3D Sketch Maps

About

The 3D Sketch Maps project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation in the scope of the Sinergia funding program, investigates 3D sketch maps from a theoretical, empirical, cognitive, as well as tool-related perspective, with a particular focus on Extended Reality (XR) technologies. Although space is naturally three-dimensional (3D), contemporary research has focused on assessing individuals’ spatial knowledge with two-dimensional (2D) sketches. For many domains, such as aviation or the cognition of complex multilevel buildings, it is essential to study people’s 3D understanding of space, which is not possible with the current 2D methods.

Project Partners

This is joint project between the ETH Zürich and WWU Münster. Our collaborators at ETH are Prof. Martin Raubal (Principal Investigator, Chair of Geoinformatics Engineering at ETH) and Prof. Christoph Hölscher (Chair of Cognitive Science at ETH).

Main Objectives

To extend current 2D methods, we develop a new tool in VR to draw sketch maps in 3D. The layer-by-layer approach helps people to consistently draw 3D maps of complex multilevel buildings. Afterwards, we extend the sketch map analysis method SketchMapia to capture and compare 3D spatial relations in the ground truth (a 3D model of the building by architects) to the 3D sketch map.

Technology Innovation

Compared to traditional paper-based sketches, virtual reality (VR) creates new opportunities to investigate the 3D aspect of spatial memory as it empowers users to directly express 3D information on a 3D interface. Our partners at ETH develop VResin, a novel VR-based sketching interface that synergizes 3D mid-air with 2D surface sketching to scaffold 3D sketching into a layer-by-layer process.