AUTOMATING PHOTOGRAMMETRY FOR THE 3D DIGITISATION OF SMALL ARTEFACT COLLECTIONS

Abstract

The 3D digitisation of precious or delicate cultural heritage artefacts via photogrammetry is highly important for historical preservation purposes. Doing so can help mitigate against events such as natural disasters, war, and tourism damage, whilst enabling access to 3D data for researchers around the globe. While the digitisation of such artefacts offer many significant societal and academic benefits, the process in which data is captured is resource intensive and often results in inaccurate outcomes. This paper presents a novel small object scanner which automates the photogrammetry image acquisition process for the highly detailed and efficient 3D digitisation of cultural heritage artefacts across large museum collections.