Cost-effective 3D reconstruction with minimal on-site labor for industrial metaverse applications

Industrial metaverses provide solutions to emerging challenges, such as labor and skilled-worker shortages, by offering remote assistance capabilities, immersive training environments, and real-time collaboration tools. To enable the application of the metaverse across various situations and locations, 3D models must be reconstructed inexpensively and with minimal on-site labor. We have been developing a photogrammetric 3D reconstruction method, which leverages inexpensive consumer devices, such as 360-degree cameras and smartphones. Our method is robust against various changes in site conditions and data acquisition methods, reducing the reconstruction workload for on-site workers. Our experiments demonstrate that a factory (1008m²) can be reconstructed using approximately 31 minutes of recordings (~ 33m² min⁻¹) captured by a consumer 360-degree camera, highlighting the cost efficiency and reduced on-site workload offered by our reconstruction methods. In addition, we confirm the robustness of our method by modeling more than 10 sites under diverse conditions.