GIS DATA CAPTURE APPLICATIONS MANDLI COMMUNICATIONS

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1 GIS DATA CAPTURE APPLICATIONS MANDLI COMMUNICATIONS Mandli Communications is a leader in specialized digital imaging equipment. Since 1983, the company has produced a range of imaging, pavement analysis, and positioning equipment. Together with their GIS software and services, Mandli helps clients design and maintain better road transportation networks. The Hawaii Department of Transportation asked Mandli for a videolog inventory of the state s road system. The island group of Hawaii has a varied topography of mountains, desert regions, tropical rain forests, and over 4000 miles of roadway. The data generated would be comprised of digital video imagery, centerline data plus road geometry, and pavement information. Project success depended upon the custom configuration of its mobile Digilog VX system, an integrated image capture technology. Equipped with high-resolution cameras, a laser Pavement Profile Scanner, and an Applanix POS LV system, the survey vehicle was prepared in a matter of days. Some roads were very narrow and overhung with dense foliage. GPS reception was seriously affected, John Caya Marketing Manager at MANDLI explained. The POS LV system provided continuous and reliable position and orientation information and we were able to map all the transportation routes very effectively. With GPS alone, much of our digital imagery would not have been georeferenced. The project was completed in less than 11 months.

2 AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES: DARPA GRAND CHALLENGE DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge is a US Government sponsored contest supporting robotic utility vehicle research and development. Involved since its inception, POS LV technology has proven to be a very valuable passenger, providing autonomous vehicles and their sensors with reliable position and orientation data needed to operate successfully. In the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a 132 mile long race across an unforgiving desert, the POS LV system used by Carnegie Mellon University led two robot vehicles to second and third place podium wins. Following this event, Applanix was sought by other organizations with dreams of winning the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge a test for autonomous vehicles in a simulated urban setting where roadways are shared while independent tasks are completed. In part through this demonstration of high precision and accuracy with reliable and repeatable performance, Applanix POS LV technology has become a first-choice navigation component in advanced robotic vehicle development.

3 MULTI-SENSOR GIS AND ASSET MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS PASCO PASCO Corporation is one of the world s largest suppliers of geographic information and a leading implementer of advanced surveying and GIS technology. Based in Tokyo, PASCO is heavily involved with digital data capture for various GIS, engineering, and land development programs in Japan and around the world. PASCO uses Applanix POS LV technology on a variety of vehicles, including their mobile highway mapping systems. Known as REAL (Road Excellent Automatic Logging), this mobile roadway surveying platform is designed to support street and highway infrastructure planning, right-of-way maintenance, and transportation network design. POS LV provides the REAL system with dependable and robust position and orientation information for its onboard digital video and image cameras, and laser scanning equipment. The ability to operate effectively in dense urban environments like central Tokyo has proven to be an indispensable advantage for the REAL system. When GPS signals are blocked or adversely affected by tall structures, the POS LV provides continuously accurate position and orientation information that allows survey work to proceed unabated. Collecting detailed data along Japan s approximately 1,152,207km of roadway at normal traffic speeds without interrupting traffic flow or placing crews in danger has made PASCO s REAL system a favorite option.

4 ASSET MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS STANTEC Stantec has provided innovative engineering and data gathering services to public and private sector clients for over 50 years. Utilizing an extensive array of technology, the company is recognized for its ability to deliver sustainable, practical, and cost effective solutions. The New Jersey Department of Transportation sought Stantec s help to undertake an extensive data-gathering project covering more than 17,000 miles of roadway. The scale of the project would take the Stantec team throughout the state and would collect pavement condition information along with simultaneous high resolution digital video imaging. All data would need to be accurately georeferenced with no GPS outages allowed. Stantec s custom-designed mobile mapping/data capture system uses sensors engineered to generate a variety of information, Rob Huber, Stantec Operations Manager explained. We generally drive a route once and generate multiple georeferenced datasets, which can quickly be analyzed. This technique works very well, particularly when using a georeferencing source such as the POS LV. Even surveying in urban areas, where buildings often have an effect on a GPS solution, presented the POS LV with little problem. Capturing the pavement data and digital videolog imagery throughout The Garden State, where tree cover is extensive, took less than 18 months.

5 GEOIMMERSIVE IMAGERY APPLICATIONS IMMERSIVE MEDIA Immersive Media Corporation (IMC) is an advanced digital video imaging company with clients worldwide. Using eleven video streams arranged according to geodesic geometry, immersive video captures an almost complete spherical image; a high-resolution 360 degree view of the surroundings, seamlessly stitched together. Recently, IMC embarked on an ambitious road-based survey of populous North American cities to create a dataset that provides Situational Awareness, GIS/Geomatics and Commercial Media markets with data-rich full-motion street-level panoramic imagery. Georeferenced data, it was hoped, could be supplied with precise camera position and orientation in order to offer unlimited opportunities for feature extraction through photogrammetry techniques. Content could then be augmented with other data, enabling users to experience previously unimagined visual data reference perspectives. Since most of the data was to be collected in downtown urban canyons with very challenging GPS environments, IMC wanted a very high accuracy navigation system in order to georeference every pixel. The POS LV was selected as their precise, robust real-time navigation solution, easily integrating it with IMC s GeoImmersive capture system. With POS LV equipped survey vehicles, IMC collected over 30,000 trouble-free kilometers of imagery to meet their goal of up to 3,000 centerline kilometers in each target city.