Banishing the bottleneck
Mark Poveda, Managing Director – KOREC Group Ireland and Group Commercial Director, KOREC Group
‘ENTER to Connect’ advised the sign above the door at the recent Trimble Dimensions Conference in Las Vegas and after three days of presentations by visionary leaders, such as Steve Wozniak, famous for designing Apple’s first computers, along with hundreds of expert-led sessions, live demos and hands-on workshops there couldn’t have been a more fitting welcome statement. With over 5,000 visitors from more than 62 nations,
Dimensions is a hotbed of innovation, ideas, concepts and of course hardware and software. Despite the breadth of the event, clear themes emerged quickly and none was more evident than how the industry is addressing a bottleneck that’s partly of its own making – data handling and data sharing.
Over the years, the geospatial industry has been fortunate to see considerable innovation across almost every type of sensor for data collection from the mass data sets created by mobile mapping systems and 3D laser scanners to the highly accurate points collected by GNSS and total stations. But how do we effectively extract, process, analyse and monetise this high-quality, mass data when our industry has a skills shortage and people want answers in hours, not days, and certainly not weeks.
Many presentations were therefore geared towards tackling this subject and I feel that the following four areas are particularly worthy of consideration.
1. Connect – cloud-based solutions for faster outcomes
If there is one aspect within the geospatial industry that we are blessed with, it’s that we have many different workflows and vendors with solutions designed to solve a whole range of specific problems. However, this choice of great technology is also a drawback to its adoption. With so many fragmented options, the financial undertaking can simply be too much of a burden when you also have to tackle the training requirements for each individual solution.
So what’s the answer? One of the event’s big announcements was a commitment to increased integration between Trimble Solutions and those from Microsoft. By leveraging the Microsoft cloud, Trimble and Microsoft will collaborate to develop, build and deliver industry cloud platforms and solutions that connect people, technology, tasks, data, processes and industry lifecycles.
Believe me, Trimble is serious about this one so expect plenty of growth and innovation as we interact with new and exciting ways with the cloud. In short, this is going to mean better ways of sharing information and putting it into the right stakeholder hands at a much lower cost and that means faster and better decision making.
The Trimble Connect and Scale 2025 strategy is a clear indicator of this move and this development will connect users, data, and workflows across the industry lifecycle of transportation from procurement to planning to execution. Trimble’s also working on better connectivity with some of our industry’s biggest names – Esri, Bentley and AutoCAD to name just a few.
While greater connectivity was one of Dimension’s hot topics, this is something that K-Matic, the software development arm of KOREC, has long been attuned to. The secure cloud-based portal has been designed to assist in many tasks from the easy visualisation and sharing of collected data to sophisticated analysis and processing.
The portal can combine data from any number of sensors, GNSS, drones, laser scanners, mobile mapping etc from any number of manufacturers, truly connecting data to those that can use it, act on it and monetise it.
2. Robotics – autonomous devices can free up our engineers
The growth in robotics and automation of processes is a must for an industry that’s lacking in a skilled and plentiful workforce. It means that our best surveying engineers can be freed up to use their skills in the areas where they can be most productive, such as data handling, rather than undertaking basic or repetitive tasks. While ‘Spot’ (Boston Dynamic’s robot dog that can carry a Trimble 3D laser scanner for a truly autonomous system) is accustomed to stealing the limelight, at Dimensions there was also a lot of interest in a new autonomous system – step forward the HP SitePrint robotic layout solution.
HP and Trimble are collaborating on the integration of Trimble’s latest robotic total station (the Trimble Ri) with SitePrint to deliver an autonomous layout workflow with pinpoint accuracy and consistent repeatability which will be far faster than traditional methods. This will greatly improve efficiency and productivity and a same sized team will now be better equipped to handle more projects.
3. Machine Learning – getting data into the right hands, faster
As I mentioned in the introduction, the processing and analysis of the amount of high-quality data that we can now collect can also create serious bottlenecks in our workflows. Our aim is always to find ways to put the right information into the right hands as efficiently as possible and again, this was a theme that emerged at the conference through a strong focus on machine learning.
The growth in robotics and automation of processes is a must for an industry that’s lacking in a skilled and plentiful workforce.A form of AI, machine learning, by using algorithms and statistical models to analyse and draw inferences from patterns in data, can perform complex tasks in a way that is similar to how humans solve problems. In particular, we’ve seen this to great effect in the identification and classification of certain types of information from the point clouds and imagery generated by mobile mapping.
For example, we’ve been working with National Highways on a number of projects including how it identifies and classifies road defects. By using machine learning, decisions can now be made in hours rather than days helping jobs to stay on schedule and within budget. Expect to see impressive growth in this area.
4. Subscription business model – divisive or a part of the solution?
Software organisations and developers are quick to point out the benefits of subscription-based software. These range from automatic updates to everyone working from the same version to easier connection and therefore faster sharing of information. You may rightly think that there’s nothing new here, this is a business model that most of us are already familiar with.
However, we’re now seeing the growth of subscription hardware as well. This spreads the cost, lowers the overall outlay, and includes significant other benefits, including firmware updates.
Subscription hardware is already happening within the construction sector. Not everyone is going to find it easy to adapt immediately but our industry is moving fast and in order to grow and stay competitive, it’s essential that we keep moving with it, even if it means we are sometimes uncomfortable, so let’s be curious about this development and see how we can make it work for us.
At Dimensions there was a real buzz and excitement. It gave an insight of all the exciting developments coming our way. So, since I started this round up with a mention of Trimble Dimensions’ keynote speaker, Steve Wozniak, it seems only fitting to finish with one of his quotes: “If somebody else has a better way of doing something, sit down and acknowledge it and try to incorporate it into what you’re doing.” I couldn’t agree more.
Mark Poveda, Managing Director – KOREC Group Ireland and Group Commercial Director, KOREC Group