Surveying and measuring buildings don't look like sexy occupations. However, with the current boom of real estate prices in many countries, it's a good idea to hire a professional surveyor to measure a future property and to avoid to pay some extra square meters for several thousand dollars each. And now, an Israeli company, EZ2CAD, has developed a new system which can measure accurately an apartment inside a building, without the limitations of the current (and more expensive) systems. In this article, IsraCast says that the new device is composed of two units, a base station and a lightweight mobile unit called Rover. Besides being as accurate and cheaper as current systems, this device also creates a CAD model directly usable by a software such as AutoCAD to build a 3D model in real time. It should become available in about two years for a starting price of $3,000. Read more...
Before going further, here is what you can read about modern surveying technologies in this page at Wikipedia.
Modern surveying utilizes an instrument called a total station, a small telescope equipped with an electronic distance-measuring device (EDMD) and set up on a tripod, although the modern use of satellite positioning systems, such as a Global Positioning System (GPS), is also well established, with the robotic total station becoming widely used. Though GPS systems have increased the speed of surveying, they are still only accurate to about 20 mm. It is because of this that EDMDs have not been completely phased out. Robotics allows surveyors to gather precise measurements without extra workers to look through and turn the telescope or record data.
So how does this new system work?
To overcome these limitations a team of Israeli professional surveyors and engineers set out to create a revolutionary new device called QuickSurveyor. The new system is composed of two units, a base station and a lightweight mobile unit called Rover. The Base station is essentially a 50cm high metallic pyramid with nine tiny RF and ultra sound transmitters / receivers built into it.
The Rover is a portable unit shaped like a telescopic rod 1meter in length, which can extend up to 3m to help measure high ceilings, and other hard to reach places. The rod includes 3 sensors triangular in shape and can be aided by laser distance meter to increase its range. The Rover unit can also include a handheld computer which shows the measurements' progress in real time.
Below is a picture of the base station composed of its three base beacons and its nine radio transmitters (Credit: EZ2CAD).
Now, what about the performance of QuickSurveyor?
In the current prototype stage of development, the Rover can operate in a radius of approximately 30 m from the base station and create a 3D model of the measured area with an accuracy of about 2 cm within less than a second. In the finished product the accuracy level should improve to about 5 mm (almost the level of accuracy of the much more expensive TS system).
On its web site, EZ2CAD mentions a precision of 1 millimeter and a range of 200 meters, but these are probably of the future version of the product.
And by the way, when will this product be available?
The company plans to market its innovative system in about two years. [...] The estimated price of the commercial version should be between $3,000 and $10,000 depending on the system configuration.
Even if this system is not currently available, EZ2CAD is pretty optimistic about its potential market, and gives numbers I am unable to confirm from other sources.
EZ2CAD advisor Benny Marcus told Isracast that the market for surveying systems like the RTK-GPS and the QuickSurveyor is currently estimated to be more than $3 billion annually and should grow to more than $5 billion by 2008.
Finally, if you want more information about this system, including animations, please visit these two pages, QuickSurveyor Review and QS4AsBuilt.
Sources: Iddo Genuth, IsraCast, July 1, 2005; and various web sites
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