Hybridization of Convergent Photogrammetry, Computer Vision, and Artificial Intelligence for Digital Documentation of Cultural Heritage - A Case Study: The Magdalena Palace

Digital documentation of cultural heritage is a very important issue that is receiving increasing attention from the scientific community. The availability of accurate 3D models of historical buildings is crucial to preserve our cultural heritage, because it allows us to reconstruct them in case of fortuitous collapse or intentional demolition or damage. In this paper, we present a new approach for the digital documentation of cultural heritage. Our approach is based on a hybridization of different techniques for data capture and processing and image analysis, with the aim of obtaining 3D models from images and the texturing of these models. In particular, we rely on convergent photogrammetry as way to acquire information about the real objects for generation of 3D models. We also apply computer vision and artificial intelligence techniques for further processing of all acquired data. As a result, we have developed a new way to obtain digital documentation of cultural heritage from data by using accurate reverse engineering techniques. Our methodology has been successfully applied to the digital documentation of a famous historical building in the city of Santander: the Royal Palace of Magdalena, the conference venue of this conference Cyberworlds' 2014.