Rendering Inversion in the Automated Construction of Virtual Environments

A technique for the autonomous, non-contact creation of real-time navigable, virtual environments from existing, real environments is discussed. The technique, termed virtualization, uses structured light, together with assumptions restricting the classes of target surfaces, to provide direct estimation of the geometry of 3-D surface patch parameters. Passive camera images are used in conjunction with the deduced geometry to generate surface colors and textures. Color and texture recognition are achieved through a partial inversion of the rendering equation that is used to build the virtual environments. Texture samples are extended to complete texture maps by discrete cosine transform. An example reconstruction is provided.