TEDGlobal 2011
Ben Kacyra: Ancient wonders captured in 3D
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Ancient monuments give us clues to astonishing past civilizations -- but they're under threat from pollution, war, neglect. Ben Kacyra, who invented a groundbreaking 3D scanning system, is using his invention to scan and preserve the world's heritage in archival detail. (Watch to the end for a little demo.)
Ben Kacyra - Digital preservationist
Ben Kacyra uses state-of-the-art technology to preserve cultural heritage sites and let us in on their secrets in a way never before possible. Full bio
Ben Kacyra uses state-of-the-art technology to preserve cultural heritage sites and let us in on their secrets in a way never before possible. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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I'd like to start with a short story.
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It's about a little boy
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whose father was a history buff
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and who used to take him by the hand
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to visit the ruins of an ancient metropolis
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on the outskirts of their camp.
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They would always stop by to visit
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these huge winged bulls that used to guard
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the gates of that ancient metropolis,
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and the boy used to be scared
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of these winged bulls,
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but at the same time they excited him.
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And the dad used to use those bulls
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to tell the boy stories about
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that civilization and their work.
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Let's fast-forward to the
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San Francisco Bay Area many decades later,
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where I started a technology company
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that brought the world its first
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3D laser scanning system.
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Let me show you how it works.
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Female Voice: Long range laser scanning
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by sending out a pulse that's a laser beam of light.
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The system measures the beam's time of flight,
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recording the time it takes for the light
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to hit a surface and make its return.
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With two mirrors, the scanner calculates
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the beam's horizontal and vertical angles,
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giving accurate x, y, and z coordinates.
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The point is then recorded
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into a 3D visualization program.
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All of this happens in seconds.
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Ben Kacyra: You can see here,
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these systems are extremely fast.
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They collect millions of points at a time
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with very high accuracy
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and very high resolution.
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A surveyor with traditional survey tools
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would be hard-pressed to produce
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maybe 500 points in a whole day.
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These babies would be producing
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something like ten thousand points a second.
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So, as you can imagine,
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this was a paradigm shift
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in the survey and construction
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as well as in reality capture industry.
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Approximately ten years ago,
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my wife and I started a foundation to do good,
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and right about that time,
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the magnificent Bamiyan Buddhas,
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hundred and eighty foot tall in Afghanistan,
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were blown up by the Taliban.
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They were gone in an instant.
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And unfortunately, there was
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no detailed documentation of these Buddhas.
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This clearly devastated me,
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and I couldn't help but wonder about
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the fate of my old friends, the winged bulls,
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and the fate of the many, many
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heritage sites all over the world.
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Both my wife and I
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were so touched by this
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that we decided to
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expand the mission of our foundation
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to include digital heritage preservation
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of world sites.
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We called the project CyArk,
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which stands for Cyber Archive.
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To date, with the help of
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a global network of partners,
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we've completed close to fifty projects.
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Let me show you some of them:
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Chichen Itza,
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Rapa Nui --
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and what you're seeing here
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are the cloud of points --
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Babylon,
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Rosslyn Chapel,
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Pompeii,
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and our latest project, Mt. Rushmore,
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which happened to be one of
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our most challenging projects.
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As you see here, we had to develop
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a special rig to bring the scanner
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up close and personal.
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The results of our work in the field
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are used to produce
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media and deliverables to be used
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by conservators and researchers.
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We also produce media for
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dissemination to the public --
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free through the CyArk website.
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These would be used for education,
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cultural tourism, etc.
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What you're looking at in here
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is a 3D viewer that we developed
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that would allow the display
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and manipulation of [the] cloud of points
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in real time, cutting sections through them
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and extracting dimensions.
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This happens to be the cloud of points
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for Tikal.
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In here you see a traditional 2D
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architectural engineering drawing
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that's used for preservation, and of course
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we tell the stories through fly-throughs.
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And here, this is a fly-through
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the cloud of points of Tikal,
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and here you see it rendered
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and photo-textured with the photography
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that we take of the site.
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And so this is not a video.
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This is actual 3D points with
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two to three millimeter accuracy.
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And of course the data can be used
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to develop 3D models that are
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very accurate and very detailed.
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And here you're looking at a model
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that's extracted from the cloud of points
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for Stirling Castle.
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It's used for studies, for visualization,
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as well as for education.
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And finally, we produce mobile apps
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that include narrated virtual tools.
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The more I got involved
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in the heritage field,
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the more it became clear to me
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that we are losing the sites
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and the stories faster than we can
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physically preserve them.
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Of course, earthquakes
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and all the natural phenomena --
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floods, tornadoes, etc. --
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take their toll.
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However, what occurred to me was
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human-caused destruction, which was
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not only causing a significant portion
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of the destruction, but actually
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it was accelerating.
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This includes arson,
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urban sprawl,
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acid rain, not to mention
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terrorism and wars.
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It was getting more and more apparent
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that we're fighting a losing battle.
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We're losing our sites
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and the stories,
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and basically we're losing
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a piece -- and a significant piece --
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of our collective memory.
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Imagine us as a human race
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not knowing where we came from.
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Luckily, in the last two or three decades,
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digital technologies have been developing
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that have helped us to develop tools
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that we've brought to bear
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in the digital preservation,
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in our digital preservation war.
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This includes, for example,
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the 3D laser scanning systems,
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ever more powerful personal computers,
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3D graphics,
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high-definition digital photography,
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not to mention the Internet.
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Because of this accelerated
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pace of destruction,
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it became clear to us that we needed
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to challenge ourselves and our partners
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to accelerate our work.
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And we created a project
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we call the CyArk 500 Challenge --
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and that is to digitally preserve
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500 World Heritage Sites
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in five years.
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We do have the technology
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that's scaleable,
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and our network of global partners
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has been expanding and can be expanded
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at a rapid rate,
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so we're comfortable
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that this task can be accomplished.
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However, to me, the 500 is
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really just the first 500.
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In order to sustain our work into the future,
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we use technology centers
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where we partner with
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local universities and colleges
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to take the technology to them,
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whereby they then can help us
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with digital preservation of their heritage sites,
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and at the same time, it gives them
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the technology to benefit from in the future.
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Let me close with another short story.
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Two years ago, we were approached
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by a partner of ours to digitally preserve
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an important heritage site,
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a UNESCO heritage site in Uganda,
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the Royal Kasubi Tombs.
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The work was done successfully in the field,
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and the data was archived
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and publicly disseminated
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through the CyArk website.
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Last March,
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we received very sad news.
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The Royal Tombs had been destroyed
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by suspected arson.
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A few days later, we received a call:
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"Is the data available
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and can it be used for reconstruction?"
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Our answer, of course, was yes.
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Let me leave you with a final thought.
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Our heritage is much more than
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our collective memory --
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it's our collective treasure.
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We owe it to our children,
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our grandchildren and the generations
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we will never meet
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to keep it safe
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and to pass it along.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Well, I'm staying here because
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we wanted to demonstrate to you
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the power of this technology
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and so, while I've been speaking,
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you have been scanned.
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(Laughter)
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The two wizards that I have
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that are behind the curtain
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will help me bring
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the results on the screen.
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(Applause)
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This is all in 3D and of course
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you can fly through the cloud of points.
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You can look at it from on top,
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from the ceiling.
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You can look from different vantage points,
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but I'm going to ask Doug to zoom in
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on an individual in the crowd,
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just to show the amount of detail
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that we can create.
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So you have been digitally preserved
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in about four minutes.
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(Laughter)
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I'd like to thank the wizards here.
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We were very lucky to have
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two of our partners participate in this:
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the Historic Scotland,
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and the Glasgow School of Art.
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I'd like to also thank personally
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the efforts of David Mitchell,
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who is the Director of Conservation
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at Historic Scotland.
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David.
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(Applause)
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And Doug Pritchard, who's the Head of
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Visualization at the Glasgow School of Art.
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Let's give them a hand.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ben Kacyra - Digital preservationistBen Kacyra uses state-of-the-art technology to preserve cultural heritage sites and let us in on their secrets in a way never before possible.
Why you should listen
As a child, Ben Kacyra was taken to visit the ruins of the ancient city of Nineveh near his home town of Mosul in Iraq, giving him an abiding appreciation for the value of history. So when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraqi-born civil engineer was dismayed. In 2002, he founded California-based nonprofit CyArk in order to apply a highly accurate, portable laser-scanning technology he’d originally developed for monitoring nuclear power plants and other structures – to preserving the world’s cultural heritage sites, what Kacyra calls “our collective human memory”.
CyArk’s methods are fast and accurate: pulsed lasers generate 3D points of clouds, which render surfaces at accuracy to within millimeters. Combined with high-definition photography and traditional surveying techniques these data make it possible to create highly detailed media – photo textured animations, 3D fly-throughs – that digitally preserve our knowledge of heritage sites against natural disaster, war, and neglect, and make them accessible to the world. Among the sites already scanned are ancient sites in Mexico, the leaning tower of Pisa, and Mount Rushmore.
Ben Kacyra | Speaker | TED.com