Skip to main content

Laser mapping speeds up survey measurement

British scanning company 3D Laser Mapping is hoping to benefit from a £3 million ($5 million) fund announced recently by the UK government for police forces to purchase laser scanning technology for accident recording and investigation.
February 21, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
British scanning company 1639 3D Laser Mapping is hoping to benefit from a £3 million ($5 million) fund announced recently by the UK government for police forces to purchase laser scanning technology for accident recording and investigation.

Use of scanners and point cloud software to collect data is speeding up traditional survey measurement and, on motorways particularly, this can save hours of disruption when traffic is held up, a major benefit to the economy. Laser scanning works in low light, night conditions and bad weather and collects far more data than a total station.

3D Laser Mapping has already supplied one of the UK's road death investigation units with equipment, in this case a Riegl VZ-400 which can produce high quality graphics and detailed plans of collision scenes for court use.

The company claims greater detail and colour compared to other laser scanners.

The VZ-400 has echo digitisation and online waveform analysis for a high performance with accuracies claimed of 5mm at ranges of up to 600m measuring up to 122,000 points/sec in a 100 by 360° field of view.

The evaluation of multiple targets combined with a reliable, robust and lightweight construction makes the VZ-400 also suited to civil engineering the firm says.



















For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Researchers trial 3D printing for both concrete and asphalt roads
    February 27, 2019
    Automated road repairs, using 3D printing, could save money and vastly reduce disruption, and researchers are already showing it’s possible - Kristina Smith reports It’s the middle of the night, and in the street below a team is busy carrying out repairs to the road surface. But there isn’t a human in sight. A road repair drone has landed at the site of a crack and a 3D asphalt printer is now busy filling in that crack. A group of traffic cone drones have positioned themselves around the repair location
  • Topcon GPT-3500LN designed to measure long distances
    January 6, 2017
    Topcon Positioning Group’s latest reflectorless total station is built to go farther than ever before. “Measuring the long distance is the key new feature,” said Jan Balkema, account manager with Topcon. The GPT-3500LN is a reflectorless total station for the construction and mining market. With a measuring distance of 2000m, the GPT-3500 is designed to measure farther than any non-prism instrument in its class, Topcon said. “Incorporating the Topcon advanced time-of-flight pulse technology, the EDM is f
  • Topcon GPT-3500LN designed to measure long distances
    April 23, 2015
    Topcon Positioning Group’s latest reflectorless total station is built to go farther than ever before. “Measuring the long distance is the key new feature,” said Jan Balkema, account manager with Topcon. The GPT-3500LN is a reflectorless total station for the construction and mining market. With a measuring distance of 2000m, the GPT-3500 is designed to measure farther than any non-prism instrument in its class, Topcon said. “Incorporating the Topcon advanced time-of-flight pulse technology, the EDM is f
  • Work related crashes are a major factor in the EU
    June 20, 2017
    Work-related crashes account for up to 40% of road deaths in Europe. This is the finding of research by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC). The findings come as safety gains on Europe’s roads have hit a plateau. According to the ETSC, employers could be essential to tackling road risks and improving safety overall. The report by the ETSC says that employers, national governments and the European Union must boost efforts to tackle the problem of work-related road risk. In 2016, 25,671 lives were lo