It seems like cameras are all around us, capturing our every move. From Ring doorbells to traffic cameras to surveillance in businesses and on the streets, we are constantly being monitored and recorded. There are cameras installed in moving vehicles, from police cars and buses to cameras on private cars; the newest models of Tesla cars have an astounding eight cameras.
When it comes to crimes and civil issues, the footage captured on these cameras can prove to be indispensable. They might show someone committing a crime or otherwise doing something wrong such as driving dangerously or not properly mopping a floor, helping attorneys build a case.
But what do you do when surveillance footage doesn’t tell the full story? Of course, even footage has its limits. For example, you can’t tell someone’s height by looking at them on tape. You cannot determine how fast a car is going or which car struck a person if there are multiple vehicles involved in a crash and all the angles aren’t shown.
There’s also the issue of footage being grainy or not totally clear; perhaps a tree is blocking the view, or there was some other type of interference that makes it difficult to decipher what happened.
If there is a question regarding footage – maybe your client said that wasn’t him committing a crime in a video, or it’s not easy to see which car hit a pedestrian – you can use laser scans, 3-D modeling, and photogrammetry to help figure out the truth.
How Photogrammetry, Laser Scans, and 3-D Modeling Work
Photogrammetry is the scientific measurement of distances, speed, and heights using clues embedded in still images or frames extracted from videos. Attorneys can reach out to forensic experts to assist them with laser scanning a location and then creating a 3-D model on a computer. This will effectively reconstruct a crime or accident that happened instead of relying on flat surveillance footage.
Using a laser scanner, a forensic expert will scan the entire area. Depending on the location, this could include the street, the sidewalk, the inside of a hotel room or lobby, or an automobile. The most commonly used laser scanner, a FARO, sits on a tripod and does a 360-degree spin as it’s firing a laser and mapping millions of data points. Depending on the location and needs of a case, an expert may take three to thirty laser scans of one location and then combine them all into one 3-D model using software that connects the scans together. The expert can then match individual frames from the surveillance video to the 3-D model using unique, identifiable visual points seen in each. Once those two elements are matched together, it is possible to begin to make measurements.