Article by Sunnyboy Moyana – Engineering Surveyor-Technical Account Manager at WorldsView Technologies
Over the last couple of years, we have witnessed the technological revolution that has shaped how we communicate, travel, live and ultimately, how we work. We find ourselves imbedded in the 4th Industrial Revolution, whether consciously or subconsciously. The 4th IR is evolving at an expeditious pace and affects how the engineering industry professionals (such as surveyors, architects, building construction professionals and engineers) work daily. A change in the narrative we call it.
We find ourselves asking meaningful questions such as how we can capture reality of physical objects in space in an efficient and accurate manner without missing the most important detail on the objects being captured in a short amount of time, as opposed to the traditional surveying methods. One of the solutions that has been adopted by most engineering professionals for collecting massive data of physical objects is the 3D laser scanning technique (widely utilized by engineering surveyors in mining, building construction and reconstruction of BIM models and 2D drawings of process plants and buildings for creating Digital Twins).
Not only is accuracy at the heart of the conversation of reality capture, but when we look at the mining environment, various questions arise such as: How can we capture mass data and ensure the safety of employees? Furthermore, scanning dark surfaces is one of the most daunting encounters the scanning crew will ever experience when on site. Some of the challenges in the built environment is scanning dark shiny surfaces such as black tiled floors and black granite surfaces. In the mining industry, however, scanning coal stockpiles can be a difficult encounter. The same applies to carrying out a scan of a tarred road. In this article, we explore how Topcon responds to such difficulties for surveyors, architects, engineers and building construction professionals.
Topcon responded quite well to this industry challenge of scanning dark, shiny surfaces and getting enough detail from the scanned and processed data. With the GLS 2000 3D laser scanner, Topcon introduced the Road (High power) scan modes, making it possible to scan dark, polished surfaces. The image below represents the settings that can be quickly altered for the scanner to scan dark surfaces.
A good example is the dark, shiny, tiled floor at our current Topcon service center in Midrand, South Africa (soon to be relocated to our main offices in Woodmead, Sandton). The scan was carried out with the Road scan mode and the black tiles were captured.
Figure 2: Processed point cloud of a dark tiled floor
The same Road scan mode has proven to be a success in the coal mine environment, where a scan of the stockpile can be carried out and achieve good detail from scanning the dark material (Coal) and details analyzed for extracting volumes of the stockpiles. The image below represents the processed point cloud of a coal stockpile.
Figure 3: Process point cloud of a Coal stockpile
With the Topcon GLS 2000 3D laser scanner, we can capture reality of physical objects and ensure the most important detail needed by professionals (surveyors and architects to name a few) in the field of engineering is not left out. This in turn helps us identify the required volumes of stockpiles in mining with ease, irrespective of whether we are scanning coal or any type of material.
