Projective Texturing of Cisterns

For the final presentation of the cistern exploration project, all of the video and images will be mapped to the geometry generated from the sonar data. The screenshot below is a mock world generated to serve as example data extracted from sonar. Using mathematical calculations, the images are loaded into a program and projected onto the geometry (just like you would think a projector to work) to make the world look more realistic and similar to what it actually looked like from the perspective of the robot. There is currently only one projection of one image taken of a cistern a couple of years ago.

At this point, there is certainly more work to be done to merge our actual data and images together. The previous plan was to automate the video frame extraction with the location and orientation of the robot and project it. After completing many projects, we realized that it would be near impossible to complete this automatically and accurately.

Currently, my plan is to (once the geometry is loaded into the program) load images that correspond to the cistern and scan through them until one matches the current orientation within the world. At this point, the image projection will be saved, and a new image can be loaded to project and save to overlay or stitch with previous projections. This method will be an easy way to accurately bring multiple images together and place them in the right place in the geometry to make the world realistic.