Accurate 3D fireball trajectory and orbit calculation using the 3D-FireTOC automatic Python code

The disruption of asteroids and comets produces cm-sized meteoroids that end up impacting the Earth’s atmosphere and producing bright fireballs that might have associated shock waves or, in geometrically-favorable occasions excavate craters that put them into unexpected hazardous scenarios. The astrometric reduction of meteors and fireballs to infer their atmospheric trajectories and heliocentric orbits involves a complex and tedious process that generally requires many manual tasks. To streamline the process, we present a software package called SPMN 3D Fireball Trajectory and Orbit Calculator (3D-FireTOC), an automatic Python code for detection, trajectory reconstruction of meteors, and heliocentric orbit computation from video recordings. The automatic 3D-FireTOC package comprises of a user interface and a graphic engine that generates a realistic 3D representation model, which allows users to easily check the geometric consistency of the results and facilitates scientiï¬c content production for dissemination. The software automatically detects meteors from digital systems, completes the astrometric measurements, performs photometry, computes the meteor atmospheric trajectory, calculates the velocity curve, and obtains the radiant and the heliocentric orbit, all in all quantifying the error measurements in each step. The software applies corrections such as light aberration, refraction, zenith attraction, diurnal aberration and atmospheric extinction. It also characterizes the atmospheric flight and consequently determines fireball fates by using the α − β criterion that analyses the ability of a fireball to penetrate deep into the atmosphere and produce meteorites. We demonstrate the performance of the software by analyzing two bright fireballs recorded by the Spanish Fireball and Meteorite Network (SPMN).

GioGas: Edutainment and Gas Hazards

<p>The Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) has developed an interactive application, for educational purposes, in order to make schools aware of the dangers deriving from radon, and in general from harmful gases (gas hazards), near volcanic areas.</p> <p>To raise children awareness on the dangers related to an invisible enemy, often odorless “gases”, is not a simple task. Since our target are children between 11 and 13 years of age, we decided to develop a videogame with the scope of enabling them to learn the most appropriate solutions for identifying/avoiding/managing hazards. The use of a videogame for spreading information on gas hazards makes learning fun and, at the same time, feasible in a historic moment where Covid-19 does not allow for lessons to be physically partaken in a classroom. Furthermore, this type of learning known as “edutainment” is more effective, captivating and meaningful, allowing students to acquire a more concrete and longer remembered knowledge.</p> <p>The videogame, called GioGas, is a single player game running on both Android mobile phone and personal computers. GioGas has been developed using the Role Playing Game Maker MV graphic engine. The engine provides a map editor and several characters allowing for the creation of various biomes, also including the possibility to insert music. From the technical point of view the engine is based on javascript for the events creation and triggers management simplifying porting on mobile and desktop operating systems.</p> <p>The game characters are a INGV researcher, staying in a rented house during his vacation, and an elderly lady that asks for help to understand if her grandchild’s health issues are related to the recent digging of a well nearby the house. The characters move around in the virtual environment in different locations organized in several levels. Through the game, the student will learn the symptoms caused by gases, the instruments and the techniques to identify/measure them and the solutions to adopt to solve the problem. During the game, the researcher will hand out information and the student will choose which solution to apply: this will also stimulate student inclination to problem solving and overview capacities. Each solution will return a result in terms of risk mitigation and a score, from 1 to 3, based on the effectiveness of the identified solution.</p> <p>In the future, to add more stimulating and engaging elements for the student, a multiplayer mode will be developed, giving the students the possibility to challenge themselves.</p>

Modeling the Deformation of the Aerodynamic Surface to Estimate the Error of the Photogrammetric Algorithm

In-flight measurements are one of the directions of aircraft testing which has been developed actively recently. Creation of a flight laboratory based on an unmanned vehicle to reduce the cost of developing and analysis techniques for in-flight measurements is proposed. For the laboratory an onboard system for recording experimental images during a flight was developed. It was decided to conduct computer modeling of images that can be obtained using the developed system for its verification. Unity a cross-platform photorealistic graphic engine with visual integrated development environment was chosen for this purpose. For modeling both external and internal real camera parameters, including distortion coefficients, and parameters of the measured surface could be preassigned. The developed methodology for computer modeling of images of the deformable surface allows to evaluate the accuracy of various algorithms for processing experimental images, as well as the influence of the parameters of the experimental setup on the error of the measurements results.

Simulation of Multi-Camera Indoor and Outdoor 3D Scanner

Photogrammetry allows a three-dimensional reconstruction of the object based on its multiple photography’s. The quality of the reconstruction result depends mostly on the gloss, the diversity of the texture, the lighting conditions, the quality of the camera calibration and the shape of the object. The article presents the results of a simulation of a multi-camera reconstruction system, for the needs of designing indoor and outdoor 3D scanner. The 3D reconstruction system works by simultaneously taking photographs of cameras located around the object. The simulation was created to investigate the optimal distribution of cameras and projectors casting a pattern that increases the number of characteristic points on the surface of the object. The impact of background removal in images on the reconstruction result as well as the texture quality of the object depending on the resolution and distance of the cameras from the object were also investigated. The graphic engine used to create the simulation also allows testing of impact of various conditions. The presented results prove that the parameters of the system structure, such as the placement of cameras, projectors, the selection of patterns projected by the projectors are important and their values can be determined at the stage of system simulation. The acquired results are promising and will be further investigated.

VR Interactive Feature of HTML5-based WebVR Control Laboratory by Using Head-mounted Display

The development of web-based online laboratory for engineering education has made big progress in recent years with state-of-the-art technologies. In order to further promote the effectiveness within an online virtual environment, the virtual reality (VR) interactive feature of WebVR Control laboratory based on HTML5 is presented in this paper. The educational objective is to assist the students or researchers to conduct a realistic and immersive experiment of control engineering with a head-mounted display (HMD) equipped. The implementation of the VR technique mainly relies on the Three.js graphic engine based on Web Graphics Library (WebGL) which has been supported by most of the mainstream web browsers in their latest version without a plugin embedded. At the end of the paper, the ball and beam system is taken as an example to illustrate the whole operational approach of the novel VR experiment in detail. While such a VR interactive feature hasn’t been integrated into some of the current web-based online laboratories, the technical solution could be inspirational for them.