Geospatial Virtual Reality for Cyberlearning in the Field of Topographic Surveying: Moving Towards a Cost-Effective Mobile Solution

Eugene Levin,Roman Shults,Zhongming An,William Roland,Reza Habibi

doi:10.3390/ijgi9070433

Abstract

In spite of the tremendous success in artificial intelligence technology and a high level of automation in geospatial data obtaining processes, there is still a need for topographical field data collection by professional surveyors. Understanding terrain topology and topography is a cognitive skill set that has to be demonstrated by geospatial Subject Matter Experts (SME) for the productive work in the topographic surveying field. For training of the mentioned above skillset, one has to be exposed to the theory and must also practice with surveying instruments in field conditions. The challenge of any surveying/geospatial engineering workforce training is to expose students to field conditions which might be limited due to equipment expenses and meteorological conditions that prevent good data collection. To meet this challenge, the Integrated Geospatial Technology research group is working on a geospatial virtual reality (VR) project which encompasses the following components: (a) immersive visualization of terrain; (b) virtual total station instrument; (c) virtual surveyor with reflector installed on the virtual rod. The application scenario of the technology we are working with has the following stages: (1) student is installing total station on the optimal location; (2) students move virtual surveyor on the sampling points they consider to be important (3) contours are generated and displayed in 3D being superimposed on 3D terrain; (4) accuracy of terrain modeling is observable and measurable by comparing the sampling model with initial one.

Highlights

Nowadays, geospatial technologies are part of the new paradigm of cyber-infrastructure [1] that demands a geospatial workforce training methodology to accommodate cyberlearning technologies [2]
Research paper [6] reports on virtual instruments developed for teaching surveyors, which can be enriched by small Unmanned Aerial Systems data and Terrestrial LIDAR Scanner (TLS) point-clouds, as described in [7]
Cyberlearning workflow consisted of (a) setting a total station position, (b) repetitive movement of the virtual reflector to the positions where terrain sampling points were selected by the student for the measurements, (c) generation of contour lines based on sampling points selected by students, (d) visual and quantitative comparison of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and contours generated based on student measurements with proper ones generated based on source DEM and instructor-sample measurements

Summary

Introduction

Geospatial technologies are part of the new paradigm of cyber-infrastructure [1] that demands a geospatial workforce training methodology to accommodate cyberlearning technologies [2]. Understanding of terrain topology is a critical skill set that has to be developed by any surveyor who is involved in topographic data collection Training of those skills for surveyors requires the use of various instruments (total stations/GPS systems) in the field. The major difference of the current research is the attempt to deploy inexpensive mobile VR compared to standalone systems described in the papers mentioned above. Those studies are theoretically based on another in-depth research study in the sphere of Augmented Reality (AR)VR, such as [14,15,16]. Where [14] performs an excellent VR/Mixed Reality (MR)/AR technology review, [15] deals with biomedical and attentional aspects of such technologies, and [16] is devoted to the rigorous cognitive analysis of the experiment from the human factors standpoint

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion