SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project focuses on the current lack of integrated techniques and methods by which rock art data can be completely and accurately recorded three-dimensionally, managed within a three-dimensional database, and analyzed with respect not only to formal features of individual rock art elements, but also to interrelationships among figures, the rock on which they are placed, and associated sites, places, and views. The research investigates the feasibility of developing an integrated system for rock art data recording, management, and analysis incorporating infield three-dimensional digitizing, the use of electronic distance measurement (EDM) and global positioning systems (GPS) for control and site mapping, computer-assisted drawing (CAD) and geographic information systems (GIS) technologies for data input and database management, and computerized photogrammetry and such additional technical adjuncts as analog and digital photography, all linked by specially designed software and methods. Research objectives include an exhaustive survey of current data user needs as well as an assessment of new data possibilities and theoretical directions that such a system would provide. The appropriateness and feasibility of integrating both off-the-shelf and modified technologies, including hardware and software, will also be investigated. Finally, the nature of software specifically designed to link systems components, as well as methods by which these will all be used as a consolidated system, will be examined. Systems components and integrative software and methods will be preliminarily tested in rock art data field situations. Rock art researchers, cultural resource managers, Native American groups, anthropologists, art historians, and other rock art and rock art data users-- in the United States and worldwide--will benefit from the development of such methods. An additional, related field of study and social concern, graffiti studies an d control, offers another potential market

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II proposal from Ebert and Associates, Inc. seeks to develop a means of providing efficiently and accurately recorded, managed, analyzed, and visualized rock art data within a unified 3-dimensional database, accommodating a wide range of scales and resolutions for use by rock art researchers, conservators, managers, and other data users. Phase I research indicated that the rock art profession and market needs an integrated system for rock art data recording, management, and analysis incorporating in-field 3-dimensional laser and contact digitizing, digital and conventional photography and the use of global positioning systems for data collection, digital photogrammetry and surface modeling for data reduction, CAD and geographic information systems technologies for data input and database management, and a number of other digital technologies for data analysis and display. Phase II research objectives focus on the development of methods by which data collection, reduction, management, analysis and display technologies will be integrated into a coherent whole. Appropriate rock art data recording, reduction, management and analysis/visualization subsystems components and integrative software and methods for their use together will be specified, and a prototype general total rock art system will be developed and assembled. This hardware/software system will be tested in a number of different rock art situations. The project has value for scientific research and education and for the preservation, conservation and management of cultural heritages. Rock art researchers, archaeologists, anthropologists, conservators, cultural resource managers, and Native American groups--in the United States and worldwide--will benefit from the development of such a system. In addition, there are other situations that share the problems inherent in the capture of rock art images to which a modified system could be applied, such as in the catalog uing of geologic formations and the cataloguing, management, and analysis of 3-D data at polluted sites