Sea legs, Re/Cappers. Get ‘em, because it’s an ocean blue view this glorious Re/Cap day.
We’ll soon detail how a scanty iPhone can work reality capture wonders for whales, particularly for conservation. But there’s no discussing whales and scanning, without first discussing the leviathan of a 3D tale that occurred in Chile 15 years ago.
As construction workers widened the Pan-American Highway near the coastal town of Caldera, they uncovered what would become one of the most monumental fossil sites in the world: Cerro Ballena, or "Whale Hill".
An astonishing collection of marine fossils was revealed. Along with over 40 rorquals - the cetacean family under which our contemporary blue, fin, and minke whales fall - were extinct marine creatures like the walrus-faced dolphin and aquatic sloth (best yoga pose ever).
This 5-to-9-million-year-old graveyard flummoxed paleontologists; how did so many marine mammals end up fossilized in what is now a desert, 40 meters above sea level?
Meet Nicholas Pyenson, anti-flummoxer and paleobiologist from the Smithsonian Institution, who arrived at the site in 2011. With construction deadlines looming, Pyenson had limited time for traditional excavation methods. Recognizing the importance of preserving the site's context, he summoned 3D scanning experts from the Smithsonian's Digitization Program Office - for something that had never been done before.
The scans revealed that the whales were buried in four separate layers, suggesting multiple mass strandings over several thousand years. Researchers concluded that these events were likely caused by harmful algal blooms, which poisoned the whales and other marine life. The bodies were then washed onto a tidal flat and buried by sand; voila, preserved fossils.
The 3D scans not only preserved the site but also allowed anyone worldwide to explore the fossils virtually. Additionally, some of the fossils were 3D printed for museum display - the first of their kind.
What’s Cappenin’ This Week
Best of The Re/Cap: Winter
Six of the 13 great whale species are officially endangered or vulnerable. Calling them important to the ecosystem is like calling makeup important to Insane Clown Posse. Worse yet, there is a dearth of postmortem knowledge due to the inaccessibility inherent to stranded whales, and other marine mammals. And whatever knowledge may be attainable through a necropsy (autopsy is for us), what precedes it is often pricey.
But one researcher isn’t just technifying his way to a solution - he’s simplifying, cheapening, and championing.
3D reconstruction of a gray whale via Scaniverse via iPhone 12 via rockstar researcher. Image credit Cottrell et al, 2025 via Phys.org
Sadly, if you’ve seen how a moth is drawn to light, you’ve seen a metaphor for how catastrophic hydro-meteorological events are drawn to Africa. Increasingly, floods and droughts end lives, fracture livelihoods, and stifle economic development. Africa's vulnerability is exacerbated by rapid urbanization, and a lagging enforcement of building standards. But there’s a path to resilience being laid almost daily for city planners, with drone LiDAR doing the heavy lifting.
Flooding alone is responsible for the displacement of millions of Africans. Image credit Action Against Hunger
Stephen Ware, associate professor at the University of Kentucky, has a prolific background in games. He directs UK’s Narrative Intelligence Lab, complementing his teaching of AI and game development.
But his most recent start button pressed is almost more game theory: human behavior, in AI-driven, VR de-escalation training for law enforcement.
It began in 2022, when the National Science Foundation bestowed on Ware over $530,000 for his “Structured High-Agency Interactive Narratives for Virtual Environments.” Three years later, it’s ripping, with lieutenants praising it the way LLMs praise mediocre questions.
Given the profound tension that can be unique to police confrontations, the upside could mean fewer conflicts, injuries, and even deaths. The University of Kentucky speaks to the process below, but not before covering calmness, Ware’s zeal for technology, non-player characters (NPCs), human unpredictability, seeing consequences of poor choices, and UK’s approach to AI education.
And the Oscar goes to…The BIRDS! No no, not the classic Hitchcock film, the Bridge Inspection Robot Deployment System BIRDS. Oh, wait, and not the Academy Awards either, but better…
The American Society of Civil Engineers 2025 Charles Pankow Award for Innovation.
Dr. Genda Chen stands bridgeside with one of his BIRDS. The crawler bots were busy. Image credit Blaine Falkena/Missouri S&T
BIRDS has that transcendent combo of cool factor and dire-need factor, as almost half of American bridges are over 50 years old. Not to mention the laborious, costly, often dangerous human inspections that reign supreme today.
The award-winning bot crop was devised by Dr. Genda Chen of the Missouri University of Science and Technology. You got a hybrid UAV that clings to bridge girders, and crawls to gather inspection data via infrared and LiDAR; a second UAV that releases a bike-like, microscope-wielding crawler for steel assessments; and a third UAV equipped with a manipulator for maintenance and concrete defect testing. Missouri S&T goes from abutment to abutment below about their hardware-boasting researcher, and what flies ahead for BIRDS.
Kansai International Airport in Japan has been dropping it like it’s wet for three decades. Image credit Kentaro Ikushima/Mainichi Newspaper, via AP
Seppuku was the ancient samurai honor ritual of suicide through self-stabbing.
Let’s hope this airport isn’t drawing out a modern rendition of it.
Because in the heart of Osaka Bay, Japan, lies a 747-sized cautionary tale of what happens when you try to defy gravity…and the sea.
Kansai International Airport, built on two artificial islands, is sinking faster than the Titanic if that iceberg was TNT-laced to boot. Since its opening in 1994, the airport has dipped a bewildering 38 feet, or over a foot per year for all you non-Euclids. And the sinking ain't even done yet, with experts predicting life under the sea by the 2050s if the ship doesn’t right.
The low blow began in 1987, at construction’s start. Engineers laid sand over the clay seabed and installed 2.2 million vertical pipes to create a dry and dense foundation. It was a feat of engineering, but perhaps they should have consulted the sea gods first. The airport was expected to settle evenly over 50 years, stabilizing at 13 feet above sea level. Instead, it's been a race against time, with the airport sinking faster than anticipated.
The core issue? Foundation volatility. Nine hundred support columns with hydraulic jacks have been used to regulate the settling process, but it's a bit like trying to hold back a tide with a broken reed. Engineers have added iron plates and raised the seawall, but these measures are more Band-Aid than solution, making this quite the wait-and-sea scenario.
Reality capture tech during and after Kansai International’s construction would have been > an AYCE sushi buffet after a month-long fast. Laser scanning and photogrammetry could have generated a detailed 3D model of the airport and its foundation, revealing potential weaknesses before they became critical. AI-powered simulations could have predicted the uneven settling and alerted engineers to the impending subsidence. Advanced metrology techniques could have provided precise measurements and tracking of structural elements throughout the building process.
A digital twin would have been exemplary prevention, a virtual replica evolving in real-time as the physical airport settled, predicting stress points months before they appeared. Engineers could have watched their BIM models react to simulated scenarios, birthing continuous monitoring and predictive maintenance.
In the end, Kansai International Airport stands as a testament to human ingenuity and the unpredictable nature of the sea. While reality capture might not have prevented the sinking entirely, it could have smoothed the journey, creating a masterpiece not just constructed on the sea, but designed to live with it.
By subscribing, you are agreeing to RCN’s Terms and Conditions of Use. To learn how RCN collects, uses, shares, and protects your personal data, please see RCN’s Privacy Policy.
Reality Capture Network • Copyright 2025 • All rights reserved
