ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., March 8, 2010 — The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] today announced it has begun offering a new, compact, energy-efficient camera that provides three-dimensional images for military and commercial applications.

Boeing Directed Energy Systems and wholly owned Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab have jointly developed the camera using their own research and development funding, and successfully tested it over the past two years by attaching it to mobile ground platforms and a Boeing AH-6 Little Bird helicopter. Equipped with advanced sensors that were developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory and transferred to Boeing under a teaming arrangement, the cube-shaped camera is one-third the size and uses one-tenth the power of most comparable 3-D imaging cameras.

“Our three-dimensional camera fits a lot of capability into a small package,” said Nasser Karam, vice president of Advanced Technology Products at Spectrolab. “Its compact design and modest power needs will allow it to be deployed on a wide range of platforms, including unmanned aerial and ground vehicles that don’t have much room or power to spare.”

The camera, which Boeing can customize for each customer, has many potential uses, including mapping terrain, tracking targets and seeing through foliage. To create a 3-D image, the camera fires a short pulse of laser light, then measures the pulse’s flight time to determine how far away each part of the camera’s field of view is.

“The camera combines cutting-edge sensor technology with Boeing’s advanced pointing and tracking solutions and real-time processing to provide our customers with highly integrated 3-D imaging payloads for ground, airborne or space-based applications,” said Joseph Paranto, Growth lead for Directed Energy Systems in Albuquerque.

Boeing is currently integrating the camera into compact 3-D imaging payloads on unmanned aerial vehicles and will be testing that capability this spring. The team will also add 3-D video capability to the camera soon to complement its existing still-image capability.

A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is one of the world’s largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world’s largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is a $34 billion business with 68,000 employees worldwide.

Source: http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1107

Due to inclement weather in Washington D.C., I was not able to make it back to The Woodlands in time for the first day of SPAR 2010, but I sure do have a lot to share with you after day 2. Below are some highlights from the well-attended event:

Zebra Imaging – if you did not have a chance to see them in person, be sure to check out their website because they have developed a truly remarkable product. Zebra Imaging makes digitally-mastered, actively-animated, true-color, full-parallax holographic images. These holographic images are available in full color, or in monochrome (green). Zebra’s holographic images can be scaled to any size, large or small. By tiling together multiple tiles, it is possible to create large city maps, full sized cars, humans, and machinery. Check out a sample video of their technology here. Look for a full post about this technology after the conference.

Trimble Indoor Mobile Mapping Solution (TIMMS) – Simply put, this technology is full-dome mobile scanning for interior applications. The technology uses the same IMU-type technology as aerial LiDAR and mobile mapping, but without the GPS. You simply push a cart around a facility to capture detailed, accurate point cloud data without the hassles of registration. Monthly rentals are available or you can purchase the technology.

Z+F showed off a new digital camera attachment for the Imager 5006i/Leica HDS-6100. The camera mounts on top of the unit and integrates with the point cloud data through the use of their proprietary software. There are batch capabilities that allow application of the RGB values to be applied to multiple scans at once. These values are appended to the ZFS files without affecting the intensity values. It works flawlessly with the HDS6100, however, a hardware upgrade is needed in order to work with the HDS6000. The cameras can be purchased or leased from Z+F directly.

Velodyne Lidar Inc. showed off their real-time 360-degree LiDAR sensor. Velodyne’s sensor was used on the Radiohead House of Cards music video directed by James Frost and Zoo Film Productions for which I recently had the privilege of working with on a new project. More on that once the project has been released… it is big, real big! In the meantime, check out the results from the Radiohead project. It is guaranteed to amaze you!

Deke Smith gave a great presentation on the buildingSMART alliance and the National BIM Standard. Join at http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org. Download the Whole Building Design Guide at http://www.wbdg.org.

I regret that I was not able to attend the first day, but it has been great to see colleagues I have not seen in a while and catch up on some new technology. Look for more info to be posted tomorrow. Follow us on Twitter for real-time updates from the conference.

Leica Geosystems announces three new laser scanning software products for scan data import, forensic scene mapping, and modeling complex 3D surfaces. Combined, these products increase the breadth and depth of laser scanning software solutions available from Leica Geosystems.

A new, standalone Cyclone IMPORTER module is part of the separately announced, enhanced Cyclone 7.0 software suite. This new “open systems” module enables the direct use by Cyclone of scan data. Direct import of native data formats avoids conversion steps to neutral formats that can be time consuming and that are generally not as efficient for downstream data processing. Overall, it lets users of scan data from 3rd party scanners take better advantage of the broad capabilities in the Cyclone suite of software.

Cyclone IMPORTER module

ForensicMap Pro, developed by MicroSurvey, is available exclusively from Leica Geosystems. It builds on the strength of MicroSurvey’s existing software for mapping forensic scenes and incidents and takes advantage of Leica’s point cloud engine technology. With the addition of point cloud processing capabilities in mapping software specific for them, forensic professionals can now take further, direct advantage of the richness and completeness of 3D High-Definition SurveyTM data for forensic investigations, a high growth area for laser scanning.

Leica ForensicMap Pro software

3DReshaper software, a powerful, standalone software for working efficiently with large, complex meshes and comparing them against designmodels, has been added to the suite of point cloud processing software directly available from Leica Geosystems. Developed by Technodigit SARL, a Hexagon company, 3DReshaper enables users of laser scan data to create smooth surface models of very complex 3D geometry surfaces. This capability is especially useful for laser scanning applications involving heritage, archaeology, architecture, ship hulls, and terrain mapping among others. Hexagon is also the parent company for Leica Geosystems.

For more information please visit www.leica-geosystems.com/hds

The rapid speed at which technology is advancing seems to amaze me every single day and today is no exception. Below is a video demonstrating ongoing research being done out of the Georgia Institute of Technology funded in part by a Google Research Award. Be sure to watch the video at the bottom of this post. Below is some information from the research site.

Kihwan Kim, Sangmin Oh, Jeonggyu Lee and Irfan Essa,
College of Computing, School of Interactive Computing
GVU Center, Georgia Institute of Technology

* Paper to appear in ISMAR (IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality) 2009, Orlando Florida USA

** This work was in part funded by a Google Research Award (http://research.google.com/university/relations/research_awards.html).

Abstract

We introduce methods for augmenting aerial visualizations of Earth (from tools such as Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth) with dynamic information obtained from videos. Our goal is to make Augmented Earth Maps that visualize the live broadcast of dynamic sceneries within a city. We propose different approaches to analyze videos of pedestrians and cars, under differing conditions and then augment Aerial Earth Maps (AEMs) with live and dynamic information. We also analyze natural phenomenon (clouds) and project information from these to the AEMs to add the visual reality.

System Overview

Videos

(1) AVI/Divx 6.8, 80MB: Download

(2) Youtube (5:21) :

]]> http://highdefinitionsurveys.com/new-technology/augmenting-aerial-earth-maps-with-dynamic-information/feed/ 0 http://highdefinitionsurveys.com/laser-scanning/review-leica-geosystems-scanstation-c10-cyclone-7/ http://highdefinitionsurveys.com/laser-scanning/review-leica-geosystems-scanstation-c10-cyclone-7/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:17:52 +0000 Travis Reinke http://highdefinitionsurveys.com/?p=347

On Sepember 1, 2009, Leica Geosystems and Point of Beginning Magazine hosted a webinar titled The Business of Laser Scanning — hype or competitive advantage? Presenters Michael Harvey and Frank Hahnel along with Kristi Grahl discussed using laser scanning technology to:

• Submit more competitive bids — and win more jobs — for both high-end projects and routine surveys.
• Meet the requirements of customers who increasingly incorporate HDS into their project specifications.
• Lower your labor costs and increase profit margins on every job.
• Increase customer satisfaction with more accurate and detailed surveying reports.

During the webinar, the presenters also announced the availability of Leica’s new ScanStation C10 self-contained time-of-flight 3D laser scanner along with Cyclone 7, Cloudworx for SmartPlant3D and Forensic Map.

Some of the benefits of the new ScanStation C10:

• No cables
• On-board data storage
• USB Interface for data transfer
• Uses Internal Lithium-Ion TPS Total Station Batteries
  • Hot-swappable
  • 3.5 – 4 hours per battery
  • 4 come with scanner
• GPS antenna and prism mount attachements
• Automatically switches between oscillate/spin mirror mode to improve speed

• Can still be used with a laptop
• 180-degree sweep – scans both sides
• Higher resolution capability
• Integrated color touch-screen
• Light-weight – 28.6 lbs (scanner),
• More Portable – 62 lbs (scanner in case)
• Dual High-resolution camera/video with auto exposure and auto focus
  • Faster target acquisition by point and shoot using the on-board color touch screen
  • Acquire full dome images in 4-7 minutes
• Man Machine Interface (MMI)
  • Similar to Leica TPS Total Stations
• Shorter Start-up time
• Low scan power
• Withstands moisture better than ScanStation 2

Cyclone 7 Features:

• Updated Traverse Editor
• Improved meshing capabilities
  • Leica acquired 3Dreshaper – new meshing functionality
  • Meshing of tunnels
• Point Cloud engine is real-time indexed – faster viewing performance

View this webcast on-demand. The archive will be available for one year from the live broadcast.

Request your FREE on-site demo — Want to see the new ScanStation c10 in action? Reserve your spot at www.leica-geosystems.us/c10.

Technology is a wonderful thing… when it works. I am always fascinated by the rapid speed in which technology is advancing. Augmented reality, intelligent models, holographs, etc. are no longer things of the future, but technology of today. That said, I wanted to share this video showing what technology Microsoft Research expects to exist by the year 2019 – a miniscual ten years from now.