The virtual excavation is a well-known augmentation technique
that was proposed for city road environments. It can be used for
planning excavation work by augmenting the road surface with a
virtual excavation revealing subsurface utility pipes. In this paper,
we proposed an extension of the virtual excavation technique for
live augmentation of excavation work sites. Our miniaturized
setup, consisting of a sandbox and a Kinect device, was used to
simulate dynamic terrain topography capture. We hypothesized
that the virtual excavation could be used live on the ground being
excavated, which could facilitate the excavator operator’s work.
Our results show that the technique can indeed be adapted to
dynamic terrain topography, but turns out to occlude terrain in a
potentially hazardous way. Potential solutions include the use of
virtual paint markings instead of a virtual excavation.