As a data capture company, Virtual Technology Simplified (VTS) has a bird’s eye view on the process of digitally documenting cell towers and equipment compounds. When looking at the tools previously available to capture data on cell towers and creating digital twins, VTS saw needless complexity.
Scanners are bulky. Between five and ten different software tools were needed for scheduling, management, and the capture of data for processing, according to VTS. Employees sent to the tower needed to be specially trained to obtain the proper data needed for a digital twin.
To streamline the process, VTS created a 3D capture, virtual access mobile app, and web portal. The product allows large-scale reality capture of remote assets to populate digital twins with reliable, accurate 3D data.
VTS now markets that product, known as 360Capture™, to tower companies, tower services companies, carriers and engineering firms — virtually any organization that has employees visiting antenna sites. 360Capture™ gives them the ability to capture data from the site for use in a digital twin without special training. With smart data collection, drone capture companies can also onboard new employees faster than before, according to VTS.
“We realized that if we built a product with our expertise that we have from living and doing this work, we enable other technicians that are in the field to capture accurate 3D data,” said Joshua Bigham, VTS Product Manager.
To simplify the process, VTS focused on the interaction between all the different stakeholders and the capture operations, including scheduling coordinators, site owners, quality control technicians and capture technicians, according to Nathan Pugh, VTS Chief Technology Officer.
360Capture™ has three different functions. The first task involves work management, which schedules the capture crews. The second feature is the capture portion of the app, which is the integration with the sensors and model generation. Then, there is the quality control assurance of the data and the submission of the data to the clients.
This video shows a technician capturing rooftop equipment
“When it comes to capture, 360Capture™uses an iPad with its cameras and the LIDAR sensor in later generations, instead of a separate scanner,” said Kamp Fender, VTS Operational Strategist. “The scanners and tripods seem to get heavier every year. With the iPad, my backpack is one tenth of the weight.”
The video shows a rooftop dataset capture
360Capture™ also works with drones and other terrestrial LIDAR sensors that can be used for capture. The capture can either be done by the client or a VTS technician, then an application on the iPad collects data that is captured and pushes it up to the cloud infrastructure to be used by other applications such as Bentley’s OpenTower iQ.
Over the life cycle of a tower, there are a number of reasons to capture data, whether it is the pre- and post-construction, structural integrity assessments, mount mapping, or close-out packages. For each of these, there may be a different software package on the backend. 360Capture™ makes sure those integrations are tight.
“Our focus is to develop seamless integration with the backend, so the software works together,” Pugh said. “With good integration, the data pipeline flows seamlessly and you don’t lose information at every step along the way.”
From the data capture at the tower to the digital twin, 360Capture™ simplifies the process, says VTS, so that every employee can do it. The mobile app ensures the data that flows into the digital twin is accurate.
360Capture™ is currently in limited beta and scheduled to become generally available in first quarter 2023. The focus of the beta is to engage with people using the product to get feedback for fine-tuning it.
For more information, visit https://www.vtscans.com/360capture, LinkedIn or email [email protected]. You can sign up for the 360Capture™ beta here and download the white paper here.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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