Bringing information from around the world, Dr. Vincent Fan, Lidarist Company Limited, Chief Technical Officer, Leo Kwan, Lidarist Chief Executive Officer and Dr. Wai Yeung Yan, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Assistant Professor, joined together at SUMSF 2023 to present a livestream on May 16, 2023 called, “Deep learning based underground digital twins: Scan to BIM.”

Dr. Yan began the presentation by introducing some recent work in Hong Kong, and discussing AI solutions regarding converting 3D into BIM models for underground scenarios. He spoke about the challenges of limited time and accessing records of underground utilities. Dr. Yan discussed the differences between 2D UU maps and 3D Point Clouds.

Leo Kwan was the next to speak, and discussed the approach of “hardware over software” taken by Lidarist. There is over 7000 km of underground pipework in Hong Kong and efficient data extraction software is still needed. He discussed the deep neural network, classification of object types and semantic segmentation. Kwan spoke about the scanning to BIM process and deep learning-based semantic segmentation processes.

Data acquisition was the next topic of discussion, and Lidar plays an important role. Laser scanning, placement of control points, setups, control targets, coordinate extraction and 3D point clouds were explained and demonstrated.  

A scan to BIM workflow was demonstrated as well. In the future, to cope with the “ever-changing” data, Lidarist’s solution will allow quick response and upgradable MN models. It is designed to be flexible and adaptable. 

A question and answer session followed the presentation.  Watch the whole presentation to find out more.