Viametris mobile backpack scanner includes panoramic camera

Mobile-scanning company Viametris has launched the bMS3D backpack mobile scanning system, which features an embedded 360° camera.

Narrow streets and pedestrian zones are considered hurdles when it comes to mobile scanning. The new bMS3D-360 makes these tasks achievable. It is now available on the market and it comes with post-processing software. It will be presented at SPAR 3D 2018 in June.

“Users of mobile scanning systems know how difficult it is to cover an entire city with this kind of system and how complex the completeness is,” said Jerome Ninot, founder of Viametris.

Improved Data Exploitation with Panoramic Images. Viametris has found a solution to scanning challenges by developing the bMS3D-360: the mobile scanning backpack system includes a panoramic camera. This sensor allows the user to maintain continuity of results with mobile mapping systems on cars that already include this kind of camera. Operation and visualization with such 360° images are now easy to use.

Since Google provided massive street views, people are used to navigating through panoramic images. Navigating through bMS3D-360 images becomes easy and intuitive compared to navigating with 3D point clouds, the company said.

Ten years of experience have allowed Viametris to produce its GNSS mono-antenna system based on GNSS-free scanning (indoor or denied-GNSS area): the system trajectory is calculated by lidar-SLAM. It produces colorized point clouds with absolute accuracy of less than 5 centimeters under appropriate satellite reception conditions.

Compared to many mobile scanners, this backpack does not rely on GNSS to work. If the GNSS reception is not good enough, control points can be added for absolute localization. The backpack can be used to scan all sorts of indoor areas such as airports, industrial buildings or shopping malls.

The bMS3D-360 is lightweight. It protects the retractable camera an all other components since it is self-contained.

Post process in VIAMETRIS PPiMMS Software. PPiMMS post-processing software manages the dataset coming from the system. Its mission is to calculate, control and improve the trajectories by calling lidar-SLAM functions, and reducing drifts, thanks to loop closure algorithms.

The user can manually add GCPs to constrain the result when GNSS reception is poor. But, in most cases, the user will be able to include post-processed global positions (PPK) using GNSS post-processing software. Additionally, the panoramic camera can be used to colorize the point cloud using PPiMMS.