hey everybody wow that’s a lofty title
I’m a kid from Akron Ohio so that might
be the most complicated thing that ever
ran through my brain that’s me as a
little boy and I always think of Akron
is sort of Detroit’s smaller in stature
less successful less musical cousin you
guys made the cars we made the tires and
my grandfather worked in a tire factory
for 40 years fast-forward 40 years here
me is me as a father I work at a company
called isobar we are a digital agency
and here in Detroit we do a lot of work
for General Motors including making
virtual reality experiences part of my
job is to investigate new technologies
and trends and how those apply to
businesses and we often talk about
innovation to me innovation is this
practice of connecting dots that were
previously not connected trying to find
out ways to do things that perhaps we
didn’t intend but that lead to solutions
to big problems we often try to force it
and sometimes that doesn’t work and
sometimes the unforced examples are most
beautiful one day sitting in our office
in Chicago I was working with a team we
were talking about how can we recreate
physical spaces and how can we provide
more context to people using these types
of digital experiences because if you
don’t know vr is pretty cool and it’s
going to be very important to us over
the next five or so years this is the
view from the Chicago office and I had
this inspired moment because the week
before my wife and I were on the Chicago
architectural tour if you’ve never done
that it’s pretty interesting and they
give you this point that all of the land
east of michigan avenue at one time was
lake and after the Great Chicago Fire
they dumped the remnants of the ashes
into the lake to create land this
happens all over the world but you never
really have context on what that means
and so let’s take a look that used to
all be lake that was all lake and that
was all lake that is an area about three
times the size of downtown Detroit
proper all right so it makes me think to
myself and ask this question which we
often do
in the world of innovation we don’t know
if we’re always right but we have to
question things are there better ways to
visualize change or deconstruction or
the reconstruction can we provide more
context to people and how can we better
preserve today for the benefit of people
tomorrow we have these current tools
maps and illustrations & paintings in
photography and video and time-lapse
videos and maybe 3d videos if you’re
really lucky and have a lot of money and
in the course of putting the slide
together I did some research and I found
this beautiful picture of the fox
theater here in Detroit because this is
from the 60s right no it says Aretha
Franklin still not from the 60s because
you can see in the corner on the right
hand side there’s a little bit of a
second city sign and that didn’t appear
in detroit until the 90s and so even the
ways we think about capturing things
today don’t always provide the right
kind of context okay so moving forward
maybe there is a way to do this by using
drones and virtual reality that might
sound crazy to some you but let me
explain there is a process called
photogrammetry photogrammetry is a an
old process used to create Maps you got
to think back before we had airplanes we
walked around and tried to create maps
and they probably weren’t that accurate
but the once we got into the air we
could use expensive airplanes with
expensive cameras take aerial
photographs and measure distances using
them well today because of the consumer
market in innovation in drones or UAVs
is the more astute might call them we
have low cost flying cameras and we also
have a lot of companies that have
created software to take advantage of
these low-cost flying cameras to do what
I’m about to show you requires two types
of flights first you identify something
that you want to preserve historically
you fly around it in a circle and you
take a bunch of pictures the GPS in the
German records all of this and its
position and the where the camera was
faced in a lot of other settings embeds
it into the photograph then you do a
scanning flight similar type of flight
obviously not a circle so drones and
photogrammetry what’s that look like
well it looks like that it’s pretty cool
that’s a 3d model of a temple in
thailand
really inspired me and I wanted to say
to myself well could I go there this is
orange island in orange aisle in China
that is a giant sculpture of general mal
but there is this problem with
perception of drones these people don’t
want you to fly over their backyard
because you’re going to spy on them and
this guy is the defender of privacy is
actually a marketing campaign by a
company that makes silencers for
shotguns because we need woes so that
you can shoot drones out of the sky with
that bothering your neighbors this town
in deer deer trail Colorado actually had
a legislation on the books that
thankfully didn’t pass that was where
they were considering a bounty on drones
and issuing hunting licenses no
ignorance folks no lack or no problem
with perception so photogrammetry with
drones is pretty cool but viewing 3d
models on a flat screen not so awesome
this is where we bring in VR so if you
have an experienced VR you should this
is the year for VR if you don’t know
that but people have a perception
problem with VR also that when we do
that we’re actually doing that which
leads to that and nobody wants this so
photogrammetry and virtual reality
combined is one of these unintended
innovations I doubt that when I guess
the Air Force 50 years ago or 80 years
ago was thinking about we should create
maps from the sky and we can use math
that they were thinking about what I’m
about to show you none of these 3d
models were intended to be used for this
they were simply captured by drone
pilots all over the world you’ll see the
credits in the bottom left hand and what
I’m able to do is load these in I’m in
my basement when I was recording this
with a VR headset on and two controllers
and I can point and click and now I am
inside this beautiful villa in Spain
this is a terrible 3d model this is from
hong kong you can see the 3d model
doesn’t look photo realistic but boy
I’ll tell you you feel like you’re going
to fall off of the edge when you stand
on that roof and again standing and
looking at ganesh it was amazing so the
question
can we do this the answer yes and you
really create empathy there’s even a way
to take photographs and change the time
of day this is again that photograph of
orange aisle which now you can jump into
which is amazing so why is this so cool
to me is because when we create content
for a VR that’s photorealistic it’s
really complicated take 3d modelers and
laser scanners and all sorts of experts
and you know what for a $300 dro norfolk
ebay and about a day of your time you
have an opportunity to create those
types of experiences for kids the
potential impact on education is
unprecedented how does it apply to
Detroit so in talking to some folks they
said hey go there do that but I don’t
think that’s the answer and we could go
these places which we believe are
beautiful and we should share with the
rest of the world so let’s capture these
but they aren’t really in threat of
going away something that is in Detroit
that isn’t a threat not necessarily if
going away but of changing and being
different for the future is this the
Heidelberg project is fascinating and
really for me shows perseverance in the
time of adversity and what Tyree and
this team has been able to do over time
is amazing and so if we have this
technology ten years ago we would have
been able to still go and visit this
place or this place or this place which
have all been victims of arson so it is
a bar we are starting to work with the
Heidelberg project what are we doing
we’re going to take new technologies
including the 3d scanning drones and
photogrammetry and a variety of other
techniques to see if we can’t try to
preserve the today for others tomorrow
as you may know the Heidelberg project
is under a transition it’s going to be
changing over the next couple of years
with the support from the community to
remix it if you will someone made a
comment to me yesterday that the
Heidelberg project is like visual
hip-hop I thought that was a really a
fascinating way to describe it these are
some shots from the recent experiments
that we’ve done flying the drone over
now we’re taking them and we’re creating
3d models and really the first step here
is to see what kind of rest
gen quality we can get because I think
it would be amazing for a child in China
to be able to look at this jump in too
inexperienced the heidelberg project
without having to actually fly to
detroit although we’d like that to the
number house is under a current
preservation and there’s a capital
campaign to help do that and while the
heidelberg project is working on this to
preserve the house structurally we are
working to preserve everything digitally
so what can you do become an advocate
this is pretty interesting stuff that
you probably didn’t know existed before
you sat in here today or that you watch
this online so embrace this idea of
mixing and matching technologies and
providing new ways to create low-cost
scalable dynamic and experiential and
immersive educational content secondly
go out and support digital preservation
seek out organizations that are doing
stuff like this hey everybody you’re in
Detroit you know of one supportable and
lastly influential public officials and
I say this because every city in the
world right now was talking about how
innovative they are however there’s
still barriers for innovation and so
this idea that public officials could
maybe we create more pathways for people
for example flying drones that they’re
not here to do bad or to spy but to
create new and interesting things and if
all of that is too much for you I ask
you to do this when you see these things
I want you to think of that that in that
instead of that and that thanks [Applause]