I'm the first author of this, happy to answer any questions. It's great to see this on HN.
PS. I'll be graduating this July with my masters.
PS. I'll be graduating this July with my masters.
As far as I can tell it's not directly related to yours - but are you aware of any software that uses say, Android OS and a camera or pre-existing photos of the inside of a house/office/building to create a 3d map? Matterport seems like it might but their Android app is not going so well.
Ben’s reviews are the best I’ve seen, but he is far from the only reviewer in this space.
Unfortunately, most of the software in this space does not actually generate a floor plan, even if they do create a 3D model of the space (like Matterport). There is one program he highlighted which is bundled with a service from the company that you can use to process your pictures and generate a floor plan among other things, but some of that work is still done by human beings.
I’m still looking for a good consumer grade program that can do photogrammetry of a space and turn that into a floor plan. I’ve seen attempts to do this with phones and cameras, and the LIDAR scanner that Apple has recently introduced has improved the situation, but IMO it is still not there yet.
But please correct me if I’m wrong. I would love to be wrong.
Edit: the Canvas.io software really wants the latest iPhone or iPad devices with LIDAR scanners built-in. It will supposedly run on lesser hardware, but with greater error in the constructed 3D map. Fine for a sample to get an idea of whether or not it might work for you, but not really enough to actually use for anything useful.
Fine for a sample to get an idea of whether or not it might work for you, but not really enough to actually use for anything useful.
But IMO, this still isn’t good enough. It’s a huge improvement over the corner mode, which is what you have to use if you aren’t using a device with a LIDAR sensor, but it’s still not enough.
I’m still looking.