Abstract

In this thesis we propose an architecture for a reusable web service for online 3D reconstruction. The purpose of this
service is to enable developers and end-users to perform reconstructions, compare photogrammetry software, and
support the future development of photogrammetric applications by offering all functionalities through a single reusable
web-API. The main focus point of this work is the reusability aspect of the web service architecture. We introduce a
decentralized and containerized microservice structure that allows new components and photogrammetry software to
be integrated into the system easily. Our web service provides a platform to manage image-sets and image metadata
as well as a standardized way of starting and parameterizing reconstruction pipelines. Further, we implement a way of
using existing camera poses during the reconstruction process. The system is evaluated from structural and functional
viewpoints and it is shown that our proposed web service presents a reusable and well maintainable approach for
web-based reconstruction and lays the structural foundations to support further development of our service in the future.

Proposed Architecture:

We propose the following structure for our architecture:

We implement a task queue scheduling for reconstruction tasks:

New reconstruction 'providers' can be integrated using the following interface specification:

The respective providers are responsible for the implementation of the listed functionalities.

Detailed API-Documentation can be found on the Swagger endpoint:

Currently included photogrammetry TUMsoftware: COLMAP, OpenMVS, Meshroom

Conclusion

In this thesis, we proposed a well-functioning and reusable web service for online 3D reconstruction providing web-API
with generalized functionalities for client applications.Our architecture uses state-of-the-art technologies with the use of
containerization technology and the microservice architecture. Moreover, our web service was developed in a
future-oriented manner. It provides basic and advanced functionalities for expert and non-expert users and a
well-documented API. Further, we implemented three different software into two different providers and have shown how
our service can be used to upload images to image-sets, start reconstructions and compare different providers. The
made structural and code design decisions have made the service extensible and reusable. We have evaluated the
structure and functionality of our system showing that our web service works as intended and satisfies our reusability
requirements. Though there are some minor things that could not at all or not sufficiently be implemented in the scope
of this thesis, we have laid the structural foundations for future development and further refinement of the provided
features and server architecture.

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