Underwater photogrammetry

Underwater photogrammetry, like its counterpart in ‘air’, has gained an increasing diffusion thanks to the availability of easy-to-use, fast and often quite inexpensive software applications. Moreover, underwater equipments that allow the use in water of digital cameras normally designed to work in air are getting largely available. Our R&D activities aims to investigate open issues in underwater 3D surveying by means of photogrammetric methods.  Use-cases include underwater enviornmental and heritage scenarios but also semi-submerged industrial structures.

Our R&D tasks and activities include:

• understand the effect of underwater ports in front of the photographic lens, in particular the effect of dome or flat ports on image quality in 3D modelling applications

• assuring accurate and reliable 3D modelling results a profound knowledge of the employed devices as well as physical and geometric principle is even more crucial than in air

• development of a low-cost, lightweight, portable and modular prototype system, called Frog: it is based on stereo vision, runs a customized vSLAM approach and provide real-time guidance and feedback to the surveyor during the underwater image capturing phase about exposure control, motion blur and ground sample distance. This ensure a more reliable and effective photogrammetric data acquisition and processing.  

• Inclusion of AI methods for semantic image classification, point cloud classification, etc.

Representative Publications:

- Chemisky, B., Menna, F., Nocerino, E., Drap, P., 2021. Underwater Survey for Oil and Gas Industry: A Review of Close Range Optical Methods. Remote Sensing, Vol.13(14), 2789

- Nocerino, E., Menna, F., Farella, E.M., Remondino, F., 2020: A cost-effective 3D Photogrammetric Approach for Semi-submerged Caves. CREG Journal, Vol. 112, 3-6

- Nocerino, E. and Menna, F., 2020: Photogrammetry: Linking the World Across the Water Surface. MDPI Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 8(2), p.128

- Menna, F., Agrafiotis, P., Georgopoulos, A., 2018: State of the art and applications in archaeological underwater 3D recording and mapping. Int. Journal of Cultural Heritage, Vol. 33, pp. 231-248

- Menna, F., Nocerino, E., Remondino, F., 2017: Flat versus hemispherical dome ports in underwater photogrammetry. ISPRS Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., Vol. XLII-2-W3, pp. 481-487

- Nocerino, E., Menna, F., Fassi, F., Remondino, F., 2016: Underwater calibration of dome port pressure housing. ISPRS Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. XL-3/W4, pp. 127-134

- Menna, F., Nocerino, E., Fassi, F., Remondino, F., 2016: Geometric and Optic Characterization of a Hemispherical Dome Port for Underwater Photogrammetry. MDPI Sensors, Vol.16(1), 48

- Menna, F., Nocerino, E., 2012: Hybrid survey method for 3D digital recording and documentation of maritime heritage. Applied Geomatics

Funding:  internal