Urban Mapping

Background

As more of the world’s population lives in urban areas, the importance of smart cities has grown. Smart cities leverage technology to improve the quality of life, enhance sustainability, and optimize urban operations. Gathering consistent and accurate information about the urban environment makes it possible to improve the maintenance of the existing assets and create sustainable plans for future expansion. Traditional survey methods often fail in speed, accuracy, and adaptability to the ever-changing urban landscape. 3DT designed Scanfly DUO to create the most accurate and comprehensive digital twins of any challenging environment.

The project

A multiutility company requested to map an area in downtown Brescia, Italy, as part of a PoC. The urban area features different challenging environments for a mobile mapping system. The ruins of the ancient Roman archeological area and the medieval fortress overlooking the city are connected with intricate streets surrounded by relatively tall buildings, providing an ideal environment to showcase the capabilities of Scanfly DUO. The objective was to create a detailed 3D map of the area as the basis for different tasks.

Workflow

Scanfly DUO was installed in the designated vehicle with the dedicated rooftop mount. The operators started the system in an area with good GNSS visibility outside the area of interest and then activated the data collection. The dedicated SmartSurvey application, running on a tablet PC, made it possible to follow the progress, along with a preview of the images acquired in the dedicated SmartSurvey application. Immediately after the survey, the operators processed the data stored in the removable SSD with SmartProcessing Lidar to generate accurate 3D point clouds with overlaying panoramic images of the mapped area.

The Scanfly DUO advantages

The dual, multi-channel Hesai PandarXT-32 Lidar heads of Scanfly DUO helped capture all the buildings' visible sides in a single pass. Based on the Applanix AP+ series, the navigation system provided the necessary reliability in the trajectory calculation to georeference the data. The multiutility company validated the accuracy and completeness of the 3D point clouds, judging the details collected as impressive.