ITR: 3D Free Form Models for the Representation, Manipulation, and Recovery of Shape, with Applications to Archaeology and Virtual Sculpting

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

The problems of 3D shape representation, analysis, manipulation, and estimation from unstructured sensor data are central not only to computer vision, but are also of key significance to geometric modeling, computer graphics, computational geometry, medical imaging, surveillance, among others. The goal of this proposal is to investigate approaches to these problems in the context of tackling certain key problems in archaeology. This area of application offers the following three distinct advantages: (i) it is a rich source of free-form shapes, e.g., pottery sherds, marble plates and reliefs, sculpture, column capitals, building facades, etc., which are easily accessible, in contrast to 3D free-form shapes obtained from medical images which require expert segmentation; this data is also richer and more variable than data available in a typical manufacturing environ-ment; (ii) the problems are of a generic nature and the proposed approaches can be applied to a variety of other domains; (iii) this application area forms a key bridge between the Physical Sciences and the Humanities.