Humans have long-dreamed of flying around the world and exploring never before seen locations or remote historical sites restricted to visitors. Of course, the reality is that the ability to do this is limited by gravity, ability, time, and money. But imagine if there’s a way to overcome these limitations and have similar experiences either without or before actually doing them?
As it turns out, in recent years, this dream has become possible through virtual tours and street views. However, creating these tours requires a lot of data, processing time, and expertise. What’s more, how can these environments be built if there are only a handful of photographs or images of the location one wants to explore?
IARPA Program Manager, Ashwini Deshpande, believes the solution to these problems is within reach with the Walk-through Rendering from Images of Varying Altitude (WRIVA) program. WRIVA’s goal is to develop software algorithms that can build photorealistic environments using a few images taken from a ground-viewpoint, along with images from traffic cameras and satellites.