Capture and processing of geospatial data with laser scanner system for 3D modeling and virtual reality of Amazonian Caves

In recent years there has been an advance in new geotechnologies that contribute to the research in 3D modeling, observing a boom in applications such as Lidar and laser scanning. With the use of these technologies, capable of capturing or obtaining a very close copy of the object of interest, the exploration of subterranean cave environments becomes possible. Due to this process, original information has been possible to be kept in digital files, as there may be deterioration and loss due to improper exploitation or lack of knowledge of the importance of the existing scientific value. In this sense, the goal has been to obtain a three - dimensional model of the Elviandi Cave, which is located in the Province of Napo, Ecuador, with the support of a laser scanner, called the Faro Focus 3D. This has allowed us to rescue the historical value of formations that date back thousands of years, such as stalagmites, stalactites and speleothems. The Mesozoic deposits of the Elviandi Cave has speleologic formations of the Quaternary, with an irregular extension of approximately 450 meters. Consequently, the scan has been meticulous, at intervals of 19 minutes and 19 seconds, taking into account parameters of quality and resolution. Data processing (point cloud) has been performed in the Software Scene, which allowed to join the different scenes in a single cluster. Later the product has been debugged, in order to eliminate (potentially artificial) information that does not belong to the cave. As a main result, we obtained a three-dimensional model of the Elviandi Cave and a visualization in a virtual environment of itself. We concluded that the selected parameters (quality of 6x and resolution of 1/5, dimensionless parameters) produced a balance between manageable size and density of the point cloud.