A new portable device combines laser scanning technology with cameras to create precise 3D images in colour.聽It could be used for everything from infrastructure inspection to construction to robot vision.
At its heart is a technology called lidar, which measures the distance to surfaces using a laser. Each measurement records a point in space, building a 鈥減oint cloud鈥� to show surfaces and objects. Unlike a camera, the point cloud gives exact distances and dimensions, but the images are monochromatic and can be hard to interpret.
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The lidar in ExynPak, a handheld scanner from Exyn Technologies in Philadelphia, is combined with an AI system that drapes real-time colour data from two hemispherical cameras over the point cloud it captures. ExynPak weighs 3 kilograms and scans as far as 100 metres, displaying images on a tablet computer in real time. The developers claim it is 20 times faster than traditional tripod-mounted scanners, which take minutes or hours to produce colourised output.
The colour makes it easy, for example, to distinguish brown ore from surrounding grey earth.
An early application will be making 鈥渄igital twins鈥�, copies of facilities such as construction sites and factories so architects, contractors and regulators can track progress. Quick colour scans could also speed industrial inspection, for example by highlighting corrosion.
鈥淪urveyors will be able to evaluate the conditions of bridge piers and bearings, any deterioration of the steel in an electrical tower, or rusted bolts on the side of a ship in real-time,鈥� says at Exyn.
This will allow them to get a closer look at potential problems without waiting for traditional lidar to be processed.
at University College London says that current lidar imagery must be colourised in post-processing.
鈥淚f they have solved the problem of doing it online in real time, that is spectacular,鈥� says Muller. 鈥淚t has been discussed for at least 12 years, but I have not seen a commercial system before.鈥�
He cautions that lighting is likely to be an issue. While lidar works in poor light or even complete darkness, cameras don鈥檛. 鈥淯nless you have as much lighting as a film crew, you鈥檙e only going to be able to scan at short ranges,鈥� he says.
Muller says the device might also be useful for rapid scans of hazardous environments or creating digital copies of settings for video games.
In the future, colourised lidar could assist self-driving cars, drones and other robots. For example, the point cloud can highlight the presence of a traffic sign against a cluttered background, and the colour shows the message on the sign, providing more useful data than either a camera or monochrome lidar alone.
ExynPak scanners will be supplied with a beta version of the colourising system from this month, says Derenick. He says the initial colourised images captured may have slight inaccuracies in this version, but the company is refining the real-time process, and post-processing cleans this up. Even a sloppy colour image is more useful than monochrome in some situations, he says.
