Plug-and-Play Reality Capture with the Leica Pegasus:Two
In December 2017, Stahl Sheaffer Engineering (SSE), a multi-discipline civil and structural engineering company, expanded its equipment portfolio with the Leica Pegasus:Two mobile sensor platform. SSE provides services from nine locations in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia while specialising in:
- Roadway surveys: over 4200 miles of mobile LiDAR collected in 4 years, and over 45,000 roadway video logs on record.
- Traffic engineering: conducts traffic analysis and planning, asset inventories for municipalities and roadway ownership.
- Asset management: provides asset condition assessment and projected maintenance needs, assists in maintenance planning and cost mitigation.
SSE’s roadway asset management workflow typically consists of initial data collection, roadway condition assessment, roadway asset management plan, and inspect condition post-maintenance.
The Leica Pegasus:Two experience
A week after the Leica Pegasus:Two acquisition, SSE was able to utilise the system on a 450-miles roadway survey for road condition assessment purposes. The data was collected in only 5 days across 4 states with imagery and point clouds created as deliverables.
Vehicle independence
SSE needs to use their multiple collection vehicles located at their different office location efficiently for its projects, while also using rental vehicles for field applications. This can be challenging since not all vehicles support a mapping system which is electrically powered by the vehicles’ internal supply. The Pegasus:Two, due to its self-contained power system, allows users to quickly transfer the mobile sensor platform between vehicles.
In addition, with its universal mounting system, SSE is able to utilise over-the-counter roof racks to switch collection vehicles while the simplicity of its design prevents misplacing cables, for example one single cable containing power and communication.
Learning through hands on experience
SSE has grown steadily from a two-person company in 2006 to being ranked in the top 500 engineering design firms that employs 170 people across nine locations in three states. Therefore, to effectively coordinate the surveying teams, employees need to learn and understand workflows quickly and correctly. With the Pegasus:Two, only 2 to 3 days hands-on experience is enough for someone to learn the reality capture workflow.
Post-processing: an automated process
The Leica Pegasus:Manager removes the need for a technician to manually start multiple third party applications, since the trajectory processing to feature extraction is incorporated in a single desktop – Leica Pegasus:Manager. The process is set up as a batch, checklist allowing the team to run the processing routines with little user input. Additionally, LAS and Jetstream export functions allow downstream personnel to have access to the data immediately.
Increasing productivity with digitalisation
SSE provides a full range of multi-discipline civil engineering services for road inspection and transportation engineering.
The Leica Pegasus: Two mobile mapping platform enables SSE to increase the efficiency of their data collection and post-processing by providing a flexible and easy to use system, thus providing a reliable collection system leveraged by all their locations.