Jacobs University Students Win Laser Imaging Art Contest

Students from Jacobs University (Bremen, Germany) successfully participated in the recent 2nd edition of the ‘Lidar as Art’ contest, which was held in conjunction with the International Lidar Mapping Forum (ILMF) in Denver, USA. PhD student Jan Elseberg won the contest with an image called ‘Self Portrait with Duckling’.

The winning image of the 2nd edition of the Lidar as Art contest shows how the autonomous robot Irma3D (Intelligent Robot for Mapping Applications in 3D), developed at Jacobs University, sees itself in a mirror. The robot, its duckling mascot and the main sensor, a Riegl VZ-400, are reproduced almost authentically. The laser looking into itself creates distortions as well as changes in intensity that give the robot a single eye, complete with iris and pupil.

Jacobs PhD student Hamid Reza Houshiar came third with an image showing sphere representations of terrestrial laser scans in the city centre of Bremen. The art contest accompanies the ILMF, a three-day technical conference and exhibition focused on terrestrial laser scanning, mobile mapping systems, airborne and bathymetric Lidar.

Similarly to photography, Lidar captures the environment, but as opposed to passive sensing, a Lidar emits laser light and analyses the returning signal. This way, precise representations of environments are obtained. Laser scanning technologies are a core competence of the automation group led by Andreas Nüchter, professor of computer science.

The contest was organised by Canadian company for geospatial information management solutions, Geodigital International. The donated prize and the auction proceeds of the images are going to charity.