Speed Breakthrough in Time-of-Flight Laser Scanning from Leica

Leica Geosystems announced ScanStation 2, a new time-of-flight 3D laser scanner whose maximum instantaneous scan speed is a 50,000 points/second. That is more than 10 times the speed of its precursor. Leica claims this is the fastest TOF 3D laser scanner on the market. Operating speeds of competing time-of-flight 3D laser scanners typically range from 2,000 to 12,000 points/sec.

The new technology was developed by the design team at Leica Geosystems HDS headquarters in San Ramon, CA. The technical challenge was to reduce the pulse energy in order to maintain the instrument's Class 3R (IEC 60825-1) eye-safety rating. Leica engineers accomplished this by lowering the single pulse energy from 200 nanojoules to 30 nanojoules. Using a lower-energy pulse allows the laser source to be pulsed much more rapidly while remaining Class 3R eye-safe.

In order to preserve the range resolution specification, significant changes in the laser source, receiver and timing electronics were required. More productive capture; visual point location supports new construction and asset management applications.

ScanStation 2 achieves more than tenfold speedup in data acquisition – obviously this ought to reduce field hours. A less obvious benefit, but perhaps just as significant, is that the instrument's visible green laser can now dwell on a specific point. This is because the new, lower-power device is intrinsically Class 3R eye-safe; by comparison, the previous ScanStation and the HDS3000 relied on a continuously moving laser beam to achieve Class 3R rating. This ability to use the instrument for visual location of points on surfaces opens up new greenfield construction applications – equipment placement, bolt hole location, elevations for form placement, some large-volume assembly operations – anything where position accuracy of order of millimeters is required. 3D laser scanning work processes can help make design perhaps 10% more efficient, but these new applications point the way to greater savings in construction and asset management.

The pricing is not expected to change significantly. To provide a measure of investment protection, Leica has made it possible for customers to send in their HDS3000 or ScanStation to be factory-upgraded to ScanStation 2. Pricing for upgrades was unavailable at press time. Leica Geosystems reports that beta and demonstration units are currently in the field. Production shipments are scheduled to start in the second half of August. Version 5.8 of Leica's Cyclone software was announced at the same time.

www.leica-geosystems.com