FJD Trion S1 3D LiDAR Scanner helped surveyors from Surveyor Indonesia capture point clouds of Indonesia Power Plant's coal pile in 19 minutes, 401 minutes fewer than a Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS).
Introduction
Surveyor Indonesia is a state-owned survey and analysis company that provides mapping, volume calculation, and density tests among many of its services in Indonesia and abroad. It partners with the Indonesian government to optimize the use of domestic resources in the energy sector and many other industries.
Indonesia Power Plant, also state-owned, is one of the many clients Surveyor Indonesia provides surveying services for. Located near the shore of Labuan Ratu, it has a coal pile within its facility for power generation.
In order to evaluate the coal inventory for financial reports and bank loans, make insight-based purchasing and stock decisions, and better arrange for workers' working hours, accurate stockpile measurement is required.
The challenge
Surveyor Indonesia used to use Terrestrial Laser Scanners (TLS) for the coal pile measurement, but due to their large size and heavy features, "they always have to ship the equipment first to the project site and can't go together with the scanner," explained Ilham, sales director of FJDynamics in Indonesia.
"The TLS is systematic but very time-consuming. When you capture an area, you have to set up a tripod and balance it like you do with a total station. And also because of the registration, the process you have to go through in order to align multiple scans with the help of at least 3 black and white reference targets, setting up in one location sometimes takes 20 minutes.”
The result of the "systematicness" was that the measurement of the Indonesia Power Plant's coal pile needed 7 hours.
The Solution
To measure the stockpile in a time-efficient manner, Surveyor Indonesia turned to Trion S1 3D LiDAR Scanner, the handheld device FJDynamics launched back in August of 2022. With 320,000 points per second, 0.8-2cm accuracy, and easy portability, Trion S1 allows surveyors to capture quality point clouds with the device held in hand, mounted on UAV, or fixed in straps.
“With Trion S1, we just connect the cables, establish the internet connection, and walk around to scan. The surveyors I helped with the stockpile scanning liked the simplicity of our scanner, and they were impressed by the real-time point clouds they saw on the phone when walking around and scanning,” said Ilham.
(Surveyor from Surveyor Indonesia scanning the coal pile with FJD Trion S1 held in hand)
The Result
The surveyor from PT Surveyor Indonesia captured the coal pile's point cloud in 19 minutes, saving 401 minutes compared to the past.
"It's simpler, lighter, and more effective," commented Arief, the surveyor from Surveyor Indonesia who was using the Trion S1 in this project.
Conclusion
Precise point clouds are the premise of accurate volume calculations. Terrestrial Laser Scanners are able to measure with points up to one million per second and reach as far as 1 kilometer, but due to their heavy features, it's restricted when it comes to stockpile measurement — heavy to hike with and time-consuming with the setup. The long hours spent in the facility prove stressful and sometimes dangerous for surveyors — they sometimes have to hike up stockpiles for measurement. Thus, the quicker they can complete the measurement without compromising accuracy, the better.
Handheld LiDAR Scanners, such as Trion S1, are a better fit for stockpile measurement as they are lightweight, easy to carry, and versatile with their carrier — surveyors can mount it on drones to reach inaccessible places without risking their health in harsh conditions — so they are able to complete the measurement in a time-efficient manner.