Drawing Forth

Mobile laser scanning technology developed  by Renishaw is at the heart of an effort to create a detailed digital model of Scotland’s three iconic bridges over the Forth.

The £300k project – launched to celebrate Scotland’s industrial heritage – covers the Firth of Forth Rail Bridge, the  Forth Road Bridge and the soon-to-be-complete Queensferry Crossing. The data acquired will be used to help maintain the bridges as well as to generate animations, fly-throughs and educational materials.

In an effort to determine the best technology to use for the task, the Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation (CDDV), a collaboration between Historic Scotland and The Glasgow School of Art, asked Renishaw to use its mobile  laser scanning technology to conduct a survey of a section  of each bridge.

Laser scanners capture data by firing a laser beam from  a scanner at a solid surface and using the reflected laser beam to make rapid and highly accurate distance measurements. Each of these measurements, or data points, is used to form a ‘point cloud’, a collection of measurements that can be used to create extremely accurate 3D models of whatever is being scanned. As the process effectively operates at the speed of light, it has huge advantages over many traditional surveying techniques.