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

  • Innovative GIS software offerings
    July 18, 2012
    The latest construction software developments can speed the construction process overall, Adrian Greeman reports Construction software is by its very nature a very fast moving technology, with new systems coming to the market almost continuously. There are some key developments however, such as major new product launches and market trends. One of the most important developments in the road design sector is the launch of the Bentley Systems V8i versions of its software, including its road design applications
  • UK to deploy 3D laser scanning technology for post-crash analysis
    March 1, 2012
    UK government roads minister Mike Penning yesterday announced the roll-out of 3D laser scanning technology to shorten road closure times after crashes.
  • Brisbane’s Airport: Innovative Management of One of the World’s Busiest Runways
    June 26, 2014
    When it comes to runways, there are few busier then Brisbane’s main runway. Servicing both domestic and international travel, with over 200,000 movements per year, operating without a curfew Brisbane’s main runway is the busiest in Australia. For maintenance, crews only have a limited period of time to determine the pavement condition, normally during the night, making the detection of pavement faults difficult. To resolve this issue, a new high speed pavement scanner was used to rapidly survey the pavem
  • Positioning tools continue to improve
    July 16, 2012
    Topcon says that its new IP-S2 package combines GNNS positioning capabilities with inertial sensors, while the firm also has a solution for customers wanting to mix and match receiver components. The IP-S2 is a vehicle-mounted, mobile 3D tool that offers precision mapping and surveying capabilities. The package collects data using 3D laser scanners, LIDAR, and/or cameras, and this is then integrated, time-stamped and geo-referenced. The customer can use this assembled data to combine LIDAR point cloud and d