Cartography of Mars in a Virtual Reality Environment

Abstract

This work aims to investigate the suitability of applying Virtual Reality techniques in the exploration of Mars terrain features in order to support the creation of topographic maps of the planet. Traditionally, these tasks are performed using Geo-Information-Systems (GIS) on desktop workstations, with a two-dimensional projection of the collected map data as the basis on which an operator performs manual feature extraction. After identifying features and characterizing them quantitatively using measurement operators, they are ultimately represented visually by so called geo-objects which are then entered into a GIS database. Within the scope of this project, a system will be developed which enables this workflow to occur entirely within a VR-environment, using appropriate navigation and interaction metaphors. The main goal of the project is to examine whether the more natural immersion in the VR-environment can help to improve the identification and spatial analysis of surface features.