The content of the project is the highly accurate three-dimensional capture of small and medium-sized cultural assets. The focus is on the protection of the objects to be digitised as well as the rapid handling of a large number of digitised objects. A fully automatic positioning and measuring system is being developed for this purpose. The measuring system consists of a high-resolution 3D surface scanner based on the fringe light projection technique. In parallel, texture and colour of the objects are recorded in order to obtain a pixel-precise affiliation of 3D coordinates and colour information. An extremely smooth positioning of the measuring system is crucial in order to reduce distortions to a minimum. For this purpose, a rail-based positioning system is being developed, which is equipped with electric drives and with sensors in order to be able to carry out both translatory and rotatory movements fully automatically. The absolute position is obtained by an inertial measurement unit (IMU).

In addition to the technical development of the system, the implementation of the project includes the application to a collection complex in the Museum of Islamic Art (excavation objects from Samarra/ Iraq). Here, not only the technical implementation will be tested, but also the exemplary use with regard to the mass recording of objects, their basic documentation and, based on this, scientific investigations and the possibilities of their virtual representation, and in particular the possibilities of contextualising the museum objects will be developed.

The project result is intended to demonstrate exemplarily the three-dimensional documentation of museum collections with an inexpensive and easy-to-handle system, with an area of application ranging from the production of physical backup or sales replicas or replicas as blind objects in exhibitions to virtual objects that can be used with a measurable accuracy of a few micrometres for scientific research or for conservation status and conservation research. Last but not least, collections can be made accessible to a broader public without burdening the cultural assets, or objects in exhibitions can be placed in a three-dimensional reference space in order to make them understandable in their original context.