In the latter 20th century, however, the speed-accuracy trade-off began to give way. Take, for instance, NASA’s Saturn V rocket. With a first stage capable of reaching speeds of over 6,000 mph, orbital insertion followed by translunar injection, was engine speed and precision navigation at its finest. Too slow and Apollo couldn’t escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. Too imprecise a burn and the spacecraft would miss the moon entirely, careening into deep space.
Today, surveying specialists still grapple with the speed-accuracy trade-off. Not so much in terms of raw power like the Saturn V (or its modern Space Launch System upgrade) but of project completion speed, data capture, and precision measurement. Thanks to advances in laser-based imaging technology, the construction industry, like the space sciences, is also witnessing a bridging of the gap that separates the speed-accuracy divide. It’s a narrowing driven by what FARO calls “Hybrid Reality Capture, powered by Flash Technology.”
What is Hybrid Reality Capture?
Hybrid Reality Capture for the FARO Focus Premium Laser Scanner is a Flash license that includes the ability to merge 360° panoramic images with a higher-speed scan to create full-colorised scans in less than 30 seconds with virtually no loss in data quality. It does so thanks to its ability to interpolate data points.
Whether it’s breathing new life into an aging power plant, the re-imagining of urban cores, or it’s reducing loss-of-life in the wake of a mass-casualty event, Flash Technology, will, to a large extent, solve the speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT). And it will allow construction and engineering and public safety professionals to do their jobs better, safer, faster and just as accurate when compared to traditional 3D terrestrial laser scanning methods.
Developed as a “best-of-both-worlds innovation,” Flash Technology will improve on-site productivity and deliver state-of-the-art colorized visual clarity at a highly affordable price. Industries that have long made trade-offs between capturing 3D data accurately or quickly will benefit greatly as this hybrid solution continues to saturate the market.
‘Time Enough at Last’
By cutting scanning time in half, with virtually no loss in data quality, Flash Technology is pioneering an imaging breakthrough in the 3D measurement and laser scanning space. This will enable accelerated workflows, faster project completion times, and the ability to take more scans with the time saved, leading to greater accuracy and an even better understanding of the built environment.
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