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Cartography of Mars in a Virtual Reality Environment

Mars

Project description

This work aims to investigate the suitability of applying Virtual Reality techniques in the exploration of Mars terrain features in order to support the creation of topographic maps of the planet. Traditionally, these tasks are performed using Geo-Information-Systems (GIS) on Desktop Workstations, using a two-dimensional projection of the collected data as the basis on which an operator performs manual feature extraction. After identifying features and characterizing them quantitatively using measurement operators, they are ultimately represented visually by so called geo-objects.

Within the scope of this project, a system will be developed which enables this workflow to happen entirely within a VR-environment, using appropriate navigation and interaction metaphors. The main goal of the project is to investigate whether the more natural immersion in the VR-environment can help to improve the identification and spatial analysis of surface features.

DLR Tasks

DLR-IFP provides the reference-dataset collected during the Mars Express Mission and provides user feedback as well as an evaluation of the applicability of the final system.

DLR Simulation and Software Technology Tasks

DLR Simulation and Software Technology develops the VR-GIS Software System.

Project partner

• DLR Institut für Planetenforschung (IFP), Berlin

Project runtime

01.08.2009 - 01.08.2012