What is a mobile scanner?

Mobile, or dynamic, scanners are solutions for 3D scanning of buildings recent. This equipment is very often inspired by carts or backpacks, which you push or carry around in a scene to carry out your 3D scanning.

How a mobile scanner works

Unlike static scanners, they allow continuous acquisition while being moved around the environment: the station logic disappears. To allow this acquisition in motion and a correct reconstruction of the environment, dynamic scanners have a location system composed of a positioning system (based on GNSS or SLAM technologies) and an inertial unit (Inertial Measurement Unit, or IMU).

On the one hand, the positioning system will make it possible to define the list of positions of the scanner during the survey phase. On the other hand, the inertial unit will integrate the movements and movements of the scanner, to deduce its orientation and speed.

The benefits of mobile scanners

The use of mobile scanners allows operators to identify the environment very quickly. For example, the NavVis VLX scanner that we use offers a survey rate varying between 4,000 and 15,000 m² per day.

This survey rate has several advantages:

• Reducing the intervention time on a project, and therefore the associated human time, makes it possible to reduce capture costs → gain in competitiveness
• The disturbance caused by scanning the building is also reduced. The activity of an active building will not be disrupted, which can be key in certain environments (industry, hospitals, etc.) → minimized site disturbance