Posts Tagged ‘3d’

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.”

By Guillermo X. Garcia - Express-News

Bexar County’s criminal investigators soon will have cutting-edge help as they comb through crime scenes: a 3-D, computerized laser scanning system.

County commissioners approved the $207,000 purchase Tuesday.

“This is state-of-the-art equipment,” said Jose Treviño, the Sheriff’s Office homicide supervisor. “This will provide much more accurate data, and much quicker, to investigators at the scene.”

The system, which will be operational by March, takes a 3-D electronic photograph that plots objects in a 360-degree scan.

The unit “will all but eliminate human error” when it comes to measuring and plotting crime scene evidence, Treviño said.

“Eliminating the human error means you’ll have much greater chance that evidence won’t be missed,” he added. “It also guarantees much more accuracy in documenting the evidence’s location.”

Law enforcement officials say they plan to use the tool to probe major incidents, such as bank robberies, homicides and large-scale traffic accidents.

PITTSBURGH, PA — (Marketwire) — 10/29/09 — Quantapoint (http://www.quantapoint.com) — recent recipient of a General Services Administration (GSA) laser scanning IDIQ contract — announced the integration of Quantapoint 3D laser scan data with Autodesk® Revit using QuantaCAD(TM). Laser data may be accessed directly within Revit as photo-realistic Laser Images(TM) of individual 3D laser scans and high-definition Laser Models(TM) of integrated laser data, not fuzzy “point clouds” whose sparse measurements make them difficult to use and understand.

“One of the challenges of Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been creating 3D BIM models that accurately represent existing buildings,” said Eric Hoffman, Founder of Quantapoint. “By integrating Laser Models and Laser Images with Revit, Quantapoint can more quickly create 3D BIM models and validate their accuracy. Additionally, new 3D BIM designs can be viewed and clashed with the laser data to ensure that they will fit into the existing facility, thus eliminating rework.”

The General Services Administration (GSA), Public Buildings Services (PBS), has officially awarded six individual $30 million Nationwide Laser Scanning IDIQ Contracts to the following firms (source: https://www.fbo.gov/spg/GSA/PBS/PHA/GS-00P-09-CYD-0137/listing.html):

• Stantec Consulting Services
• Quantapoint, Inc.
• Pharos Consulting, LLC
• Coign Asset Metrics & Technologies, LLC
• Beck Technology
• Architectural Resource Consultants

Some firms were awarded contracts in their specific region(s) and others were awarded a contract covering all of the GSA regions.

Congratulations to all! These firms include some of the most talented individuals in 3D laser scanning. It will be interesting to see how much work actually comes out of this contract and how it will impact the laser scanning industry. Be sure to follow us on Twitter to get the latest updates on this monumental contract award.

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

(Norcross, Ga., 03 September 2009)  District Attorney Joe Mulholland of the South Georgia Judicial Circuit added yet another legal case reference to the growing number of U.S. court cases in which Leica Geosystems 3D laser scan data has been admitted into evidence when he successfully proffered and tendered to the jury a visually compelling Leica TruView.

During the murder trial of Antonio Jerome Greenlee in Decatur County Superior Court, witness and crime scene investigator, Andy Forte of the Thomas County Sheriff’s Department, used Leica TruView to virtually place the jury at the crime scene and to show them how the homicide could have occurred.  The case stems from the homicide of 21-year-old Ebony Clarke of Bainbridge, GA, who was shot and killed on August 12^th, 2008, during a street altercation between two men.

Leica ScanStation C10

The All-in-One Laser Scanner for Any Application

Today’s most popular class of laser scanner – ScanStation™ – is now in a compact, all-in-one ScanStation C10 platform. It includes scanner, tilt sensor, battery, controller, data storage, auto-adjusting video camera and laser plummet. ScanStation C10 also features major productivity advances, including a new Smart X-Mirror™ that lets users conduct full-dome scans in literally just minutes using a spinning mirror.

With outstanding performance for site, exterior, and interior applications, ScanStation C10 makes High-Definition Surveying™ (HDS™) profitable for even more as-built, topographic and monitoring surveys. The ScanStation C10 platform represents the most capabilities and best value packed into a single laser scanner instrument. Users can take advantage of surveyor-friendly, onboard total station-like control or use an external laptop for even more powerful, onsite viewing and data processing.

See UPDATE: GSA Nationwide BIM/Laser Scanning Services Contract Awards

Beginning this week, the General Services Administration (GSA) began interviewing the 21 firms (not verified) shortlisted for the Nationwide Laser Scanning Services solicitation. Although this solicitation was advertised as a “nationwide” services contract, information announced in the interviews clarified that firms would be selected for up to three regions. This opens the door to the possibility of a greater number of awards and smaller contracts.

The GSA is looking at an aggressive schedule for the awards which will be announced the first or second week of September with hopes of having contracts in place before the end of their fiscal year – September 31st.

Good luck to all of the Shortlisted firms. Stay tuned for more info as it becomes available.

Company: ClearEdge3D
Software: EdgeWise™
Website: www.clearedge3d.com

Quick Pitch: Automatically extract vector planar surfaces from point cloud data.

Overview:
Having used just about every piece of software on the market related to processing and extracting vector information from point cloud data, I am always looking for the next best thing that will make my life and my team’s life easier. We have seen the hardware side of laser scanning come a long way in a very short period of time; however, the software side has not improved at the same blistering pace.

Leica Geosystems Announces the Release of Leica CloudWorx™ 1.0 for SmartPlant 3D

(Heerbrugg, 21 July 2009) Leica Geosystems announces the immediate availability of Leica CloudWorx™ 1.0 for SmartPlant 3D. This powerful and easy-to-learn point cloud solution is designed for Intergraph SmartPlant 3D users who want to take full advantage of accurate, laser scan as-built data directly in SmartPlant 3D.

Leica CloudWorx™ 1.0 for SmartPlant 3D is the latest addition to the Leica CloudWorx suite of products that enable professionals to use rich, as-built point cloud data directly in their native desktop design and visualization platform. SmartPlant 3D is Intergraph’s next generation plant design platform.