Hand-Held Multi-Sensor Capture, Data Fusion and 3D Imagery System

It has long been a maintenance and modernization problem with the time, man-power and resources required to fix and upgrade ships in the fleet. Prior to submarines entering the depot, extensive engineering and production planning is required to verify the current state of existing equipment and configurations since rarely do ships match the construction drawings. This causes a serious dilemma when ships are to be retrofitted with new equipment and maintenance teams are unable to properly install such equipment when it doesn’t “fit”. This research proposes to solve this problem by developing and demonstrating a hand-held combination laser scanning, camera and imagery system for shipboard engineering personnel to scan areas of interest and output a 3D point-cloud. These images and sensor data will be used to generate engineering drawings to identify the size and separation of equipment and structures. Using a feature recognition tool, this capability will aid future design and modeling of shipboard spaces. Engineers can render the engineering diagrams in rotational 3Dimensional views. This data can be used for engineering changes, modernization, intelligent information gathering and life-cycle support initiatives, to improve ship maintenance and decrease down time.