ACELA Architects + Engineers, P.C. is among the first firms in the US to invest in the new Leica Pegasus TRK500 Neo mobile mapping system for surveying and geographical measurement.

Developed by Leica Geosystems of Switzerland and described as “the future of mobile mapping,” it is the only survey-grade mobile mapping unit currently available that is capable of providing three-dimensional points of everything it sees–capturing 500,000 point cloud data sets per second—all while traveling at highway speeds.

“This is a game-changing tool for ACELA. It allows us to survey areas in an hour that would normally take days or even several weeks to survey,” said Daniel Witczak, PE, PMP, president of the Lehigh Valley, PA-based firm. “This greatly reduces survey costs to our clients while improving the safety of our surveyors since they no longer need to stand on the road surface or shoulder to survey it.”

It will be particularly useful to create asset inventory for municipalities, governments, schools, colleges and private campuses, according to Witczak. “This unit will automatically log items such as utility poles, sidewalks, tripping hazards, street conditions, street landscaping, signage and traffic control devices,” he said. “The applications of this technology are almost endless.”

The core LIDAR technology—acronym for laser imaging/detection and ranging—has been around for a while but, in Witczak’s many years of civil engineering experience, Leica’s new TRK500 system takes functionality, workflow and sheer speed to an entirely new level.

“Everything we drive past gets image-mapped in real time with location accuracy down to the centimeter. We go straight from data capture to processing without time-consuming transcoding costs, workflow delays or the chance of errors during data transfer,” he said. “We are investing in the most advanced technology on the market to accelerate our workflow and deliver efficiency, innovation and value to ACELA clients.”