SITECO Enters the UAV Market With Sky-Scanner

Siteco Informatica S.R.L has launched their new high performance Sky-Scanner LiDAR and image data collection system for UAV’s. In development since early 2015, the Sky-Scanner has already exceeded all performance expectations on theDJI-S1000 and DJI Matrice-600 airborne platforms.

The development project was spearheaded in collaboration with:

• LTS, a high-tech survey Company headquartered in Treviso, shareholder of UNISKY(spinoff of the Venice University),
• ASCO-DAITO Co. Ltd., Japanese leader of surveying, inspection and environmental engineering. Since early 2015, ASCO have been operating a Siteco Road-Scanner system throughout Japan for high accuracy 3D railway and roadway infrastructure capture.

Based on specific price/performance requirements of ASCO, Siteco worked with LTS to develop the Sky-Scanner. This high performance airborne data collection system fills the gap between the low-cost low-altitude photogrammetry approach of current UAV systems, and the more complex and expensive LiDAR systems typically deployed on manned fixed and rotary wing aircraft. The system is delivered as a compact and light configuration (only 3.5 kg, including batteries) with up to 5 hours data collection time.

The Sky-Scanner, equipped with a Velodyne VLP16 scanner, 16-20 Mpx high resolution camera for imagery and an Applanix AP15 inertial navigation system has succeeded in delivering verified accuracies of ±5 cm on regular surfaces (road, walls), and ±8 cm on natural ground with vegetation, capable of generating high quality orthophotos. The double return laser-scanner allows vegetation filtering.

ASCO-DAITO will present the system at the important new technology EE-Tohoku Engineering Exhibition, on next June 1st, 2016.

“We have seen many companies offering UAV solutions, but none have been able to deliver the data quality at a price required by our partners.” said Eng. Augusto Burchi, Siteco’s CEO. “The Sky-Scanner is the first such light, compact and cost effective system deployable on most commercially available UAVs”.

The Sky-Scanner UAV system is another highly flexible tool, bringing additional functionality to Siteco’s family of mobile mapping systems; the extremely flexible and scalable RoadScanner-4 and RoadScanner-Compact which employ existing LiDAR  sensors from Faro, Leica, Velodyne, Z+F and other 3D scanners.