DRF Lunchtime Clinic - Dr Olaf Wysocki

Kicking off the Michaelmas Term 2025 series of DRF Lunchtime Clinics, we are pleased to welcome Dr Olaf Wysocki to talk on CV4DT: Computer Vision for Digital Twins, where perception meets geometry.  

This talk will provide an insight into the new CV4DT group within Civil Engineering at University of Cambridge. CV4DT aims to gather researchers willing to push forward the boundaries of machine learning, photogrammetry, and computer vision. The CV4DT research agenda focuses on the following aspects: a)   3D semantic understanding,  b) 3D semantic reconstruction, c) 3D models as sensors, and d) Uncertainty quantification – overarching all three aspects. 

The rationale is that those aspects are interdependent and indispensable in creating digital twins from any sensory data, enabling any digital simulations before real-world action occurs. CV4DT understands a digital twin is not as a mere 3D geometric representation of reality, but rather as a 3D model comprising a) 3D minimum-viable and watertight geometric representation, b) hierarchical semantics, c) estimated uncertainty of both predicted semantics and geometry; enabling updates of digital twins in the presence of new evidence. 

Bio

Olaf is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Cambridge leading the group CV4DT. Previously, he was a Research Associate on 3D object reconstruction & semantic segmentation of point clouds at the Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing Chair, Technical University of Munich, where he received summa cum laude PhD in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing under the mentorship of Prof Thomas H. Kolbe and late Prof Uwe Stilla. A few years back, he obtained his Geodesy and Geoinformatics master’s degree with a major in photogrammetry from Technical University of Munich. Olaf was fortunate to intern and complete his master’s thesis devoted to HD Maps for automated driving at Audi AG and had a previous stint as a geomatics professional in a 3D urban-reconstruction-focused company. Currently, a member of Runder Tisch GIS, TUM Data Innovation Lab and Get Kids into Survey. Cherishing interdisciplinary collaboration with top-notch professors and their labs: Yan Xia Christoph Holst Boris Jutzi Filip Biljecki Daniel Cremers.