Lidar has become an indispensable element of autonomous vehicle operations but the technology relies on accurate georeferencing to be effective. This is one reason why US firm OGI (Oceanographic & Geophysical Instruments, Inc.) has selected supplier iXblue’s Atlans INS to provide robust and uninterrupted data georeferencing to its newly unveiled mobile mapping lidar solution dedicated to road assessment surveys.
OGS says that its new system provides a fully integrated mobile mapping solution, with the vehicle-based system integrating numerous technologies to provide highly detailed georeferenced survey data to US Departments of Transportation (DOTs).
Based on fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG) technology, the Atlans A7 INS is a North-seeking INS that offers highly accurate and robust data georeferencing. Resistant to GPS outages, the it enables continuous acquisition operations within environments lacking continuous GPS signals and is a valuable system for high-accuracy data acquisition without interruption.
“[With] Highly accurate and reliable georeferencing of the collected data being crucial for road assessment operations, we were seeking a compact and robust navigation solution for our mobile scanner project,” said Darren Moss, program manager at OGI. “We tested other inertial navigation systems (INS) during mobile surveys in NYC and Boston with poor results, as those INS units relied mainly on GPS signals.
“Maintaining good GPS signals in the urban canyons of large cities proved to be impossible. This deeply impacted the georeferencing of the acquired lidar data, leading to highly inefficient operations. This is the reason we turned to iXblue’s Atlans A7 INS.”
OGS was confident a FOG-based INS systems would perform even during GPS outages.
“By choosing the Atlans A7, we are assured to get robust and uninterrupted georeferenced data in urban environments, tunnels, forests and mountainous areas, which is crucial for our customer’s operations,” Moss said.
