Structure from Motion, a Cheaper Alternative for Three-Dimensional Modeling in Earth Science

Abstract: In this report, two methods for three-dimensional modeling are evaluated against each other. The first method is terrestrial laser scanning (LiDAR) that uses a laser beam to record the surrounding environment, and the second one is called Structure from Motion (SfM). The SfM technique works on the same bases as photogrammetry, which is that an object of interest is photographed from multiple angles with overlapping images and mutual points are identified and used to create a three- dimensional model. Since both the equipment and the software used to produce LiDAR models are very expensive the main thought of this project was to produce the SfM model using a cellphone camera and free open source software. The study was carried out in such a way that a “before and after” -model was generated of a small snowy mound to see how well the SfM method performed compared to the LiDAR method. The final result revealed that SfM method deviated with approximately 8mm from the LiDAR method. One of the main difficulties during this project was to correctly reference the models against exact coordinate, which also could have been one reason to why the two models differed the way they did. Taking into consideration the user-friendliness and the low cost of the SfM method, it is a very promising tool for earth science related field research.