High speed & high resolution road surface scanning

In the first two weeks of 2009, QPS performed laser scanning trials on the A28 motorway measuring the road surface topography. The objective was to measure the road topography with a minimum speed of 80 km/hr with sub centimeter accuracy.

For these tests a high definition laser scanner (Leica HDS6000) was used at an update rate of 50Hz providing up to 250,000 samples per second.

All sensors were integrated into QINSy providing the operator the road surface topography DTM in real-time! This means that time consuming post processing is no longer needed.

The enclosed movie provides a good impression on the real-time processing capabilities of QINSy. Especially the use of backscatter (laser intensity) data proved to be essential in QA/QC of the laser measurements.

Comparing the on-line generated DTM with first order tachymeter measurements proved that accuracies were achieved of better than 8mm (1 sigma).