Kudan Lidar SLAM (KdLidar) in Action: Scanning a multi-story ship

In this new demo video, we present another impressive result from UCS, our partner in Korea, scanning a multi-story ship with their mapping device using Kudan Lidar SLAM with Ouster OS1-32 (Rev 6.2). There are 4 floors inside of the ship and UCS scanned both the outside and inside extensively. The size of the ship is approximately 80m (260ft) long and 20m (65ft) wide.

Why do we need to scan a ship?

Some might wonder “I agree that the point cloud looks interesting but what is the point of scanning a ship?”. For this customer, their purpose was to decide the best positions to install cameras to detect passengers falling overboard. With the accurate 3D-model, they can avoid physically visiting the ship numerous times for trial-and-error by virtually simulating different positions on a computer. In general, accurate digital representation of these large assets helps companies in the following ways.

• Understand progress of construction or repairs. They can scan ones under construction periodically to track the progress and check if they achieve each milestone efficiently) → Avoid project/ budget overrun
• Plan installation of equipment more efficiently. They can simulate installation of large equipment such as cranes on a computer due to accurate 3D model → Reduce planning time and resource, inefficient re-work
• Reduce actual visits to the asset for maintenance work → Reduce cost and time

How was the result?

As you can see, the point cloud accurately captures details of the ship. The inside of the ship is a GNSS-denied environment but there’s no distortion in the point cloud. The customer tried to scan this ship with an iPad lidar but the distortion was too large and the result was not usable at all. Also notice all the small details, such as wires and small equipment, that were captured clearly and crisply within the point cloud. It’s typically difficult to capture them well due to the noise originating from lidar’s depth estimate error and SLAM error in the point cloud. This can be used for the activities mentioned above.

Here is the demo video on Kudan YouTube channel.

Please reach out to us if you would like to check the point cloud in more detail. We are happy to share it and hear your feedback.

■For more details, please contact us from here.