Rapid generation of urban models

This paper discusses existing methods for rapidly generating models of real scenes. In particular it focuses on the use of these methods in reconstructing urban models. The major work in this area has been conducted using images, however, methods have also been developed that use high-resolution digital elevation models. To accomplish the goal of rapidly reconstructing an urban environment many cues in the images are used. These include observing the light reflected from a surface and the disparity between the set of corresponding points in two overlapping images. We will discuss how these cues are used to reconstruct the three-dimensional shape. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.