Overview

The City of Munich owns a huge number of buildings used in different areas, like education (schools, day care centres…), information (service centres, info points…) and culture (museums, libraries, theatres…). To show these buildings to citizens, tourists and parents or employees of the City of Munich, such as architects, facility managers and IT-network managers, in a cheap and easy way, a Virtual Reality (VR) solution was searched for. To the City of Munich it was important that the solution would value privacy and data security settings that would suit all users.

Problem

At the moment, professionals that are working for the City of Munich have to physically access a public building if they want to get an overview of it or want to do planning on upcoming works like maintenance, renovation etc. However, physical access to a building is costly and its necessity can lead to delays in workflows. A team of five students therefore tried to find a suitable VR solution to solve this problem.

Approach

The challenge was approached with the help of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and their “Working-Backwards”-technique that focuses primarily on the final customer. To get clarity about the customer and the problem, the team of students created an empathy map, answered the “Working-Backwards”-questions and wrote down FAQs. Lutz-Steffen Schmidt, representative of the City of Munich, was seen as the first customer, final customers were the employees of the City of Munich. After analysing the customer needs, the team proceeded to create an actual prototype while working on a technical feasibility study. To create the prototype of the virtual preview, the students tested two different software solutions in advance, Canvas and Matterport.

Prototype

The final solution prototype was created with the Matterport software. The camera used by the students to capture two rooms at the IT@M-office was the Ricoh THETA Z1, a 360°-camera mounted on a tripod. It made it possible to create a 3D model for a virtual walkthrough. In the 3D-model, basic measurements can be taken, faces can be blurred and there is an annotation system. All these functions were tested by the students and reached satisfying results. To demonstrate the scanning process and the 3D-model, they also created a roleplay in form of a video.

Next Steps

The team suggested several points to consider as next steps. For once, they suggested that the IT@M should think about self-hosting the 3D-models as there could occur security problems otherwise. Another important aspect that would have to be considered regarding privacy would be the removal of personal data like documents or screen images before performing a scan. Furthermore, a solution for the automatization of the analogous scanning of building-plans for architects would be important.

To fully display the solution’s abilities, the students proposed to capture a whole public building as a pilot project. Regarding the usage, they recommended the technique not only for the creation of previews for employees of the City of Munich but also for the creation of previews for parents to visit schools virtualy or to show museum exhibitions online, too.

About the Co-Innovation Lab

This challenge was carried out as a joint project between the DTLab and the Co-Innovation-Labs of the Munich University of Applied Sciences. The Co-Innovation Lab is a comprehensive concept for innovation projects between students and companies. Temporary innovation partnerships - in the form of projects - are created between companies, students and lecturers. Initiated by Prof. Holger Günzel and Prof. Lars Brehm (both Munich University of Applied Sciences), more than 25 innovation projects are currently carried out each year, often on an interdisciplinary basis. The Co-Innovation Lab is structured as an open community. Interested lecturers can use the concept of the Co-Innovation Lab in their courses and are welcome to actively participate in its further development.