LEADERS' OUTLOOK
Communicating 3D Physical World Data to a Broader Audience BY MICHAEL BURGER
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President & CEO, FARO Technologies, Inc
ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022
oday, we continue to see an explosion of growth in massive data that brings the physical to the virtual information world. This enables an efficiency boost so that the physical world can be analyzed better and faster — independent of location — and shared with practically any stakeholder. This moves organizations and economies to higher performance through less waste and cost. The insights gained are increasingly being supported with artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), where the interoperability of devices and data relies on the information provided by laser scanning and sensors.
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Scanning launched surveying to new heights of performance, and broadened its impact. It has changed the construction and architecture industry as well, creating much better control and insight to manage process and design challenges. It has also found great application in mining, tunneling, water management, solar and wind power, heritage management, and forensics. The range of applications is growing every day. It is all about understanding and communicating 3D physical world data to a broader audience. The opportunity for cost savings in construction alone is massive, which is of tremendous importance given that construction is the largest industry in most economies.
Information about our physical world underpins our ability to address real challenges — from pre-incident planning and disaster response to forestry maintenance and environmental stressors that may imperil infrastructure. With advancements in mobile mapping, Digital Twin and the remote sensing technology we see today, our physical environment (indoors or outdoors) become further intertwined with the digital environments in which we work and live. FARO has been a pioneer in 3D measurement since 1981. However, laser scanning technology really came to market about 20 years ago and we are proud to have been a leader in this space since that time. In fact, in November 2021, we manufactured our 20,000th scanner.
Building sustainable infrastructure
By digitizing the physical world, we can create smarter designs to gain better efficiencies — lowering cost and waste while optimizing the processes in the virtual world. Digital technologies also help customers improve productivity and control over complex processes by getting things right the first time. Digital collaboration also means less need for carbon-producing travel to sites multiple times. It allows smarter insights by more stakeholders in a simple and more risk-adverse fashion. This data is also the basis for detailed simulations and optimization of complex projects.
The ‘Scan to BIM process’, for example, supports the concept of a regenerative circular construction economy, where a building is planned and built to use or recycle nearly everything that goes into construction and maintenance. Scanned data is used by all stakeholders to provide information about thermal performance, ideal layouts to manage fluctuations in temperature and weather conditions, support simulations, and optimized to reduce energy emissions, save on electricity, and more. When it’s time to retrofit or update, the process maintains an accurate as-built record. Understanding the physical world accurately helps to smartly reduce materials and energy waste, and optimize human labor. In infrastructure, it offers a similar proposition — scanned data coupled with sensor/real-time data that provides information on conditions, predicts risks, and provides the intelligence to help stakeholders map new infrastructure to meet the evolving conditions of their projects. This can even have direct effect in disaster prevention and recovery, with important learnings
