Registration of technical drawings and calibrated images for industrial augmented reality

Despite tremendous progress in 3D modelling technology, most sites in traditional industries do not have a computer model of their facilities at their disposal. In these industries, 2D technical drawings are typically the most commonly used documents. In many cases, a database of fully calibrated and oriented photogrammetric images of parts of the plant is also available. These images are often used for metric measurement and 3D as-built modelling. For planning revamps and maintenance, it is necessary to use industrial drawings as well as images and 3D models represented in a common “world” coordinate system. This paper proposes a method for full integration of technical drawings, calibrated images and as-built 3D models. A new algorithm is developed in order to use only a few correspondences between points on a technical drawing and multiple images to estimate a metric planar transformation between the drawing and the world coordinate system. The paper describes the mathematical relationship between this transformation and the set of homographies needed for merging the technical drawing with all the calibrated images. The method is implemented and fully integrated into an industrial software we developed for 3D as-built reconstruction. We present examples of a real application, in which the method is successfully applied to create an augmented reality representation of a waste water plant. Accepted: 13 August 2001