The Leica BLK2FLY, the autonomous flying laser scanner from Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon, now has the ability to scan indoor spaces.

The new feature, which can be delivered through a free firmware update for existing customers, is designed to provide expanded coverage for complex scanning projects, including digital twins.

The BLK2FLY can now scan in areas without GNSS availability, opening reality capture opportunities in new settings and with new applications, including hazardous indoor areas like nuclear power plants.

Increased performance of the autonomous navigation system are said to heighten the sensor’s spatial awareness, allowing for obstacle avoidance in more confined spaces.

This new capability relies upon advancements to Hexagon’s visual SLAM system, providing real-time spherical imaging that improves the BLK2FLY’s operating range to a radius of 1.5 metres.

“The BLK2FLY, with its advanced autonomous UAV-based scanning, redefined reality capture workflows for multiple industries, especially digital construction, architecture, historic preservation and utilities,” says Pascal Strupler, business director autonomous reality capture at Hexagon’s Geosystems division.

“Digital realities are a crucial component of those workflows, and now that the BLK2FLY is able to scan indoors, users can create complete, comprehensive digital twins of buildings and structures.”

The BLK2FLY complements Hexagon’s terrestrial and autonomous sensor portfolio. According to Hexagon, when combined, they create complete coverage for any scanning project.

Users can also take advantage of Reality Cloud Studio, powered by HxDR, Hexagon’s cloud application that enables uploading of data to the cloud from the field using a tablet or smartphone to register, mesh and create 3D models of their data from the field automatically.

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Hexagon has launched Reality Cloud Studio, powered by HxDR (Hexagon Digital Reality), a SaaS application designed to make reality capture data more widely accessible.

Users upload reality capture data to the cloud for automated processing, storing and visualisation to create what Hexagon describes as ‘photorealistic digital twins’, and to share data quickly and securely.

Reality Cloud Studio can be accessed from any computer or mobile device with a web browser. Users on site can upload data directly from compatible reality sensors to create ‘registered and meshed digital twins’ for use on-site.

“We are at a point in reality capture where a unified, scalable and simplified digital reality experience is necessary to make digital twins and their value accessible to everyone,” said Thomas Harring, president, Hexagon’s Geosystems division. “Reality Cloud Studio provides a space where anyone can access and build digital twins and share their vital information, using valuable communication tools that bring people and data together in a centralised space for digital reality.”

Reality Cloud Studio features automated registration and meshing of point clouds. Users can collaborate in real-time with measurements, annotations, attachments, comments and ‘virtual tours’.

For more advanced workflows, data can be streamed directly from the cloud application into the Cyclone 3DR desktop software for detailed analysis and reporting – with more Leica Geosystems reality capture software connections coming soon.

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NavVis has lunched the NavVis VLX 3, the latest version of its wearable mobile mapping device, designed to capture indoor and outdoor environments with high detail.

The all-in-one device captures 3D measurements at walking pace with two new 32-layer lidar sensors in combination with SLAM software to deliver what the company describes as ‘industry-leading’ point cloud quality.

According to NavVis, the new lidar sensors generate twice the amount of data at range, with 1.2 million points per second, and increased vertical field of view, optimising the level of detail that can be extracted from the point cloud, improving modelling accuracy and precision. The SLAM algorithm has been improved to perform ‘even better outdoors’ and capture the facades of buildings at range.

“If you just look at the coverage at distance, it is truly on a completely different level,” said Dr Georg Schroth, CTO and co-founder, NavVis. “The VLX 3 will not only show details in more clarity, it will also feature an improved absolute accuracy with further reduced drift – for instance, when you scan long roads sections.

“So, from scanning civil construction work like roads and bridges to topographic surveys, the VLX 3 is going to be the new cornerstone tool that you will bring and use in any kind of project.”

Meanwhile, four cameras positioned on top of the device take high-resolution, sharp images in every direction for a complete 360º image — all without the operator appearing in the field of view.

Thanks to software updates, both the NavVis VLX 3 and NavVis VLX 2 (with its original cameras) feature an improved panoramic resolution, so users will be able to read text and other details likes cracks in more clarity.

For scanning feedback, users can monitor scanning progress in real time with a built-in touchscreen.

Other features include ‘highly realistic texturing’ and the ability to automatically detect and remove dynamic objects from point clouds during postprocessing.

According to the developers, NavVis VLX 3 is fully compatible with standard tools in the field and can capture control points in a local site coordinate system measured by both Total Stations and GNSS rovers. The device also supports national and global coordinates for ‘precise georegistration’ and alignment of datasets.

The unit itself features a hinged design that folds up and fits into a protective hard-shelled case on wheels or backpack, so that a single operator can easily transport and set up. It comes fully equipped with grip pads, shoulder pads, and stabilizing belt.

In addition to launching the VLX 3, NavVis has announced that it will continue production of the VLX 2 and has reduced the price accordingly.

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CupixWorks, the spatial digital twin platform from Cupix, has joined the Bentley Systems powered by iTwin Program.

The CupixWorks platform is designed for decision-making and collaboration through all stages of a building’s lifecycle.

It allows project managers, general contractors, architects, and owners to remotely view, track, and manage on-site progress via 3D spatial contexts and ‘life-like’ 3D navigation.

The platform can be used to synchronize and visualize 3D, 360° capture data — along with BIM models plus customized data — and use georeferencing to place the capture in the site’s physical location.

“We are excited to add CupixWorks to Bentley’s powered by iTwin program,” said Simon Bae, CEO at Cupix. “The iTwin Platform’s visualisation and synchronisation capabilities help CupixWorks to deliver life-like 3D navigation that feels like you’re on site. This improves collaboration for stakeholders—wherever they are—based on what’s actually happening at the site.”

“CupixWorks is a great example of how 3D reality capture data and BIM can be synchronized for virtual site navigation and progress tracking of complex construction projects,” said Adam Klatzkin, Vice President, iTwin Platform, at Bentley Systems.

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The UK currently generates around 15 to 20 per cent of its electricity from nuclear energy. To support the UK Government commitment to reach Net Zero emissions by 2050, Hinkley Point C in Somerset is under construction. This is the first new nuclear power station to be built in the UK in over 20 years and will provide low-carbon electricity for around 6 million homes.

The electricity generated by its two EPR reactors will offset 9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year, or 600 million tonnes over its 60-year lifespan.

As part of the project, Balfour Beatty is responsible for delivering the complex marine and tunnelling works, and constructing the structures for the critical infrastructure needed to supply cooling water to the power station. This project involves the construction of three tunnels under the Bristol Channel, with offshore concrete heads allowing sea water to pass into the tunnels.

Working within tight tolerances

Through the delivery stages from design to offshore execution, precision was vital with very tight construction tolerances required. Once complete, the system will be connected to the seabed via vertical shafts, capped with intake and outfall heads.

The intake structures are 44 metres long, which is roughly the length of four double-decker buses, and around eight metres high, weighing more than 5,000 tonnes each.

The structures were constructed at a purpose-built facility at Balfour Beatty’s site in Avonmouth, Bristol. Large steel alignment frames were then installed on top of the heads to enable future lifting and piling operations.

Lifting lugs were cast into the reinforced concrete heads and these were then matched against bespoke handling frames. The accuracy of the fit was critical due to the 5mm tolerance available for alignment, ultimately allowing for the installation of the lifting pins and the subsequent safe offshore lifts.

Tom Bush, Digital Project Delivery Coordinator at Balfour Beatty, explained: “It’s no surprise that using cranes to rotate and position the large fabricated structures on to the concrete heads is an incredibly challenging task, and we didn’t have any room for error.

“While we were constructing the concrete heads, fabricators were building the alignment frames. With such a small tolerance on either side of the lifting lugs, we needed to ensure the data and measurements we were giving were accurate – with Topcon’s ClearEdge3D Verity software, we were able to do that.”

Verification of works

Topcon’s ClearEdge3D Verity software can be used to compare point cloud data with design and fabrication models for verification of work. Balfour Beatty used the software to compare real-time data being supplied by the survey team on-site against initial drawings, to ensure the lifting lugs were aligned with the tolerance available. Inaccuracies were discovered during the first comparisons, and so changes were fed back to the fabricators and rectified early on.

Topcon’s software was also used to run several scenarios and create a digitally accurate approach that saved Balfour Beatty time and money, as well as strengthening health and safety precautions. The software translated data collected on-site into a digital model, providing accurate demonstrations of the rotations and twists of the installed lifting lugs on each of the heads, with immediate access to the latest data and comprehensive digital display models helping to streamline the process.

“Being able to accurately verify the position of each individual lifting lug on each of the concrete heads through Verity allowed us to provide detailed as-built information, within a short period of time and remove the risk of expensive or time-consuming errors taking place when it came to fabricating and fitting the alignment frames. This was key to enable the project to keep on programme,” added Bush.

Meanwhile, learn about the use of IFC at Hinkley Point C in this AEC Magazine article by Tim Davies, digital engineering manager, BYLOR Joint Venture (JV) – Hinkley Point C

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Faro Technologies has released ‘Hybrid Reality Capture’, a new technology that combines the accuracy of the Faro Focus Premium Laser Scanner with the speed of a panoramic camera. According to Faro, it allows users to complete up to two weeks of on-site work in just one week.

Hybrid Reality Capture is a new scan mode for users of Faro’s Focus Premium Laser Scanners. Powered by Flash technology, it combines ‘fast scans’ with colourised 360° images.

According to Faro, Flash Technology will enable more frequent, faster data capture, requiring only 30 seconds per scan. The company explains that by using proprietary smart upscaling algorithms, the output includes all collected images and points captured by a Ricoh Theta Z1 360° camera and Focus Premium Laser Scanner, resulting in full-colour scans that look more crisp than the same resolution scans with traditional methods.

Matthew Davies, senior account manager at Faro, posted a video on LinkedIn that shows a scan he captured in 12 minutes 51 seconds using the new Flash Technology.

It comprises 15 scans and includes a 3.5-minute calibration scan in full colour, plus tripod moves. Processing, registration and project point cloud creation took another 30 minutes 38 seconds, he writes.

“Hybrid Reality Capture is a best-of-both-worlds innovation that will improve on-site productivity and deliver state-of-the-art colourised visual clarity at a highly affordable price,” said Faro President and CEO Michael Burger.

“Industries that have made tradeoffs between capturing 3D data accurately or quickly have been waiting for this hybrid solution and we are excited to bring it to our markets.”

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Cintoo, along with the Autodesk Technology Impact Program, is helping young people gain essential training and knowledge in construction skills.

The company is making its Cintoo Cloud platform for managing 3D scanned data, available free to Xcel Strategies, a nonprofit organisation that mentors young people aged 15 – 25 in soft skills, job skills and trade skills for the construction industry.

The free offering also includes Autodesk Construction Cloud, AutoCAD, and NavisWorks.

“The coordination between Cintoo and Xcel to provide our comprehensive digital construction solutions to today’s youth underscores our joint commitment to supporting training initiatives including BIM and digital twin applications.

“Cintoo is delighted to be a proud sponsor along with Autodesk of the efforts that Xcel is providing to allow interested users to learn about the latest advancements in laser scanning by donating our browser-based solution, which allows any expert or non-expert access to high resolution 3D scans and models from anywhere at any time,” said Dominique Pouliquen, CEO and chief product officer at Cintoo.

Xcel Strategies offers a network of trained mentors in Georgia and South Florida. The organisation’s ‘Worx Mobile Training Units’ allow hands on access to tools, materials, and experiential learning.

Xcel’s mentoring program is holistic in its approach and design, providing mentoring, soft skills, and hands on career training in carpentry, electric, plumbing, HVAC, welding, auto mechanic and Virtual Design Construction (VDC).

Cintoo Cloud is cloud-based SaaS solution for managing 3D scanned data. It is agnostic to any scanning hardware and supports static & mobile laser scan data, drone data & 360 panoramic images.

Cintoo Cloud uses a point cloud-to-mesh engine that, according to the company, does not compromise on scan accuracy and density. It is connected to Autodesk Construction Cloud to enable QA/QC and issue tracking workflows for comparing as-builds to as-designed.

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OpenSpace has added several new features to its 360° reality capture and AI-powered analytics solution. This includes improvements for customers capturing on multiple sites and providing construction site teams with new tools to strengthen coordination with VDC and larger project teams.

The newest version of the OpenSpace mobile app, available on iOS and Android, includes the addition of BIM Compare, allowing teams on site to view their model side-by-side with actual site conditions and ‘navigate models easily’. In addition, new capture heatmaps show which areas of the site have been previously captured and which areas have been missed to ensure an entire site is documented.

A new QuickConnect feature is designed to make it quicker to connect cameras to the mobile app (including Insta360 One X3, Insta360 OneRS 1-Inch Camera, Insta360 One X, Insta360 One X2, Insta360 One R, Ricoh Theta Z1, and Garmin VIRB).

Meanwhile, with Field Notes, project teams can visually collaborate by adding notes in context within the 360° image capture and share the information in just a few clicks.

Enhancements include custom safety and environment tags, a “closed” status designation, and a search feature—all of which are designed to help project teams take action on what they see on-site, with customisable statuses and tags coming soon.

To help improve coordination between the site and office/VDC teams, OpenSpace offers new ‘advanced image enhancement’ capabilities that allow for brightening, noise reduction, and other post-processing improvements to captured images. According to the developers, this reduces the need to revisit the site or perform another capture to investigate an area more closely.

A new sheet overlay feature in BIM Compare lets users view drawings overlaid on the model so they can view notes from the drawing such as door and room tags and dimensions from their desks or on-site via the mobile app.

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Agtek, part of Hexagon, has introduced Reveal, a new AI-accelerated software tool designed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of point cloud editing for construction applications.

Reveal allows users to delete unnecessary objects, automatically using the power of AI for ‘faster and more accurate’ takeoff and quantity tracking.

Designed specifically for the heavy construction industry for use with point clouds collected from drones or laser scanners, Reveal eliminates the need to manually remove elements from point cloud datasets

Using AI, Reveal ‘recognises’ the objects it captures on site and clusters them into groups, such as construction vehicles, material stockpiles, ground and vegetation.

Users can quickly remove each of these groups, providing a clear picture of the site. This can help teams in the field and the office to more easily understand the project volumes and work progress.

“As a grading contractor, we want the data to represent the dirt,” says Ken Fritts, engineering services technical manager at Goodfellow Bros.

“We do not get paid to move the vehicles, trees, tall grass and structures. Reveal has the intelligence and precision needed to automate the sorting and clean-up of millions of points in just minutes.”

Find this article plus many more in the March / April 2023 Edition of AEC Magazine

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How might we use visual imaging to measure how efficiently we blow things up? A strange question, maybe, but it’s one that got David Boardman started on an exploration of how much usable material is collected during mining operations. His investigations led to the establishment in 2012 of Stockpile Reports, a company that specialises in stockpile measurement and management.

It had to be possible to find a better and more accurate alternative to the established practice of clambering up a stockpile once a year with a GPS pole in hand, in order to estimate that stockpile’s volume. After all, these are valuable assets.

Boardman’s photogrammetry-based approach quickly caught on. Today, Stockpile Reports provides technology and services to companies looking to use smartphones and cameras fixed to vehicles, drones and planes to measure stockpiles around the world.

As smartphone technology has evolved, with increasingly high resolution cameras and, in the case of the iPhone, the inclusion of low-density LiDAR capabilities, the application of mobile scanning has exploded.

Stockpile Reports had already built a high degree of expertise in photogrammetry and so the company ended up developing a generic photogrammetry toolkit called Everypoint for the iPhone. Any developer could build on this, in order to take the technology into new market areas.

While Everypoint development happened back in 2021/22, with a number of applications using it, it is only more recently that Stockpile Reports has released its own generic stockpile scanning tool for the iPhone 14. This is called SR Measure and is based on Everypoint.

At-hand capabilities

SR Measure offers on-system processing of 3D scans, with accurate measurement, barcode scanning, data management and 3D-verified post-analysis reports. These can be customised and shared by those with the necessary admin privileges.

It is designed to provide firms with the ‘at-hand’ ability to monitor and track their onsite inventory and raw materials in real time, according to a defined workflow. An enterprise option also exists, for companies that want to provide every employee with this kit.

To use the application, the user launches the app, and sets up basic definitions, such as location and material type. As a reference, they then set out two orange cones, around 25 feet apart.

To ‘scan’, they simply walk around the targeted stockpile with the camera pointed at it. Following a single walk-around, the software displays the pile, its contours, the estimated weight of material it contains and the area it covers. The information can then be sent back to base.

Stockpile Reports claims that scans performed using SR Measure provide measurements within 5% of accuracy. And this can be as low as 1.6% if cones are used as a reference point. In tests, more than 90% of measurements have shown scaling errors that fall below 3%, according to company executives.

As iPhone applications go, SR Measure is not the cheapest available, costing $99/£99 per month for an individual, unlimited-use licence. But this is an app designed for professional, not consumer use, and there is a 48-hour free trial available after you conduct your first test scan.

NERF and photogrammetry

Jonathan Stephens (Twitter @jonstephens85) is marketing director of Stockpile Reports. He’s very hands-on when it comes to mobile scanning technology, not to mention worth following on LinkedIn or Twitter by those interested in this subject.

For example, he regularly posts about tests he has completed using the company’s Everypoint photogrammetric application development platform, as well as his experiments with Nvidia’s NeRF (Neural Radiance Fields) technology.

Photogrammetry models are built up using multiple overlapping 2D photographs, to create a 3D mesh. NeRF, like photogrammetry, is used to create realistic scenes from 2D images, but does not need all the images to overlap. NeRF creation uses AI in a neural rendering framework to ‘fill in the gaps’. It can be used to capture larger areas where it might not be possible to get full photo coverage. In these cases, accuracy may be sacrificed and you might get some NeRF rendered artefacts, but these can be quite magical.

Why iPhone 14 only?

While iPhones are becoming very expensive, costing almost the same as a laptop, the onboard sensors and processing capability they now boast make them ideal for reality capture.

Take, for example, the iPhone 14 Pro; this offers a larger, brighter screen, a bigger battery, LiDAR and image stabilisation capabilities, a dual-frequency GPS for better accuracy, a higher resolution camera and the fastest processor yet. All these components are put through their paces in photogrammetry scanning and come out winning.

By contrast, says Boardman, the problem with Android phones is that there is a huge degree of inconsistency between different brands, in terms of both their capabilities and what’s in the box.

The iPhone is more standard, so is far more practical as a target device for software firms intent on writing reality modelling applications.

Find this article plus many more in the March / April 2023 Edition of AEC Magazine

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