Three-dimensional point-cloud room model for room acoustics simulations

Telepresence applications require communication with the feeling of being together and sharing the same environment. One important task in these applications is to render the acoustics of the distant room for the telepresence system user. This paper presents a fast method for the room geometry acquisition and its representation with a 3D point-cloud model, as well as utilization of such a model for the room acoustics simulations.
A room is scanned with a commercially available input device (Kinect for Xbox360) in two different ways; the first one involves the device placed in the middle of the room and rotated around the vertical axis while for the second one the device is moved within the room. Benefits of both approaches were analyzed. The device's depth sensor provides a set of points in a three-dimensional coordinate system which represents scanned surfaces of the room interior. These data are used to build a 3D point-cloud model of the room. Several models are created to meet requirements of different room acoustics simulation algorithms: plane fitting and uniform voxel grid for geometric methods and triangulation mesh for the numerical methods. Advantages of the proposed method over the traditional approaches are discussed.