UTokyo's e-Heritage Project: 3D Modeling of Heritage Sites

Google Tech Talks May, 8 2008 ABSTRACT Enjoying amazing ancient structures through Internet technologies is one of the most promising methods to promote our culture and cultural heritage. These technologies involve sensing, transmission, and display. In this talk, I will briefly explain these three aspects, and then focus on sensing issues, in particular, the technical challenges presented by sensing huge outdoor structures. I will describe the technical challenges and how we solved them as we confronted the difficult task of modeling the huge Bayon Temple in the Angkor ruin in Cambodia. I will show the digital data we obtained, including the entire structure of the temple, the hundred and seventy-three faces of deities, and the hidden pediments. I will also explain some of the technical issues involved in displaying the data we obtained, using our virtual Aska as an example. Speaker: Katsushi Ikeuchi Dr. Katsushi Ikeuchi is a Professor at the University of Tokyo. He received a Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1978. After working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI Lab for two years, Electrotechnical Lab, Japan for five years, and Carnegie Mellon University for ten years, he joined the university in 1996. His research interest spans computer vision, robotics, and computer graphics. He has received several awards, including the David Marr Prize in computational vision, and IEEE R K-S Fu memorial best transaction paper award. He has served as the program/general chairman of many international conferences, including 1995 IEEE-IROS, 1996 IEEE-CVPR, and 2003 IEEE-ICCV. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computer Vision. He is a distinguished speaker of the IEEE CS society this year. He has been elected as a fellow of IEEE since 1998.