Laser Scanning Brings New Asset to Accident Investigations—and Surveyors

"Laser Scanning technology is revolutionizing many aspects of surveying and applied measurement, but it's been especially game changing in the rarified niches of forensics and accident investigation. The main strengths of scanning--speed, safety, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and the ability to return to the same data set and make new observations--serve forensic engineers especially well. Money is also a factor: when so much is riding on a court case, the extra costs associated with adopting new technology don't seem especially significant....."





I hope we will see some TLS documentation in the following Dexter episode`s..... :)

http://www.amerisurv.com/PDF/TheAmericanSurveyor_Longstreet-ScanningAccidents_August2009.pdf

ISPRS Workshop Laserscanning 2009

Report from the conferance on the TerraFormatics...coming soon.


Terms of Reference

Submissions are invited in, but not limited to, the following areas:

* Information extraction from point clouds
* Registration of point clouds
* LiDAR system improvements
* Analysis of full waveform lidar data
* Data management systems
* Feature extraction and 3D modelling
* Extraction of forest parameters from airborne/terrestrial lidar data
* Sensor modelling, calibration and validation
* Range imaging
* Data fusion
* Classification of natural and urban areas
* Deformation measurement and metrology

Program:

http://laserscanning2009.ign.fr/download/prog_web_laserscanning09.pdf

iTacitus

Augmented reality is a buzzword nowadays, and iTacitus is just about that. AR + tourist information, to be precise.

It would be interesting to see that in action, I'm curious, how fast will it spread.

On the other hand, it would be nice to see some AR applications while scanning an area! For instance, you could upload a part of the scanned points on your phone, and an AR software could show you, which parts of the area have been scanned already. The problem is, that you need instant GPS data for that, and you have to merge the different scanning position datas instantly. Without a specific software it could be quite difficult to do that.

However, links for iTacitus:
http://itacitus.org/
http://itacitus.org/content/blogsection/5/38/

Sig.ma

Sig.ma is a visual browser and meshup generator, which will crawl the web for informations, semantic data, and even search inside applications.

You can get some information about laserscanning at this link: http://sig.ma/search?q=laserscanning (A nice start to get familiar with Sig.ma)

However, I find this tool rather interesting than useful. At least for now.... semantic web is the future.

Laser Strike at the Galactic Center

You should check out this one as well!! Interesting idea.

See explanation after clicking on the link:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090816.html

(Dont worry, no alien invasion! (yet...) )

Morning Glory, 1000km long clouds

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090824.html

Gigantic jets

Not really our business, but this is just super-cool: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17664-gigantic-jets-blast-electricity-into-upper-atmosphere.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

Gigantic jets shoot upwards from thunderclouds and can reach altitudes above 80 kilometres. Now some people managed to measure the electrical discharge from a single gigantic jet, and it turns out: they are as strong as a lightning hitting the ground.

So... a lot of charge is going to heaven... the sky.. the void.

Okay, this is not 'into the void' at all, but still interesting, even after you've been told that the material there is ionised.

You should read the article: there is a hidden world behind the clouds.

Where on Earth? #2, Turtle Head

You can easily tell which direction is the water flowing, and that it is a lake.

But the question arises again: Where is this turtle?

I'll help: I have spent beautiful days around here... :)

PTgui - Textur post-processing

I want to be at this place....

http://www.ptgui.com/gallery/space_shuttle_atlantis_1_panorama.html

.....we can make with this software high quality textur, and our TLS model will be with one step closer to the real world.

Nanoscanning

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090816171003.htm

"Researchers have created the tiniest laser since its inventien nearly 50 years ago, paving the way for a host of innovations, including superfast computers that use light instead of electrons to process information, advanced sensors and imaging." And so on, and so on...


Even if I will not work with nanolasers, spasers, or whatever that comes out from the gates of modern science, I'm happy about hearing the news. In time, it will have a positive impact on TLS, laser scanning in the real world. (Well, not that blood cells are not real, but I can't touch them. Scanning a bridge or statue is more of a 'handleable' work, for me at least.)

But: we are using the same 'technology', the same softwares, and we have more or less the same issues. (How will they solve the scanning of a fast moving bacteria, for instance? How can we scan the waving water, or the trees blown by the wind?)

And for the softwares: we are using the same technique for imaging and manipulating the datas. After all, they are just numbers. Scale doesn't matter, we have invented the normal form already. So, if nanolasers mean that the number of engineers working on the field will double, I suppose the efforts for developing softwares will double as well.

It would be nice to see that progress in the near future.

Capturing 3D Surfaces Simply With a Flash Camera

http://hothardware.com/News/Capturing-3D-Surfaces-Simply-With-a-Flash-Camera/

This is from August of 2008. I'm curious, where did they get from here..

Bridge Surveying

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS0l0-nKnDU&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Flidarnews.com%2F&feature=player_embedded#t=170



The video was created in Pointools.

HP restores creased photos with flatbed scanners

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49303316,00.htm

Nasa hunts down planet

"As NASA's first exoplanets mission, Kepler has made a dramatic entrance on the planet-hunting scene," said Jon Morse, director of the Science Mission Directorate's Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Detecting this planet's atmosphere in just the first 10 days of data is only a taste of things to come. The planet hunt is on!"

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/06aug_kepler2.htm

Where on Earth can you find this place?

Ancient spider and computed tomography

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8184396.stm

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_5-8-2009-9-49-44

"The researchers created their images by using a CT scanning device, which enabled them to take 3,000 x-rays of each fossil. These x-rays were then compiled into precise 3D models, using custom-designed software."

"Our models almost bring these ancient creatures back to life and it’s really exciting to be able to look at them in such detail. Our study helps build a picture of what was happening during this period early in the history of life on land. We think one creature could have responded to increasing predation from the amphibians by growing spikes, while the other responded by becoming an ambush predator, hiding away and only exposing itself when it had to come out to eat."

Sexy Data

Recently I read a blogpost about the sexyness of handling huge datasets, being a statistican, etc.
You can find it here:
http://dataspora.com/blog/sexy-data-geeks/

I have some words to add, according to TLS.
It's quite nice to work with geodata.. For instance I was always impressed by sat images. (And everyone likes google maps.) Working with 3D pointclouds (of real buildings, statues, terrain, whatever), and making them useful is an interesting job.

Now to Data Munging: we have previous posts about working with coordinates (awk, especially), but thats only tip of the iceberg. You have to clean the 3D point cloud, remove not static objects (for instance cars and people on a street), take care about the correctness of the coordinates (1-2cm difference between two intersecting pointcloud is an everyday issue), uniting the intersecting point clouds to a bigger one, etc.

And yes, Visualisation. After creating a 3D model, you can put the real texture on it, with the help of some HD photos. After that you have a really nice object model. And thats just where the work starts!

After reading the beforementioned post, I've had the feeling that working with laser is sexy as well..

Geobacter, the electricity producing microbe

Geobacter is here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090729210821.htm