On the Road again with 3D Scanning services
“On the road again, oh I can’t wait to get on the road again.” That is what I sing before I head out on a 12 hour road trip across the rolling hills of Kansas. After about 5 hours of nothing but the same, the music has died off in my head and I am starting to feel a bit uncomfortable. I shift and turn in my seat, wondering how long I am actually going to be able to endure. The road sign tells me I’ve still got 5 hours till I hit Denver. Out of shear boredom I start rapping to the rhythm of the bumps in the road. That is about the only thing that keeps me sane after four more hours following of honky-tonk radio. Then I start to ponder questions that I would have never pondered before. How do they manage to keep such a long stretch of road in shape? After that road trip, I did some searching and came to find out that one thing that they do use to maintain roads is 3D scanning services.
Do it speedily with 3D scanning
Most of us are just normal road folk. We don’t spend our days in a semi truck all year. We just want to get home for Thanksgiving dinner. Hopefully, we can do so without blowing a tire or running out of gas before we get to the next station. We don’t often thing about all the factors that must be considered to make a good road. The only thing we really notice are the things that jiggle and bounce our cars. Most of the time we don’t even think about the road. until we hit a big bump or feel the jolt of a pothole. There are a lot of other things that civil engineers have to think about. They have to think about water flow off of the road when it rains. Huge puddles can be dangerous if they form in the middle of a highway where people are coming 75mph. That car might hydroplane and do something that should only happen on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. They also have to plan out all of those markers that we take for granted being there. Someone has to fix those road markers if they wear out. This is why they use 3D scanning services to do a fast and vast scan of the road to determine problems.
3D Scanning is a road warrior tool
Those aren’t the only things that road maintenance management is looking for. They also have to consider bridge clearance, tunnels, and all of those electrical lines overhead. On the surface they have to get an analysis of the cracks and ruts. A road is going to develop problems over time. 3D scanning services can use a LiDAR scanning device on a vehicle to gather data about the condition of the road. The scanner sits on top of the car and scans from above, gathering 3D image data of cracks in the road. That data can then be analyzed later to determine if maintenance repair is necessary.
We don’t usually think about all of that when we are heading to grandmas for Christmas. Thankfully some people are thinking of all that so that we can arrive safely to our destination for some marshmallow yams. They get the job done using 3D scanning services.
