Ottawa, Canada – June 11, 2014 – Neptec Technologies Corp. is pleased to announce that its OPAL 3D laser scanners have been selected by the Technische Universität Dresden for an airport tarmac safety project in Germany.
The research project, led by Professor Hartmut Fricke, aims to improve the current safety level of airport operations with a real-time 3D surveillance and visualization system for the apron controller. The system combines 3D point cloud data with real-time algorithms to automatically detect aircraft, vehicles and pedestrians for collision avoidance, and to alert the apron controller to the presence of Foreign Object Debris (FOD) to mitigate damage to aircraft. Ground handling accidents, such as the collision of two aircraft during taxiing, have been reported to cause millions of dollars in direct and indirect damage costs.
TU Dresden selected Neptec’s OPAL-360 sensor because of its large, panoramic field of view, longer range options and, in particular, its non-overlapping scan pattern that avoids creating “blind spots” when the scanner is stationary compared to conventional 360° laser scanners designed for autonomous vehicles. Neptec’s patented obscurant-penetrating OPAL technology also solves the problem of operating a LiDAR-based surveillance system in all types of weather – including fog, rain and dusty conditions.
The system concept and technology selection rational were recently presented at the International Conference on Research in Air Transportation (ICRAT 2014) in Istanbul, Turkey.
“We are thrilled to have been selected by the TU Dresden for this project,” said Mike Dunbar, Director of Business Development for Neptec Technologies. “This is another validation of our objective to make it easy to deploy intelligent 3D applications that can operate in all kinds of harsh environments and that improve the safety and productivity of our customers’ operations.”
About Neptec Technologies Corp.
Neptec Technologies Corp. develops innovative 3D robot vision products for machine automation and robotics applications in harsh environments. The company was founded in 2011 to commercialize space-technologies developed by Neptec Design Group Ltd., an award-winning space flight technology company and NASA prime contractor. Its first products are a family of obscurant-penetrating laser scanners (OPAL) and a software development tool kit (3DRi) with advanced features such as automatic change detection and object recognition and tracking. Together, these out-of-the-box “building blocks” make it easy to integrate intelligent real-time machine vision applications on autonomous off-road vehicles, and for more familiar LiDAR-based survey and measurement tasks in harsh environments. The company is located in Kanata, Ontario, Canada. For more information, visit www.neptectechnologies.com.