Recovering traditions in the digital era: the use of blimps for modelling the archaeological cultural heritage

Driven by progress in sensor technology, algorithms and data processing capabilities, the recording and 3D virtual modelling of complex archaeological sites is currently receiving much attention. Nevertheless, the problem remains the huge effort and costs that have to be invested to obtain realistic models. Besides on-site measurements, much time is often spent in manually rebuilding the whole site with a CAD package or a 3D-modelling tool. In this paper, a low-cost and flexible system has been devised and realized for virtual archaeological sites modelling, starting from the acquisition system and ending with the generation of a virtual model in three dimensions. Different efforts have been made to increase the level of automation without losing accuracy and reliability. Finally, in order to demonstrate its capabilities some examples applied in archaeological sites are tested and reported. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.