MS Defense

A Framework for GPU 3D Model Reconstruction
Using Structure-from-Motion

Yu Wang

10:00am Thursday, 28 April 2011, ITE 352

A framework for three-dimensional (3D) model reconstruction is described in this thesis. The primary application is scanning forest canopies and assisting scientific applications such as fire hazard evaluation and vegetation biomass estimation, using photos taken from a radio-controlled helicopter, although the methods apply to any series of photographs taken along a path. The approach is based on the fact that the photos are taken in a continuous path, thus taking advantage of the adjacency between images. The major contributions of this project are 1) introduce a linear time complexity algorithm that reduces number of image pairs to match for datasets obtained in a continuous path. 2) present an optimized high performance framework for GPU 3D reconstruction using structure-from-motion.

Thesis Committee:

• Dr. Marc Olano, Chair
• Dr. Penny Rheingans
• Dr. Erle Ellis