- Mobile is the HOT laser scanning technology. The key players will be at Spar 2009.
- The business case is closer to investing in an airborne sensor than a tripod mounted scanner.
- Don’t underestimate the political and workflow roadblocks associated with disruptive technology.
Trivia question: Who sang “Going Mobile”? The first correct answer gets a free 1 year subscription to the In The Scan blog. 
It appears that mobile is the HOT laser scanning technology. Spar announced in this week’s conference update that 2 new mobile technology exhibitors – Terrametrix and StreetMapper have signed up. The two are actually related as Terrametrix uses the StreetMapper technology. The parent company of StreetMapper also announced this week that they are expanding their production facilities in the UK in order to meet the worldwide demand for data processing. This is in addition to offerings from Optech, Riegl, Topcon and perhaps others that will be at Spar 2009.
In a couple of conversations this week with 2 well respected industry veterans – both with more than 10 years in the laser scanning business, they both praised the capabilities of mobile and predicted significant growth opportunities. Of course at $750K for the data collection component alone, it will take some serious business planning and hustling to justify the cost of one of these systems, plus the talent required to operate, maintain and post process the data.
Rather than comparing the investment in a mobile system with a tripod mounted scanner, I think it is more appropriate to compare it with an aerial platform operation. Although mobile is still inexpensive when compared to airborne data capture, the overall level of sophistication and required business savy are a lot closer. I would think it may be wise to sub out the first couple of projects to an existing player to get a better idea of how the economics are actually going to work.
The reason that mobile is coming on is the fact that it is now possible to achieve survey grade accuracy while collecting data at 100 kilometers per hour. That is impressive and would have to be considered disruptive technology when compared to traditional manual survey operations. Once again, when considering the amount of data being collected and the required post processing, think aerial instead of static.
As with any disruptive technology there is going to be serious resistance from the establishment. Do not underestimate the politics associated with this change, or the very real disruption to existing workflows and standard operating procedure. The failed business container is filled with companies who underestimated these potential roadblocks. It’s not all about excel spreadsheets and theoretical ROI’s.
It’s important to remember that the one thing all successful businesses have in common is – customers.
Trivia Question Answer: 
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