A team from the University of Sydney's (Sydney, Australia) Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies have won top honors in Canon Australia's Extreme Imaging competition for their efforts in mapping and digitally reconstructing an ancient underwater city in Greece.

Ariell Friedman, an engineering PhD student co-supervised by Professor Stefan Williams and Dr. Oscar Pizarro at the University's Australian Centre for Field Robotics, won the prize for documenting excavations in Pavlopetri in 3-D.

To do so, the marine robotics team worked on location at Pavlopetri, the oldest known submerged city, which lies off the coast of Greece's southern Laconia region. There, up to four meters of water covers artifacts and structures dating back 5000 years.

Friedman's work not only involved operating a diver rig, but also modifying and improving the diver camera system and developing software to allow the rapid production of maps by automating the data processing pipeline.

The Extreme Imaging competition is run by Canon Australia and CiSRA, Canon's Australian research center, and aims to promote and acknowledge local research at the intersection of imaging and technology.

-- By Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design