Endurance Expedition with Voyis Technology on BBC News

Written by Patricia Sestari

October 10, 2024

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We are excited to share more information from the Endurance Expedition, in which Voyis proudly participated by providing cutting edge optical sensors to enable the 3D reconstructions.

According to the newly release BBC News article, after more than a century submerged in the frigid waters of Antarctica, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, has been revealed in stunning 3D detail. For the first time, we can view the vessel, which sank in 1915 and rests 3,000 meters deep at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, as if the surrounding murky waters had been drained away.

This digital scan, created from 25,000 high-resolution images, was captured when the ship was rediscovered in 2022. It has been released in conjunction with a new documentary, Endurance, set to premiere in cinemas. The 3D scan was produced using underwater robots that mapped the wreck from every angle, capturing thousands of photographs that were later “stitched” together to form a digital replica.

While traditional footage at this depth can only capture sections of Endurance shrouded in darkness, the scan presents a full view of the 44-meter wooden wreck, from bow to stern, even detailing the grooves left in the sediment as the ship came to rest on the seafloor. The model reveals how the ship was crushed by ice—its masts have fallen, and parts of the deck are in disrepair—yet much of the structure remains intact. Shackleton’s descendants have stated that Endurance will never be raised, and its remote location makes revisiting the wreck incredibly difficult.

But Nico Vincent from Deep Ocean Search, who developed the technology for the scans, along with Voyis Imaging and McGill University, said the digital replica offers a new way to study the ship. “It’s absolutely fabulous. The wreck is almost intact like she sank yesterday,” said Mr Vincent, who was also a co-leader for the expedition. He said the scan could be used by scientists to study the sea life that has colonised the wreck, to analyse the geology of the sea floor, and to discover new artefacts. “So this is really a great opportunity that we can offer for the future.”

The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, which funded and organized the expedition to locate Endurance, owns the scan. The Endurance documentary is set to debut at the London Film Festival on 12 October, with a UK cinema release on 14 October.

3D Reconstruction of the Endurance, created using Voyis Insight Pro Underwater Laser Scanner, and Observer Pro Underwater Imaging System Credit: The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust & National Geographic

The Voyis Technology

Using the Insight Pro laser scanner the survey team was able to accurately map the Endurance. Our system broadcasted the ultra-dense point cloud model in real-time to the crew, digitally building up the shipwreck as they “fly” over the wreck with the Sabertooth vehicle.

Complementing the Insight Pro system on this expedition is the Observer Pro imaging system, a long range, highly sensitive digital stills camera, and two extremely high output Nova LED panels to deliver crisp, evenly illuminated stills images.
The Observer Pro imaging system works seamlessly with the Insight Pro laser scanner, providing gapless laser data with interlaced stills.  Additionally, images taken by the Observer system are automatically colour corrected using Voyis’ machine learning “True-Colour” correction, an onboard improvement that replicates the exact colour of the shipwreck if it were brought ashore, along with additional undistortion and light leveling algorithms to improve the image quality in real-time. Therefore, it will be possible to create photomosaics and photogrammetric models of the Endurance, to further compliment the highly accurate 3D point cloud model generated by the Insight Pro.

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