Presentation by John Hindmarch, a PhD student at University College London, given on 31 January 2013 at University College London

1. Scanning the Shipping Gallery
John Hindmarch , Scanlab and the
Science Museum
johnhindmarch@gmail.com

2. The Shipping Gallery
• The largest gallery in the Science Museum
• Largely unchanged since the 1950s
• Decommissioned in May 2012 to make way
for a new exhibition opening in 2014
Pictures courtesy Dave Patten, http://www.flickr.com/photos/davepatten

3. The Project
• The Science Museum wished to record and preserve
the exhibition
• Normal method would involve photography and
potentially video, however…
• Inspired by the work
of Scanlab, the museum
approached us about
scanning the entire
space
scanlabprojects.co.uk

4. Scanning
• We used a pair of Faro Photon terrestrial laser scanners
• A rotating mirror sends out a laser beam, and sensors record
up to 1,000,000 ‘reflections’ per second
• Measures time it takes for reflected
pulse to return to the scanner
• Builds up a ‘point cloud’ – a 3D model
of the environment
• But – no colour, and lots of ‘shadows’

5. Colour?
• To capture colour, a digital
camera is attached to top
of scanner
• The camera takes a series of
‘panoramic’ photos
• The images are
projected on to the
point cloud, giving
each point a
colour value

7. Processing
• 275 individual scans, captured over five
nights, each containing millions of points
• 2 billion points overall
• = 256Gb of data!
• 16 weeks processing time:
– aligning the scans
– cleaning noisy data
– colour correction
• 7 minute video uses ~ 10% of the data and
took 48 hours to render

9. Uses?
– Video, with commentary recorded by the
exhibition’s curator, to be placed online
– Alongside more detailed 3D models that visitors
can interact with
– Detailed record of gallery space could be used for
future exhibition planning
– Dataset can be used in different ways as
technology improves. A fully interactive (walk
through) model?

10. Why?
“We hope that archiving exhibitions digitally in this
way will prolong their legacy beyond their physical
installation. As a digital record of the space and
exhibits this model offers the potential for online
versions to be created and interacted with by a
much vaster public audience.”
The Science Museum