Employees create pilot digital double project of local intercity road – Kazan Federal University

A laser scanner is used in the project.

The scanner was bought last year with grant funding, says Deputy Director of the Institute of Design and Spatial Arts Ramil Zagidullin. It can be used both on foot and on various vehicles.

A section of road 16K-1063 Stolbishche – Atabaevo, located in Laishevo District of Tatarstan, was chosen as a pilot project for creating a digital road model. In order to carry out the work, the device was fixed on a car roof; in the future, the possibility of purchasing a special portable backpack is being considered. According to the operating principle of the scanner, data is received automatically during the whole measurement session. The range of scanning depends on the characteristics of the installed laser scanner and can reach more than one kilometer. The density of data reception depends on the speed of the vehicle and the rotation speed of the mirror in the laser scanner and can reach 1 cm. And creating of a digital model after receiving and processing the information takes only 1 hour.

By creating a digital model of the road section it is possible to take various measurements. The software allows different measurements to be made on a point cloud. It can compare two point clouds made in the same location and show the deviations both visually and numerically. In addition, laser scanning greatly facilitates work on determining the sag of power line wires – such measurements can be made in a single click. In general, the system can be effectively used to obtain spatial information in solving the following tasks: conducting engineering surveys for road construction and reconstruction; determining parameters of geometric road elements (section length, width and area of pavement, transverse flatness, etc.); getting current information about the state of the roadway with detection of damages, defects and allocation of areas for local current repairs, as well as conducting an assessment of the rutting of the roadbed; survey of interchanges, bridges, overpasses for monitoring; determining the condition of engineering equipment and creating its three-dimensional models; determining the volume of excavation during mining; monitoring ground subsidence and other changes in open pits; monitoring slopes in places where rocks may fall, etc.

“Especially relevant is the use of equipment in conditions of limited use of drones. The capabilities of our scanner will be in demand on a long area that needs to be quickly converted into a digital and point cloud, so as not to walk around manually with a tape measure. Later on, you can load the information obtained with the scanner into the program and process the results of the survey literally within an hour. This is a faster format for surveying and processing sites,” explains Zagidullin.

Employees of the Institute of Design and Spatial Arts, in addition to creating digital models of roads, intend in the future to use the scanner to create digital doubles of streets, in particular the Kremlyovskaya Street. Among the ideas is the creation of digital maps of the area for the movement of drones, as well as hiking trails.

According to the Deputy Director of the institute, the laser scanner will be used for works conducted as part of scientific and applied research, and for training students in the Laboratory of Spatial Planning.