Design of a wearable system for 3D data acquisition and reconstruction for tree climbers

Abstract

Ecologists often need to extract data from forests to determine the flora and fauna conditions. Tree climbing is one technique used for this. Climbers go to the top of the tree and use hand held equipment to collect and make notes while they are descending. This process demands expert climbing skills and biology expertise, which are two characteristics not commonly found. This paper describes the design of mobile system for 3D data collection and reconstruction of the field research environment for remote evaluation. The prototype can be used to reduce the time spent up trees and collected data that can be used for crowd-sourced evaluation.