[Poster] Augmentation of live excavation work for subsurface utilities engineering

The virtual excavation is a well-known augmentation technique that was proposed for city road environments. It can be used for planning excavation work by augmenting the road surface with a virtual excavation revealing subsurface utility pipes. In this paper, we proposed an extension of the virtual excavation technique for live augmentation of excavation work sites. Our miniaturized setup, consisting of a sandbox and a Kinect device, was used to simulate dynamic terrain topography capture. We hypothesized that the virtual excavation could be used live on the ground being excavated, which could facilitate the excavator operator's work. Our results show that the technique can indeed be adapted to dynamic terrain topography, but turns out to occlude terrain in a potentially hazardous way. Potential solutions include the use of virtual paint markings instead of a virtual excavation.