Indoor Mobile Mapping Goes Mainstream

In his previous column about the future of indoor mobile mapping, Felix Reinshagen made the case for why this technology was on the brink of widespread adoption. That was just over a year ago, and a lot has changed since then: brisk expansion of the products and services on offer, together with a widening field of applications. So after another incredible year, Reinshagen has written a new column outlining why he believes that mobile mapping is well past the tipping point and is about to go mainstream. The emphasis now is on assessing data quality and establishing universal standards in... (read more)

2020-01-16 09:27:27

Carlson Unveils Scan2K Terrestrial Scanner

Carlson Software has released its Scan2K laser scanner, a versatile and user-friendly solution for the creation of accurate 3D survey data up to a range of 2,000 ('2k') metres. The announcement was made at the Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors’ 2020 Conference. “The Scan2K addresses the diverse range of applications for a laser scanner in the surveying and mining industries,” says Bradley Husack, a special projects engineer at Carlson Built with surveyors in mind, the Scan2K is at home in the field with its weather-proof housing, user-friendly sunlight-visible touch screen interface with simple, menu-driven operations for quickly collecting and georeferencing... (read more)

2020-01-16 09:07:47

Downtown Dublin as a Lidar Point Cloud

A Highly Accurate, Diverse and Dense Annotated Laser Scanning Dataset of a City Centre

The advance of Lidar data acquisition technologies is substantially increasing the amount of spatial data obtained and it is becoming cost-prohibitive to process it manually. Artificial intelligence (AI) has now started to offer cost-effective solutions to analyse and utilize those big datasets. AI can be employed for scene understanding, accurately detecting objects and classifying 3D assets. These are the significant fundamentals of several applications including autonomous navigation, intelligent robotics, urban planning, emergency management and even forest monitoring. The most popular types of 3D spatial information for such applications are Lidar and imagery data. This article describes the dense annotated ground-truth... (read more)

2019-11-27 10:05:38

How Geospatial Data Supports a Digital Railway Project

Linking Nations, People and Places

The scope of the Rail Baltica Global Project comprises 870km of tracks, 25km of major structures and more than 400 bridge structures (bridge, overpasses, viaducts, pedestrian crossings and animal crossings), as well as three freight terminals and seven international passenger stations. Besides that there are rolling stock maintenance facilities, an energy subsystem and signaling. This article zooms in on the pivotal role geospatial technology plays in the BIM strategy that underpins the digital version of Rail Baltica. When it comes to modelling this highly ambitious project in a digital environment, in order to manage Rail Baltica as a single asset,... (read more)

2020-01-07 01:40:22

The 'GIM International' Survey among Geospatial Professionals

'GIM International' is once again conducting its annual survey among geospatial surveying professionals around the world to explore the sector’s wants and needs. The findings will be published in an in-depth article in the upcoming edition of the 'GIM International Business Guide 2020'. Which methods, equipment and technologies are being used to capture geodata and convert it into optimal end products? What should developers of hardware and software bear in mind in order to keep users happy? What are the key bottlenecks, and where can further improvements be made? Your input is extremely important to help us gain a true... (read more)

2019-12-24 12:00:56

The World's First Digital Twin of a Polar Research Ship

Powered by NavVis technology, reality capture specialist DiConneX has created a fully interactive digital twin of the 'Polarstern', an iconic German polar research ship. In September 2019, the 'Polarstern' icebreaker – the flagship vessel of the Alfred Wegener Institute – launched the most extensive research expedition ever to the Arctic: the multidisciplinary MOSAiC project. (This story contains a video) The MOSAiC project expedition aims to better understand the influence of the Arctic on the global climate. For the duration of the project, scientists from 17 nations will live together for over a year on the Polarstern. The ship will stand frozen... (read more)

2019-12-20 09:16:32

European Consortium Demonstrates Highly Accurate Automotive Positioning Solution

The Horizon 2020-funded PRoPART project successfully tested a Galileo-based positioning solution enhanced with Real Time Kinematic (RTK) technique for automated trucks and advanced driver assistance systems at the AstaZero Proving Ground in Sandhult, near Borås, Sweden, at the end of November. Combining Galileo’s differentiators with other positioning and sensor technologies, the solution offers reliable cm-level accuracy using correction data from reference stations. (This news article contains a video) Autonomous vehicles/trucks and advanced driver assistance systems need robust and precise positioning to enhance safety and efficiency and enable reliable operations. This is especially important in the early transition phase when not... (read more)

2019-12-12 11:08:48

PrecisionHawk Announces US$32 Million Investment in Drone Software and Services

PrecisionHawk has received a US$32 million investment from venture investors including Millennium Technology Value Partners, Third Point Ventures, Eastward Capital Partners, and others. The company will use this financing to develop the next generation of PrecisionAnalytics, their AI-powered aerial data analytics platform. PrecisionHawk is also investing in their sales and servicing operations to address the growing demand for commercial drone services. “This is an exciting time at PrecisionHawk and the commercial drone industry overall as adoption of drones continues to grow,” said Michael Chasen, CEO of the company. “Our unique software and services deliver incredible value to our customers, equipping... (read more)

2019-12-12 09:58:14

SimActive Adds Lidar to Point Cloud Processing Solution

In response to the growing use of Lidar, photogrammetry software developer SimActive has integrated a new Lidar workflow in its Correlator3D product. The capability enables users to import a point cloud in the software and to perform registration with an image dataset. Using Lidar as control eliminates the need for traditional ground control points (GCPs) during image processing. Registration occurs during aerial triangulation, leading to a precise alignment of imagery with the Lidar data. Following this, Correlator3D can output colourized point clouds as well as seamless orthomosaics. “Removing the need to manually tag GCPs facilitates the integration of Lidar data... (read more)

2019-12-11 11:36:23

Night-time Mobile Mapping of Road Surface Luminance

Capturing Road Environment Lighting Inventories Using a Luminance-calibrated Mobile Mapping System

Lighting – which is measured in luminance plays a key role in improving road safety. A new measurement system is now being deveoped to evaluate night-time road lighting conditions based on luminance-calibrated 3D point cloud data. This new approach integrates imaging photometry, which is commonly used to measure road lighting, with mobile laser scanning techniques, which are mainly used to measure the 3D geometry of the road environment. There are many interesting potential applications of the resulting georeferenced luminance point cloud. In road traffic, the role of illumination is to improve the visibility of the road and the surrounding environment.... (read more)

2019-12-11 10:10:24