences, workplace aesthetics etc. With the emergence of virtual reality technology, such problems can be more conveniently addressed by means of a three-dimensional (3D) representation of a facility.; Building 3D facility models using existing CAD packages is a time-consuming and boring task and sometimes facility models have to be created in correlation with an existing facility. In this work, an alternative technique, based on computer vision techniques, is developed. Our technique solves crucial problems associated with reconstructing 3D models from camera images. In particular, a new camera autocalibration technique is developed, based on using a laser tracking system, rigidly attached to a moving camera, which assists in recovering camera parameters with respect to a reference frame attached to the scene. In addition, a Delaunay triangulation-based technique is developed for surface reconstruction. This technique is able to cope with a wide variety of shape and is particularly powerful for objects recovered from non-dense sets of points, unlike currently existing techniques.; The same laser tracker is employed in tracking human motion on factory floors and is, along the previously described technique, a key enabler for synchronizing human motion in real environments with avatar motion in virtual environments. This opens the avenue towards remote facility monitoring by means of virtual environments. |
