Autonomous Reality Modelling for Cultural Heritage Sites employing
  cooperative quadrupedal robots and unmanned aerial vehicles
Nikolaos Giakoumidis Christos-Nikolaos Anagnostopoulos
Nowadays, the use of advanced sensors, such as terrestrial 3D laser scanners,
mobile LiDARs and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) photogrammetric imaging, has
become the prevalent practice for 3D Reality Modeling and digitization of
large-scale monuments of Cultural Heritage (CH). In practice, this process is
heavily related to the expertise of the surveying team, handling the laborious
planning and time-consuming execution of the 3D mapping process that is
tailored to the specific requirements and constraints of each site. To minimize
human intervention, this paper introduces a novel methodology for autonomous 3D
Reality Modeling for CH monuments by employing au-tonomous biomimetic
quadrupedal robotic agents and UAVs equipped with the appropriate sensors.
These autonomous robotic agents carry out the 3D RM process in a systematic and
repeatable ap-proach. The outcomes of this automated process may find
applications in digital twin platforms, facilitating secure monitoring and
management of cultural heritage sites and spaces, in both indoor and outdoor
environments.