Blickfeld LiDAR sensors measure volume of bulk material piles
Sachtleben Technology uses Blickfeld LiDAR sensors to measure bulk material inventories, providing a precise overview of the actual amount of product in the warehouse, accurate to the minute.
Previously, inventory has been measured extremely inaccurately or with very expensive measurement technology. As a result, many of Sachtleben Technology’s customers had no data of the actual amount of product stored in the warehouse prior to using LiDAR technology. Therefore, the goal is to accurately determine inventory levels to increase the productivity and efficiency of the companies’ supply chain management.
To capture material inventory in warehouses, Cube 1 LiDAR sensors are attached to the ceiling using adapter plates with network and power connections. The 3D data generated by the LiDAR sensors provides information on the height, width, and depth of the bulk piles accurate to the centimeter. In a next step, a software solution calculates the material’s mass on the basis of this data.
The solution also offers the advantage of precise and real-time registration of the point clouds for the material piles. Each sensor outputs the acquired data as a point cloud, containing the x, y, and z distance coordinates. The fusion of multiple point clouds from sensors placed in a warehouse allows the entire inventory to be recorded at once.
In addition to installing LiDARs in warehouses to measure inventory, there are a few other application areas that may benefit from the use of this particular technology, like port facilities or gravel plants. Furthermore, a mobile version of the application could be interesting for construction sites, for example, to measure excavation.
