Reservoir scan to help engineers

At the beginning of 2021 we worked on a couple of interesting and unique projects for Guernsey Water. Firstly we completed a scan of Guernseys reservoir site. The plant located at the reservoir is due to have maintenance carried out on it, due to Covid restrictions at the time engineers were not able to travel to the island to inspect the plant, instead our services were enlisted to create a VR tour of the plant for the engineers to remotely make their inspections. We were able to successfully make our way around the inside and outside areas of the plant and create a virtual twin fo the plant that contained enough visual data for the engineers in the UK to see what they needed to see and make their plans for the future maintenance.

After the completion of the reservoir scan we were approached again by Guernsey Water with a completely different brief. Once again due to Covid travel restrictions we were tasked with providing UK engineers with visual data remotely. This time we were asked to scan a 650 metre stretch of road. We needed to pick up extra visual data and junctions and certain points on the road where engineers would be carrying out their work. This project was to be a challenge for us. The camera we use for our scanning isn’t designed for heavy outdoors use. The camera uses infrared lasers to collect its data so can only be used outside in low light levels as the suns rays interfere with the infrared lasers. Also, due to the openness of outdoor spaces the camera struggles to pick up all the data it needs as the lasers have less surfaces to bounce off of. Scanning a main road also presents the challenge of keeping our surroundings stable. When the camera is scanning the scene around it needs to be perfectly still for all the data to be collected correctly, working on a main road and in traffic junctions made this difficult due to moving vehicles and pedestrian footfall. After some trial and error we overcame these challenges by working some very early mornings. The early mornings provided us with the levels of low light and low traffic that we needed to put this scan together. It took a fair few early mornings and weekend shifts but we slowly and methodically put together the data required, we were successful and the final scan was sent to the UK for the engineers to use. The success of this scan led to Guernsey Water asking us to again scan an outdoor stretch of road for them shortly after the completion of this project. At first we considered whether these outdoor scans may be a challenge too far but now we are confident and proven successful in delivering this type of project for our clients.