National mapping agency for Great Britain, Ordnance Survey, were in need of a quicker and more cost effective way to collect georeferenced pointcloud data. Their existing method wasn’t sustainable in the long-term so they turned to Datron Technology and OxTS to help them develop a convenient, low-cost mobile mapping system that could be used ‘off the shelf’.
Ordnance Survey wanted to build a mobile mapping system that would allow them to create accurate, georeferenced pointcloud data. The system needed to be cost-effective and have the ability to scale nationally.
Challenge
Ordnace survey faced two significant challenges. The first was to build a system that would give them the ability to create an accurate digital representation of the surrounding environment – a 3D pointcloud. The features within that pointcloud would be subsequently labelled and segmented where necessary.
To create the pointcloud Ordnance Survey would have to build a mobile mapping system that could be mounted on a vehicle. It would need to include a number of components such as a LiDAR sensor, cameras and an INS. Whilst they already had the LiDAR sensor, they required an accurate INS to provide the position, navigation and timing information needed to create the pointcloud.
Another challenge Ordnance Survey needed to overcome was software integration.
Previously they used the Autoware/ROS technology stack alongside a Velodyne VLP-16 LiDAR sensor to allow them to simultaneously collect LiDAR and GPS-RTK data. However, they quickly realised that without investing significant amounts of time into software development, they wouldn’t be able to time-synchronise and merge the two sets of data.
To overcome these challenges, Ordnance Survey needed a cost-effective mobile mapping system that allowed them to concurrently collect accurate location, navigation and LiDAR data. The chosen solution also needed to provide them with a way to quickly and simply combine the two sets of data to create time-synchronised, accurate 3D pointclouds.
They reached out to OxTS and UK based channel partner Datron Technology to discuss the challenge…
Download the Case Study and learn more about how Datron Technology and OxTS were able to help Ordnance Survey overcome their challenges.
