Algorithms To Reassemble Ancient Map of Rome 18
MattJ writes "The BBC reports on a Stanford project to reconstruct pieces of an ancient, detailed, 60' by 43' 'map of Rome carved into stone slabs about AD 210 but later broken into fragments.' ... So complicated is the jumble of parts that for decades the map pieces have been referred to as 'the biggest jigsaw in the world.' Researchers developed algorithms to assemble the 3D fragments of the map, and have had some success."
So... (Score:4, Funny)
Sweet.
a Crack? (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds familiar... (Score:3, Interesting)
Raiders of the Lost Ark 4 (Score:2)
It should be easy..... (Score:5, Funny)
Just do all the outside pieces first, and work your way in.
Pretty cool idea anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
But the idea is very cool. Probably this could make it easier to put together pieces of other artifats like clay tablets and the likes, and speed up the field of archaeology, which has in some cases been painfully slow.
Cuneiform recognition software, anyone?
Re:Pretty cool idea anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree tho, that archeologists and paleontolgists will likely be the first to really benefit from the software they are currently using - piecing together skull fragments or amphorae would seem to be pretty analogous tasks.
Re:Pretty cool idea anyway (Score:4, Funny)
and speed up the field of archaeology, which has in some cases been painfully slow.
Yeah, I heard they sometimes only get around to researching stuff centuries after the fact...
Ancient buildings (Score:4, Informative)
This.Importance ++ (Score:5, Interesting)
In my high school biology class, my teacher made an incredibly insightful comment that I've found applies to many fields of problem solving:
"If it's going to take 10 years to solve the problem using current technology, then spend 3 years working on making new technology, then 3 years using the new tech. Now you've done it it 6 years instead of 10, just by 'procrastinating' and working on your tools first!"
From the BBC article, we see Professor Marc Levoy's quote in highlight, "In doing so, we have created the largest and most detailed model of a cultural artefact"
Think about this for a sec... they've invented tech that provides a better model for cultural artifacts than we've ever had before. Sounds like a key boost in the right direction for this field of engineering.
Misread (Score:4, Funny)
I thought someone had peeked at my perl code!
*ducks*
Another article on the technology (Score:1)
Very similar to a 1970 reconstruction (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice to see this technique advance.
I have a November 1970 issue of National Geographic with an article entitled "Computer Helps Scholars Re-create an Egyptian Temple" by Ray Winfield Smith that describes something very similar. A summary is embedded here [stange.com].
The article says that they had to deal with as many as 30,000 pieces, many of which had disappeared over time. They shot B&W pictures of the pieces at the rate of 400/day, and then created punched cards (and then tape image) for each picture. Each card had the piece number and codes for various attributes (such as paint color, figures, hieroglyphs) of the piece. They could then search for other pieces that matched attributes of a subject piece. IBM supplied them access to a computer.
BTW, the issue's headline article was "Behold the Computer Revolution", a nice historical piece now.
Well you know what they say ... (Score:1)
"Biggest jigsaw in the world" - not even close (Score:1)
16000 sacks of shredded paper and 600 million individual scraps of paper seems a bit more demanding task.
Probably most of the same algorithms would apply to both problems.