100+ LiDAR Scans in Three weeks on Alcatraz – Register for Upcoming Webinar June 26, 2024, 11 AM EDT.
MILTON, AUSTRALIA – June 11, 2024 – The largest database of 3D imagery of Alcatraz Island has been built in large part from the mapping work of Emesent, the makers of autonomous SLAM-based LiDAR scanner Hovermap.
To register for the upcoming webinar, “Mapping Alcatraz – The Story Behind the Scans” CLICK HERE.
Across three challenging weeks, mainly working around tourist visiting hours, Emesent Field Applications Manager, Dr Jeremy Sofonia lived, breathed and scanned his way through every building on the site.
In the process, he helped build the world’s most complete digital twin of the historic buildings and other site structures of the former prison.
“We only had a couple of hours’ window before the tourists and the staff would turn up,” said Dr Sofonia. “So, we had a 2 to 3-hour window at most to capture data before crowds started coming. We were very concerned to not impact the tourist experience.”
The volume of visitors was not the only challenge for scanning the popular tourist spot. The age of the premises, exposure to severe coastal weather conditions, and impact from local earthquakes, meant that many areas of this built environment were unsafe. And some of these parts of the island were not open to the general public.
For dangerous sections of buildings with asbestos, Emesent invited Boston Dynamics to help with the scans, leveraging the deployment of Emesent Hovermap on the Boston Dynamics Spot robot to enter rooms where humans could not.
Each room was meticulously scanned with Hovermap. Data was then processed on site using Emesent’s Aura software. This was to ensure that complete sets of data were being captured to the highest quality standard possible. This approach allowed for a quick check of the captured point cloud quality – ensuring that scans were as complete as possible in the limited time available to finish the project.
“It’s such a large complex space that there was always something that needed to be scanned,” commented Dr Sofonia. “If there weren’t people there, we did our scanning. If there were people there, we would go to another place. It was always about trying to keep busy.”
To hear more about the Alcatraz mapping project, Emesent Hovermap’s involvement, and to learn practical tips for undertaking similar scans, Dr Jeremy Sofonia shares his experience in this upcoming webinar – “Mapping Alcatraz – The Story Behind the Scans.”
CLICK HERE to register.
The Alcatraz mapping project was organized by Pete Kelsey in conjunction with the National Park Service who manage Alcatraz Island, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
For additional information on Emesent and Hovermap CLICK HERE.
