Ricoh’s AI Additions to the Theta 360 Can Now Replace Photographers

Ricoh’s real estate-focused business service Ricoh360 Tours has announced a set of artificial intelligence (AI) upgrades that it claims make it extremely easy for anyone to generate high-quality virtual tours and floor plans with fake furniture and more.

Ricoh360 Tours is targeted at real estate companies that want to produce online virtual tours as quickly as possible with as little work or required skill as possible.

Bypassing what used to require a professional photographer or videographer, the company now says that it can not only generate interactive virtual walkthroughs of spaces from a single Theta camera, but also enhance that footage so it looks higher quality, automatically generate a floor plan based on that visual data, artificially stage an empty building with virtual furniture, and automatically generate walkthrough videos.

The company says that it was able to create this intelligent software that backs up Ricoh’s Theta cameras from years of visual data accumulation that it has been gathering since 2013. In that time, Ricoh says that it has delivered more than 13,000,000 virtual tours to help real estate agents sell and rent billions of dollars in residential and commercial listings. Now that data is being put to even more use.

The new software now includes what RicohTours claims is “powerful patented AI technology” that enhances the images captured by the Theta and increases resolution without quality loss. This “Super Resolution” function also corrects exposure while maintaining highlights and removing noise. All of this is done automatically and quickly, basically eliminating the need ford any post-production knowledge.

The tech now also allows for the digital addition of photo-realistic virtual furniture in spaces that are empty, which Ricoh says saves time on money since it doesn’t require physical furniture be brought into a house.

Ricoh360 Tours’ software is also capable of generating “engaging” 360-degree walkthrough videos of a space automatically. The company says its AI is smart enough to look through footage that has been captured on a Theta and identify points of interest that should be highlighted for prospective buyers.

The software can also generate 2D photos from full 3D captures which means with just one camera placement per room, a realtor can generate a high resolution interactive virtual space, a walkthrough, and a photo all at once. It can also intelligently use that data to generate a floor plan and Ricoh360 Tours makes it easy to add custom branding, effectively producing all of the content anyone would need to list a property online from one simple interface.

Examples of how each of these additions works can be found on Ricoh360 Tours’ website.

Image credits: Ricoh