Boston Dynamics Spot with a Trimble laser scanner used to measure as-built Denver airport terminal. (Picture courtesy of Trimble)
We have given new meaning to working like a dog, says Aviad Almagor, senior director of emerging technologies at Trimble. He’s referring to their X7 scanner that rides on the back of Boston Dynamics Spot, a bio-inspired, quadruped robot. Guided by an advanced technology team Hensel Phelps, a design and construction firm headquartered north of Denver, Colorado. This 4-legged robot roamed Denver’s International Airport, seeing and recording, its lasers scanning all around it, to make a point cloud of the airport’s terminal building in progress.
Trimble has given no name for this scanner/robot system. We suggest Rover.
“The X7 produces a point cloud with up to 2mm scanning accuracy and high-res panoramic images,” says Almogor in a LinkedIn post. ”Its unique auto-calibration, self-leveling, and automatic in-field registration capabilities are a must to have for an autonomous scanning workflow.”
Challenges of getting a stable scans from something that is hopping around notwithstanding, we can see how programming Spot to scan would be quite a bit more fun than the tedious process of setting up a laser scanner a hundred times.
The robotic dog can be programmed to follow a route or it can be guided by a seeing-eye human from a remote location.
The X7’s point cloud files are transmitted to a Trimble T10 tablet via onboard…