StreetMapper for 3D City Mapping Project

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Shenzen Institute of Advanced Technology has short-listed the world’s most accurate mobile mapping system, StreetMapper, to support an active research project on Digital City. StreetMapper will be used to create highly accurate 3D models of the urban landscape, creating the foundation for research and development into the Digital City, a subject propelled by 3D earth projects such as Google Earth 3D and Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D.

StreetMapper, which is a joint development between UK based 3D Laser Mapping and German guidance and navigation specialist IGI, uses a series of vehicle mounted lasers combined with an on board positioning system to capture highly detailed and accurate measurements of city buildings, roads, bridges and the general urban environment.

“StreetMapper provides an unprecedented efficiency of data capture,” said Baoquan Chen, Professor and Deputy Director of the Digital City Research Centre at the Shenzen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT). “This will help us reach our goal of creating 3D digital representations of cities, in a practical amount of time, that will then facilitate large scale computer simulations and ultimately will help us achieve many aspects of applications of the ‘digital city’.”

StreetMapper uses well-proven laser scanning technology to capture highly accurate measurements at speeds of up to 70 km per hour. A series of laser scanners can be mounted on virtually any vehicle and arranged to suit the specific requirements of the survey project. Each scanner has a range of 150 metres, an 80-degree field of view and can capture up to 10,000 measurements per second. When combined with an on board Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) StreetMapper can achieve positional accuracies of up to 3 centimetres.

“The StreetMapper system provides the perfect combination of industry leading laser scanning and navigation technology,” continued Chen, “yet is easy to operate, achieves unparalleled accuracies and can be tailored to meet our individual requirements.”

SIAT is jointly funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the government of Shenzen, China’s first special economic region. Focusing on information technology, SIAT strives to be a national research centre in the research and development of key technologies in the advanced manufacturing industry and a top ranking base for both scientific research and talent training as well as an incubator for high-technology industry.

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