Terrestrial laser scanning joined SubSea LiDAR, SONAR, and Autodesk’s photogrammetry

Jul 7, 2014 12:41 GMT  ·  By

Pearl Harbor is a graveyard for the bodies of over 1,100 sailors and marines who lost their lives when the place was bombed in 1941, during the Japanese attack that ultimately caused the USA's entrance into World War II.

USS Arizona exploded and sank during the attack, killing 1,177 officers and crewmen. It was a grimly ironic end for a battleship that hadn't actually seen much battle during its five decades of life.

USS Arizona was a Pennsylvania-class battleship built for and by the United States Navy in the mid-1910s. It was named in honor of the 48th state's admission into the union and remained stateside during World War I.

Afterwards, it represented the USA's interests in Turkey during the Greco-Turkish War, then it was transferred to the Pacific Fleet, where it remained and was often used for training exercises.

That's not all it was used for, however. In 1933, it provided aid to the people of Long Beach, California, following an earthquake. Also, the USS Arizona was featured in Here Comes the Navy, a film by Jimmy Cagney that showed the romantic troubles of a sailor.

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the USS Arizona remained the only ship that had not been fully salvaged, as the Navy had only been able to remove some of the ship parts for reuse.

That means that even today the wreck lies on the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Consequently, it has become a course of (arguably morbid) fascination for historians, veterans, divers, and everyone else who happens to visit the harbor for whatever reason.

Alas, recovering the ship's remains is not that much easier today than it was back when the attack happened. That is why The US National Park Service and Autodesk have pooled their resources to recreate parts of the wreckage, and various “artifacts” via 3D printing technology instead.

They combined data gained via terrestrial laser scanning, SubSea LiDAR, and SONAR to give Autodesk’s photogrammetry technology all the numbers needed to faithfully reproduce (for now) a coke bottle and a cooking pot.

Diver Shaan Hurley says that the two objects are the type of things that most clearly show the ship as more than a piece of machinery. According to him, it was quite exhausting to get all the needed data, as he had to take hundreds of photos in an orbiting sequence while maintaining good control and buoyancy. He and his colleagues did this for up to 14 hours a day and tended to fall asleep on the dock right after surfacing.

After 15 days, though, they got all the data they needed for the full scan. A fair bit less than the 90 days that would have been needed back in 1983. The Autodesk Mudbox program then finalized the models, which were later 3D printed and made accessible to the general public.

The coke bottle was made of 959 layers, in full color, over a period of 5 hours and 24 minutes. The cooking pot is made of 1,028 layers and took 6 hours (and it was made at a third of the scale). The cooking pot was later presented to Don Stratton, a survivor of the attack.

USS Arizona artifacts 3D printed (4 Images)

3D printed replica of a coke bottle
3D printed replica of a cooking potDiver in the middle of the underwater photoshoot
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