Mobile Mapping System Road-Scanner for the first tram line in Bologna

The project was realized in the context of the assignment to Siteco by the Temporary Association of Companies including Systra SA, Systra-Sotecni SpA, Architecna Engineering Srl, STUDIO MATTIOLI Srl, AEGIS Srl and CANTERELLI & PARTNERS LEONARDO Srl., and the University of Messina.

The realization of the project, born from a European tender issued last July, required technical verification of feasibility which the team successfully performed with the implementation of the Mobile Mapping System Road-Scanner4.

The planned railway route will develop for about 15 kilometers with two terminus stations: the first northeast of the city near FICO Eataly World, the well-known Italian agricultural-food park of the national farming tradition, and the second one, northwest, in the Borgo Panigale area, beyond the Ducati Motor Holding SpA headquarters. The tram route also includes stops in the historical center.

Approximately 30 km of roads have been surveyed with the Road-Scanner4. The system was equipped with a spherical Ladybug5 camera, 2 Faro S70 laser scanners, a LANDINS IXSEA inertial system, and a DMI odometer.

The collected data were then processed with the Road-SIT Survey plugin in the AutoCAD environment. This allowed displaying the point clouds on the imagery, carrying out the feature extraction and adding the required measurements quickly and efficiently. All objects can also be displayed in 3D format (sidewalks, walls, poles, etc.), thus enabling a realistic and comprehensive overview. The survey covered sidewalks, road sections for disabled people, buildings and fences, public lighting poles, electric poles, and traffic lights.

“I’m satisfied from a technical point of view, obviously”, says Ing. Augusto Burchi, Siteco’s Technical & Sales Director, “but I’m also happy that Siteco had the opportunity to contribute to this project which demonstrates Bologna's ability to renew itself exploiting new technologies, while retaining its profile as a great historical city.”