Ad-hoc model acquisition for combat simulation in urban terrain

• Published in: SPIE Proceedings, Earth Resources and Environmental Remote Sensing/GIS Applications III
• Main Authors: Bulatov, Dimitri, Solbrig, Peter, Wernerus, Peter
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: ALS; building reconstruction; depth map; optical images; simulation; training; UAV; urban terrain; VBS2; 004; 670; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://publica.fraunhofer.de/handle/publica/377196; https://doi.org/10.1117/12.974486

Paper 85380G Situation awareness in complex urban environments is an important component for a successful task fulfillment both in military and civil area of applications. In the first area, the fields of deployment of the members of the North Atlantic Alliance have been changed, in the past two decades, from the originally assigned task of acting as national and allied defense forces within the partners' own borders to out-of-area missions under conditions of an asymmetric conflict. Because of its complicated structure, urban terrain represents a particular difficulty of military missions such as patrolling. In the civil field of applications, police and rescue forces are also often strongly dependent on a local visibility and accessibility analysis. However, the process of decision-taking within a short time and under enormous pressure can be extensively trained in an environment that is tailored to the concrete situation. The contribution of this work consists of context-based modeling of urban terrain that can be then integrated into simulation software, for example, Virtual Battlespace 2 (VBS2). The input of our procedure is made up by the airborne sensor data, collected either by an active or a passive sensor. The latter is particularly important if the application is time-critical or the area to be explored is small. After description of our procedure for urban terrain modeling with a detailed focus on the recent innovations, the main steps of model integration into simulation software will be presented and two examples of missions for military and civil applications that can be easily created with VBS2 will be given.