Underwater Photogrammetry and Object Modeling: A Case Study of Xlendi Wreck in Malta

In this paper we present a photogrammetry-based approach for deep-sea underwater surveys conducted from a submarine and guided by knowledge-representation combined with a logical approach (ontology). Two major issues are discussed in this paper. The first concerns deep-sea surveys using photogrammetry from a submarine. Here the goal was to obtain a set of images that completely covered the selected site. Subsequently and based on these images, a low-resolution 3D model is obtained in real-time, followed by a very high-resolution model produced back in the laboratory. The second issue involves the extraction of known artefacts present on the site. This aspect of the research is based on an a priori representation of the knowledge involved using systematic reasoning. Two parallel processes were developed to represent the photogrammetric process used for surveying as well as for identifying archaeological artefacts visible on the sea floor. Mapping involved the use of the CIDOC-CRM system (International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC)—Conceptual Reference Model)—This is a system that has been previously utilised to in the heritage sector and is largely available to the established scientific community. The proposed theoretical representation is based on procedural attachment; moreover, a strong link is maintained between the ontological description of the modelled concepts and the Java programming language which permitted 3D structure estimation and modelling based on a set of oriented images. A very recently discovered shipwreck acted as a testing ground for this project; the Xelendi Phoenician shipwreck, found off the Maltese coast, is probably the oldest known shipwreck in the western Mediterranean. The approach presented in this paper was developed in the scope of the GROPLAN project (Généralisation du Relevé, avec Ontologies et Photogrammétrie, pour l'Archéologie Navale et Sous-marine). Financed by the French National Research Agency (ANR) for four years, this project associates two French research laboratories, an industrial partner, the University of Malta, and Texas A & M University.

[1]  Odile Papini,et al.  Encoding the Revision of Partially Preordered Information in Answer Set Programming , 2009, ECSQARU.

[2]  H. S. Wolff,et al.  iRun: Horizontal and Vertical Shape of a Region-Based Graph Compression , 2022, Sensors.

[3]  Julien Seinturier.  Fusion de connaissances : Applications aux relevés photogrammétriques de fouilles archéologiques sous-marines. (Knowledge Fusion : Applications to photogrammetric surveys of underwater archaeological excavations) , 2007 .

[4]  Yi Liu,et al.  Shape Topics: A Compact Representation and New Algorithms for 3D Partial Shape Retrieval , 2006, 2006 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'06).

[5]  M. Fatih Demirci,et al.  3D object retrieval using many-to-many matching of curve skeletons , 2005, International Conference on Shape Modeling and Applications 2005 (SMI' 05).

[6]  Peter Wonka,et al.  Curve matching for open 2D curves , 2009, Pattern Recognit. Lett..

[7]  Pietro Perona,et al.  One-shot learning of object categories , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[8]  Filipe Castro,et al.  Texts, Illustrations, and Physical Objects: The Case of Ancient Shipbuilding Treatises , 2007, ECDL.

[9]  Klaus Hanke,et al.  Methodology for CIDOC CRM based data integration with spatial data , 2013 .

[10]  Franco Niccolucci,et al.  Quality management of 3D cultural heritage replicas with CIDOC-CRM , 2013, CRMEX@TPDL.

[11]  Andrea D'Andrea,et al.  An Ontology for 3D Cultural Objects , 2006, VAST.

[12]  William W. Fitzhugh,et al.  Archaeology and the Sea in Scandinavia and Britain. A Personal Account , 2013 .

[13]  Luis Filipe Castro.  Synthesizing and Storing Maritime Archaeological Data for Assisting in Ship Reconstruction , 2011 .

[14]  Filipe Castro,et al.  A multilingual approach to technical manuscripts: 16th and 17th-century Portuguese shipbuilding treatises , 2007, JCDL '07.

[15]  B. Fei,et al.  Binary tree of SVM: a new fast multiclass training and classification algorithm , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks.

[16]  Julien Seinturier,et al.  Fusion réversible : application à l'information archéologique , 2002 .

[17]  Tullio Scovazzi,et al.  Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage , 2009, The Legal Order of the Oceans.

[18]  Djamel Merad,et al.  Partial 3d-object retrieval using level curves , 2014, 2014 6th International Conference of Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition (SoCPaR).

[19]  Marc Rioux,et al.  Description of shape information for 2-D and 3-D objects , 2000, Signal Process. Image Commun..

[20]  Joan Ramon Torres.  Las ánforas fenicio-púnicas del Mediterráneo central y occidental , 1995 .

[21]  Tsuhan Chen,et al.  Efficient feature extraction for 2D/3D objects in mesh representation , 2001, Proceedings 2001 International Conference on Image Processing (Cat. No.01CH37205).

[22]  Richard Furuta,et al.  A digital library approach to the reconstruction of ancient sunken ships , 2010 .

[23]  Philip N. Klein,et al.  On Aligning Curves , 2003, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[24]  Mongi A. Abidi,et al.  Surface matching by 3D point's fingerprint , 2001, Proceedings Eighth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision. ICCV 2001.

[25]  Andrew W. Fitzgibbon,et al.  Bundle Adjustment - A Modern Synthesis , 1999, Workshop on Vision Algorithms.

[26]  Martin Doerr,et al.  A Distributed Object Repository for Cultural Heritage , 2010, VAST.

[27]  Ryutarou Ohbuchi,et al.  Shape-similarity search of three-dimensional models using parameterized statistics , 2002, 10th Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications, 2002. Proceedings..

[28]  Jitendra Malik,et al.  Recognizing Objects in Range Data Using Regional Point Descriptors , 2004, ECCV.

[29]  M. Fatih Demirci,et al.  Many-to-many graph matching via metric embedding , 2003, 2003 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2003. Proceedings..

[30]  Julien Hué,et al.  Underwater Archaeological 3D Surveys Validation within the Removed Sets Framework , 2011, ECSQARU.

[31]  Filipe Castro,et al.  Ask Not What Your Text Can do For You. Ask What You Can do For Your Text (a Dictionary's perspective) , 2009 .

[32]  Pierre Drap,et al.  A photogrammetric process driven by an Expert System: A new approach for underwater archaeological surveying applied to the 'Grand Ribaud F' Etruscan wreck , 2003, 2003 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop.

[33]  Peter Leonard,et al.  An underwater measuring device , 1972 .

[34]  Xianyu Su,et al.  A new approach for the bundle adjustment problem with fixed constraints in stereo vision , 2012 .

[35]  Jeremy Green,et al.  Recording techniques used during the excavation of the Batavia , 1976 .

[36]  Kurt Konolige,et al.  Visual Odometry Using Sparse Bundle Adjustment on an Autonomous Outdoor Vehicle , 2006, AMS.

[37]  Mohammed Bennamoun,et al.  3D Recognition and Segmentation of Objects in Cluttered Scenes , 2005, 2005 Seventh IEEE Workshops on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV/MOTION'05) - Volume 1.

[38]  Ming Ouhyoung,et al.  On Visual Similarity Based 3D Model Retrieval , 2003, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[39]  Djamel Merad,et al.  Underwater Photogrammetry for Archaeology. What Will Be the Next Step , 2013 .

[40]  Odile Papini,et al.  Extending Removed Sets Revision to partially preordered belief bases , 2011, Int. J. Approx. Reason..

[41]  Michael G. Strintzis,et al.  This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PATTERN ANALYSIS AND MACHINE INTELLIGENCE Snapshots: A Novel Local Surface , 2022 .

[42]  Manolis I. A. Lourakis,et al.  SBA: A software package for generic sparse bundle adjustment , 2009, TOMS.

[43]  Manolis Gergatsoulis,et al.  Mapping Cultural Metadata Schemas to CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model , 2010, SETN.

[44]  Pierre Drap,et al.  Underwater Photogrammetry for Archaeology , 2012 .

[45]  Mohammed Bennamoun,et al.  Three-Dimensional Model-Based Object Recognition and Segmentation in Cluttered Scenes , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[46]  Jon Doyle,et al.  Two Theses of Knowledge Representation: Language Restrictions, Taxonomic Classification, and the Utility of Representation Services , 1991, Artif. Intell..

[47]  Andrew E. Johnson,et al.  Using Spin Images for Efficient Object Recognition in Cluttered 3D Scenes , 1999, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[48]  Daniel Cohen-Or,et al.  4-points congruent sets for robust pairwise surface registration , 2008, ACM Trans. Graph..

[49]  Xavier Granier,et al.  Semi-automatic 3D Acquisition and Reassembly of Cultural Heritage: The SeARCH Project , 2011, ERCIM News.

[50]  Nico Blodow,et al.  Fast Point Feature Histograms (FPFH) for 3D registration , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[51]  Jean Ponce,et al.  Accurate, Dense, and Robust Multiview Stereopsis , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[52]  Bernhard P. Wrobel,et al.  Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision , 2001 .

[53]  Chin Seng Chua,et al.  Point Signatures: A New Representation for 3D Object Recognition , 1997, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[54]  Ankur Agarwal,et al.  Hyperfeatures - Multilevel Local Coding for Visual Recognition , 2006, ECCV.

[55]  Pierre Grussenmeyer,et al.  TEACHING ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAMMETRY ON THE WEB WITH ARPENTEUR , 2000 .

[56]  Edward C. Harris,et al.  Principles of archaeological stratigraphy , 1979 .

[57]  Carl Olof Cederlund.  Preliminary report on recording methods used for the investigation of merchant shipwrecks at Jutholmen and Älvsnabben in 1973‐74 , 1977 .

[58]  Jason Weston,et al.  Multi-Class Support Vector Machines , 1998 .

[59]  Olivier Curé,et al.  Toward a Novel Application of CIDOC CRM to Underwater Archaeological Surveys , 2010, 2010 IEEE Fourth International Conference on Semantic Computing.

[60]  Richard Furuta,et al.  Design of a Computer-based Frame to Store , Manage , and Divulge Information from Underwater Archaeological Excavations : the Pepper Wreck Case , 2008 .

[61]  Olivier D. Faugeras,et al.  The geometry of multiple images - the laws that govern the formation of multiple images of a scene and some of their applications , 2001 .