4D Next Generation GeoSpatial Visualization Laboratory
We are creating a consistent 4-dimensional space-time visualization of geospatial data and intelligence associated with the environment. This task requires intelligent collection of data using various sensors including a variety of cameras, LIDAR data, and multispectral imagery in all kinds of frequenecy bands. The spatio-temporal GIS (Geographic Information System) visualization system will bring together several layers of information including terrain data, street maps, buildings, environment data, aerial images, and mobile objects data.
The information will be collected by mobile agents (both humans and robots) roaming in the environment. The agents will be able to interact with the data in a multi-modal manner using vision, text, graphics, annotations, speech, sound, gesture, and haptics. An important step is extract and visualize time-critical information and present it to the user in a hierarchical uncluttered way. Support for quantifying and visualizing uncertainty will be provided for decision-making.
Sample Projects:
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Massive Scalable Geographic Information System |
Hierarchical interactive zooming into Santa Cruz starting from the earth to Santa Cruz County to ½ foot resolution imagery of UCSC Campus in VGIS. This work is in collaboration with Bill Ribarsky and Nick Faust at Georgia Institute of Technology. |
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Heterogeneous Consistent Geo-Spatial Data Integration |
Aerial Imagery, Digital Elevation Data, LIDAR data, AutoCAD drawings, Street Map, and Schematic Diagram registered consistently with the same coordinate system and synchronized for hierarchcial visualization and integrity check |
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Uncertainty in Mobile Situational Visualization |
How accurate is the position and velocity information obtained by the GPS receivers and visualized onto a GIS map? We do uncertainty modeling based on SNR, DOP, and GPS receiver characteristics to quantify and visualize these uncertainties associated with the mobile objects in a given context. |
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Image-based Modeling and Multi-sensor Data Fusion |
We are engaged in several interesting image processing and data fusion projects including 3D reconstruction of data from 2D images, video mosaicing, and hierarchical registration of these data sets within our global geospatial visualization system. Stay tuned! This is just a taste. Much more excitement is on the way. |
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Point Features Preserving Terrain Compression Algorithms |
Does hierarchial visualization of terrains destroy important features such as mountain peaks and valleys? Our feature preserving algorithms compress terrains but preserve important features while most algorithms in use do not. See for yourself! |
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Line Features Preservation and Simplification Algorithms for Terrains and Annotations |
Does hierarchial visualization of terrains destroy important line features such as coastlines and street maps? Our feature preserving and simplifying algorithms compress terrains and provide hierarchical details of streets as you zoom in. |
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Visualization of Uncertain Particle Movement |
Do you have robots in the environment with their own minds? We model the position and velocity uncertainty and visualize them using easy-to-recognize shapes. This work is in collaboration with Pramod Varshney and his colleagues at Syracuse University. |
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GIS-GPS Infrastructure for Context-Aware Applications |
Check out some of the cool data (helicopter collecting LIDAR data) and equipments (GPS equipments) we have. This work has been facilitated due to collaboration with Avideh Zakhor (University of California, Berkeley) and Ulrich Neumann (University of Southern California). All this data is then visualized within the global 4D GIS mobile visualization system. |
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Multi-modal Situational
Visualization for General Aviation Pilots |
This work is in collaboration with Lilly Spirkovska at NASA Ames Research Center. Do you fly your own private plane? Do not miss out on the situational multimodal visualization designed for, by, and based on the feedback from general aviation pilots at NASA Ames. |
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Consistent Visualization
and Querying of Spatial Databases |
The geospatial visualization system supports multimodal interaction with underlying databases. Want to find buildings lying within two boundaries or how to send singals from one point to another efficiently or to find nearest parking spots, telephones or best time to leave your desk to catch a metro? |
This research is partially supported by MURI funding titled “Next Generation, 4-D Distributed Modeling and Visualization”.
For publications, visit Publications
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Last modified: October 8, 2002