The new technology set to revolutionise crime fighting

Lateline takes a look at the new 3D technology set to be introduced to Australia which could re-open cold cases and revolutionise court cases.

Transcript

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: When police charged a man over a series of Family Court-related bombings and murders yesterday that were three decades old, they made it clear new technology had been key in their cold case investigation. In that case, the DNA was the key. Now there's a new case-solving technology that can take police or a jury on a virtual tour of any location where a crime's been committed. Experts use laser scanning to recreate the scene. They can even analyse blood spatters and weapons. Already the Lindt Cafe in Sydney, scene of last year's fatal siege, has been reconstructed in 3D. That evidence is expected to be critical in the current inquest. Lateline's Nikki Tugwell reports. 

PAUL GLIM, FORENSIC ID SERVICES COMMANDER: The sky is the limit into the future when we find out, you know, in three to five years what we will be able to do with this.

SCOTT WEBER, NSW POLICE ASSOC. PRESIDENT: This is what police officers need to deal with crime and terrorism in the 21st Century.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: At a mock crime scene, the NSW police forensic unit explains how 3D laser scanning technology is improving their ability to solve crime.

DOMENIC RANERI, CRIME SCENE OFFICER: What we're leaning towards is a system whereby we can capture a scene in 3D and we can conduct these analyses in space rather than having a practitioner at the crime scene manually with a piece of string, sticking it around the scene. The latest sweeps out at 270 degrees, which means that it's capturing everything except for a very small area immediately below the scanner. Each scan takes about three-and-a-half minutes, maybe five including the colour and photography. We can move through the crime scene taking these scans and overlaying them with photography to create a colour photorealistic rendering of the environment. So where we might need additional detail or resolution, we can use a different type of scanner. So this is a hand-held scanner that actually scans to about a metre away, but captures a much high resolution as well as full colour on the fly. So if we had a scene like this where we wanted to capture, say, that blood pattern, we hook that scanner up to a tablet. And because you can see about a metre away in much more detail, we can start to capture that entire area. So what you've done there is you've applied a photograph of the blood spatter onto the 3D data, which then corrects for the lens distortion and brings it in true to scale and accurate. So we can then take the laser scan data out and just look at that blood spatter. So, then we can go in and look at the blood spatter in much higher detail than we could capture before. And from that point, you can then go on to measure the droplets and perform an analysis of the trajectory. So we can then go back out and look at it in context of the crime scene. And then we can look at where those points of origin might have been. And then an expert can tell us a number of different pieces of information about that, such as, hypothetically, the position of the mallets when the strikes occurred. So the real advantage here is that you can visualise this very 3D data, this 3D evidence within the 3D space and in the context of the original crime scene, which has never been able to be done before.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: The 3D laser scanner is being used in conjunction with CCTV vision to identify and eliminate suspects.

ARNOLD JANSEN, FORENSIC IMAGING COMMANDER: It can be used in a number of ways. We've used it recently to work out the location of a CCTV camera and then show the exact point of view from that camera and we can allow for factors such as the distortion of a lens and that can be very useful when we're comparing a suspect to what's captured on the CCTV image. It's an extremely accurate tool, so from that you can get a very precise measurement of heights of objects and people.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: The technology is also being used to reopen cold cases.

NIKKI TUGWELL, REPORTER: Has it proved beneficial so far with some of those historical cases?

DOMENIC RANERI: We've used it in a number of unsolved homicides and so far we've been able to add a considerable amount of value to those.

PAUL GLIM: There's one circumstances whereby a crime scene I guess that was recorded back in pre-1990. Police have been able to go back to a scene, use the measurements and the forensic examination, the details that were taken at that time and they have been able to recreate, I guess provide a contemporary version of that scene, provided that the building is still as it was at that point in time.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: At the CSIRO in Brisbane, Thomas Lowe is developing aerial and unmanned 3D scanners.

THOMAS LOWE, RESEARCH ENGINEER, CSIRO: We can move this around and not only map what is below us, but you can also map what is above you with this system. It's sort of a multi-pronged approach. In the one hand, we're developing it for unmanned aerial vehicles for aerial mapping of areas. We're also making use of it in real-time, not only for autonomous navigation of aerial vehicles, but also to give you a three-dimensional map as you move around a building. At the same time as that, we're also looking at more accurate and longer range lasers.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: Virtual reality goggles may soon be used to verify witness accounts.

DOMENIC RANERI: One of the things that's very important with this sort of 3D data is actually visualising it. And one of the newer technologies includes virtual reality headsets. So this is a device that's experimental which we're investigating and looking at how we can actually use this to visualise the 3D data that we're capturing. So this is a device that gets strapped onto the user's head and actually immerses you completely in the 3D environment. So you have a true sense of space, a true sense of scale and the ability to look around the scene completely freely and feel immersed in that environment. Our investigators in their offices can move through the scenes and view it as they like with a witness beside them and actually exclude or validate a witness's testimony based on that.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: 3D printers connect to the scanners and replicate evidence used in court.

DOMENIC RANERI: We can take, say, a scan of that mallet on the floor and then put it straight into our 3D printer and produce a replica of it. For cases where there might be complex evidence that needs to be looked at in a very tangible way, some types of evidence can't actually be handled directly by a jury. So we might take that scan data and then 3D print a model of it. So the 3D printer uses plastic to build an object in 3D space from the scan and from a 3D model. So we got this technology on the case of the 3D printer gun a couple of years ago where there was the belief that 3D printers might potentially be used to manufacture firearms.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: All cases in Australia using this technology are still before the courts.

DOMENIC RANERI: We actually get a written report certifying its accuracy at every point that it will count. The hand-held scanner has a certified accuracy as well to about 0.1 of a millimetre. So we're starting to see this sort of evidence reaching our courts and going through the process of admission into evidence.

SCOTT WEBER: It can actually bring the court, it can bring police and the community can highlight what actually occurred in a 3D representation. And we'll be seeing that over the coming months with the Coroner's matter in regards to the Lindt Cafe - where the people were, where the projectory - the projectiles, where the incidents, looking at explosions, looking at ballistics. All that forensic evidence is so vital.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: Police want to use the laser scanners to store 3D imagery of possible terror targets.

SCOTT WEBER: What we actually want is the 3D laser scanners to do some preventative stuff. So that's making sure that we actually scan and have models of all the critical infrastructure. It means that police officers have that diagram, that we can go through training scenarios and be better prepared if a incident does occur.

DOMENIC RANERI: The technology's very dynamic and it's rapidly evolving. There's lots of different devices, different technology out there and we're constantly keeping an eye on everything that's out there and evaluating it and looking at how we can actually use it in the context of our work.