Between the Poles

Tracking a construction project in real-time with smartphones

Many see handheld scanning as revolutionizing the construction sector.  The Dot Product handheld scanner and Faro Freestyle introduced in 2013 were among the first multi-sensor devices (IR laser and photo cameras) targeted at professionals, especially in the engineering and construction sector (mm accuracy at 2 m). They employed laser scanning technology similar to the Microsoft Kinetic (2010). For rapid site documentation, Matterport allows you to scan a floor of a building in an hour or less, upload the captured data to the cloud (Amazon Web Services) and a couple of hours later have a fully-rendered 3D walk-through that can be accessed over the web.  It was originally targeted on the real estate sector but recently has been experiencing growing application in the construction industry. The Leica Geosystems BLK360 captures full-color panoramic images overlaid on a high accuracy point cloud (mm accuracy at 60 m). It weighs only about a kilogram. One-button operation means this is almost a consumer device- anyone who can operate an iPad can use the imaging laser scanner. But it is a professional device - it collects 360,000 points per second and has a range of 60 meters with 4 mm accuracy - with a very low but still professional price. Recently I came across a startup called HoloBuilder that only requires a consumer grade 360° camera and a smart phone app to document a construction project working with uploaded floor plans and walking through a job site placing the camera and tripod in the middle of each room to take a series of 360° photos. 

I just came across a product focussed on construction that lowers the bar still further.  Now ordinary smart phones can be used to capture the status of construction work at a very granular level in real-time.  A mobile+cloud application CTBIM created by BuilDATAnalytics enables each subcontractor on a project to document each step of their work with little additional effort.

Design plans are preloaded with all room and interior space locations. All assets associated with each room are in the CTBIM system organized according ot the scope of each trade's contract. For installing doors or windows for example, the height, width, material, partition, thickness, hardware and other specifications are catalogued in CTBIM for for all doors and windows associated with each room. This information is available on a subcontractors smart phone whether there is connectivity or not.

For example, a subcontractor responsible for installing door or window assemblies can simply click on the task on a smart phone and take a picture. This provides a detailed time-stamped (GPS stamped for civil projects) record of each subcontractors progress which can be used for a variety of purposes.  For example, it makes it possible to track construction progress at a very granular level, identify productivity issues that threaten the schedule, and provide documentation that could protect subcontractors if facilities are damaged later in the project.  It also means that the owner or an owner's agent such as a facilities manager can see the design page where the specific window or door assembly appears, the picture of what the door or window looked like at the time of installation, the  manufacturer specification sheet, operations and maintenance manuals, and other documentation relating to each building element. All of this information is recorded in the CTBIM database during construction and for the lifetime of the building or infrastructure.

This enables CTBIM to follow construction progress in near real time with location-specific, real time photographic or videographic evidence of work completed, real-time calculations of percentage of work completed, real time calculations of percentage of budget dollars earned per contractor, real time update on the number of assets required for the project and the number of assets on hand, on demand reports of every asset installed in a structure, the dates of installation, and the ability to drill down to identify the person responsible for the installation activity, room by room comparison of how long a build or installation activity took to complete, and data that can be used use to advise owners of the number of crew members required to accelerate build activities to avoid schedule creep, among other things.  CTBIM is focussed on providing owners actionable insights into the activities of each field crew responsible for some aspect of the build.  Since virtually every subcontractor already has a handheld smartphone, the CTBIM application could dramatically impact subcontractor business processes - improve productivity, remove risk, and provide greater transparency, critical for an industry prone to litigation.

It is really incredible how quickly consumer technology such as Kinetic and mobile handheld devices equipped with sensors, cameras and apps are being adapted for the construction industry.  As earlier users of the Dot Product scanner at Bechtel forecasted, these devices are beginning to revolutionize many aspects of how we do construction.

Mobile app uses consumer 360° cameras for visual construction documentation

At this year's BIMForum in Las Vegas, I came across an intriguing new company in the construction technology space called HoloBuilder.  I had an opportunity to follow up with Harry Handorf to gain a better understanding of how their solution, a combination of an app for iOS and Android with cloud processing, makes it possible to use a consumer 360° camera such as Ricoh Theta cameras to quickly document progress on a construction site.

The handheld app is called JobWalk, which makes it possible after uploading a floor plan to walk through a job site placing the camera and tripod in the middle of each room to take a series of 360° photos.  After the photos are uploaded to the HoloBuilder cloud, virtual tours of the construction site are available to anyone with a web browser on their platform.  In the virtual walkthroughs, dimensions can be measured with 99% accuracy.  The only input data that is required to make this possible is the distance between the camera lens and the floor.  Plug-ins are available for Revit and Navisworks which make it possible to view as-designed BIM model renderings side-by-side with as-constructed.  It is also possible to time travel over the lifetime of a construction site comparing images taken at different times to track construction progress.

HoloBuilder introduced its technology to the broad market in 2014. In 2015 it won the grand prize at the RICOH THETA Developers Contest.  Since then it has focused its solution entirely on the construction market.  It even offers a solution for real-time construction monitoring.  Harry told me that it has many customers in the construction market including the likes of Skanska, McCarthy, AECOM, Hensel Phelps, Mortenson and others.

As a practical example of how HoloBuilder is used, Skanska is currently building a 185,000-sq. ft. hotel with a construction contract value of $52.3 million.  Skanska is using HoloBuilder on the project to document existing site conditions, share progress with stakeholders and make decisions requiring the agreement of remote stakeholders scattered around North America. One of the use cases where Skanska found a lot of value with HoloBuilder is capturing images as part of pre-pour inspections - necessary inspections that occur before pouring concrete.  The challenge is to document all the in-slab deck conditions prior to pouring in a very limited window of time.  Cables, heating and ventilation, plumbing and electrical, rebar, and other equipment need to be captured.  Skanska’s Project Engineers use HoloBuilder to take 360° photos in conjunction with the bi-monthly concrete pour cycle.  Each of the floors scheduled for concrete pouring is captured and uploaded during a one-hour site walk using the JobWalk app and a standard 360° camera. HoloBuilder estimates that one 360° photo contains approximately the same visual information as 11 single lens photos. The resulting HoloBuilder project provides information about the contents and layout of materials in the slab including mechanical, electrical and plumbing as well as the rebar size, spacing and number. The images also contain additional context related to site conditions, weather, and location where the 360° photos were captured. Skanska is able to share the site conditions with the architect and structural engineer as a supplement to the inspection.  With HoloBuilder, Skanska’s project team reduced photo documentation time by 50%.  It also was able to offer a valuable deliverable that could be shared with the owner, architect, facilities management team and other project stakeholders.

This is another example of how consumer devices are changing the construction industry. The number of startups like HoloBuilder, Dot Product, Enscape, Revizto, Fuzor, Skur, Cupix and others in the construction industry is increasing and many are using consumer technologies such as gaming engines (Unity, Unreal Engine). As new technology gains traction in a $10 trillion industry that has traditionally been ranked at the bottom of R&D spending and digitization, construction productivity will rise and infrastructure will become increasingly attractive to private investors who are expected to become the source of most of the money required to develop, renew and maintain our infrastructure for the next two decades.

Documenting construction projects with a consumer 360° camera

Many see handheld scanners as revolutionizing the construction sector.  Portable and handheld laser scanners offer millimeter accuracy and can be used for engineering purposes.  Cameras with less precision are being used for rapidly documenting a construction site for a variety of purposes.   Most recently a couple of startups Cupix and HoloBuilder are lowering the bar by offering cloud software for the AEC industry to enable images of a construction site to be captured with a consumer grade 360° camera like the Ricoh Theta S or V. Walking through a construction site capturing 360° images along the way and uploading the images to the web is all that is required to create 3D walk-throughs of a site.  The 3D walk-through can be used to measure dimensions, it can be annotated, it can be compared with a BIM model, and 3D images captured at different times can be compared to monitor construction progress.

 

For engineering purposes, handheld laser scanners provide the requisite precision but are relatively expensive.  The scanning process requires time and produces large point cloud files and imagery that need to be managed and processed for visualization.

• The Leica Geosystems BLK360 weighs a mere 2.2 lbs (1 kg), is incredibly small 6.5 x 4 inches and lists for US$16,000.  It is a full laser scanner and imager, capturing 360,000 points/second with a range of 0.6 - 60 meters.  The scanner can be attached to a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet to visualize what you have scanned. Up to 16 of these can be used at the same time.
• Dot Product DPI-8 and DPI-8X (short range) are multi-sensor devices (IR laser and photo cameras).  Targeted at professionals, especially in the engineering and construction sector, the devices incorporate SLAM technology and works with Android handhelds.  All the processing is done locally on the handheld - no cloud processing is required.
• The Faro Freestyle can scan objects within a range of half a meter to 3 meters away with a resolution of  better than 1.5mm with a image point density of up to 45,000 points/m² at 0.5m and up to 10,500 points/m² at 1m.  The scanner is attached to a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet for visualizing the point cloud as you scan.

For rapid site documentation, Matterport allows you to scan a floor of a building in an hour or less, upload the captured data to the cloud (Amazon Web Services) and a couple of hours later have a fully-rendered 3D walk-through that can be accessed over the web.  It was originally targeted on the real estate sector but recently has been showing up at construction industry and other events including the recent BIMForum in Las Vegas.  It provides a dollhouse view to see a whole floor at once, an inside view for walk-throughs, and a floor plan view for a traditional top-down perspective. It relies on IR and photo cameras and multiple scans in each room - scanning every 1.5 to 2.5 meters.  It is capable of rough measurement, but not for engineering or construction purposes.  Its biggest advantages are the speed with which you can scan a site and the small size of the resulting file which has to be uploaded to Matterport's cloud site.  In addition to real estate and construction site documentation, it is used by FM professionals who need a 3D context for facilities management.  For example, it can provide a mechanical room walk through with tags on different pieces of equipment and a way of directing anyone to any location in the facility.  The camera is several thousand dollars and cloud processing requires a subscription.

 

The most recent additions to the technologies that can be used to document a construction site are Cupix and Holobuilder which lower the bar by only requiring a consumer grade 360° camera such as a Ricoh Theta.  In the case of Cupix cloud processing requires a subscription.  Similarly to the Matterport, you walk through the site capturing images with 360° camera as you go.  The resulting images are uploaded to the Cupix site and the result is 3d tours or walk-throughs accessible over the web.  You can compare 3D tours taken on different days to monitor construction progress, compare a 3D walk-through with a BIM model (Revit or IFC) you have uploaded, and measure dimensions with a precision of 1% or better at 20 meters.  To reach this level of precision in measurement requires including a marker when taking pictures.  Alternatively if a dimension is known it can be used to scale the entire walk-through.  Cupix can use images captured indoors and outdoors.  Cupix says that if GPS metadata is available from the photos, they can georeference the walk-throughs and generate a KML file. I used Cupix with a low cost 360Fly4K camera and a Samsung Note 5 phone to capture the interior and a bit outside of a cabin in a nearby park.  It took a couple of attempts to get the correct spacing between camera placements in capturing 360° images, but after that it was straightforward. I uploaded a rough picture of a floor plan and I was able to walk-through the resulting 3D tour using the Cupix web viewer.  Without doing anything additional I was able to get rough measurements accurate to about 5%.  Cupix only requires a consumer grade 360° camera.  A subscription is necessary for cloud processing. Cupix is targeting a broad market including travel and hospitality, real estate, and arts and culture in addition to the AEC industry

 

I just came across HoloBuilder at the recent BIMForum in Las Vegas.  Like Cupix it only requires a consumer 360° camera. At first glance it appears to be focused on the AEC industry and makes creating and managing 3D tours of construction sites very easy.  It offers 360° SiteStream which is a unique live streaming solution for real-time construction progress monitoring in 3D that runs as a plug-in app on the Ricoh Theta V.

A game changer for interior distance measurement introduced at HxGNLive

At HxGNLIve in Las Vegas Juergen Dold announced another very impressively designed device in the BLK line called the BLK3D. It is designed to be a game changer in the interior measurement space traditionally addressed by Leica's DISTO line because of its ease of use, size and paper-eliminating functionality.

The BLK3D follows in the footsteps of the BLK360, which is a game changer in the terrestrial laser scanner space because of its ease of use (one button), size (weighs 1kg / size 165 mm tall x 100 mm diameter), its capability (full 360 scan in less than 3 mins), and range (mm accuracy at 60 m). It it is intended the democratize laser scanning to other professionals beyond surveyors.

The BLK3D is small, somewhat larger than my Samsung Note 5.  It has two photo cameras and two laser range finders. I had a chance to chat with Johannes Hotz, Business Development at Leica Geosystems who explained that it is intended to replace the laborious paper-based measuring processes used in interior spaces. Leica Geosystems worked with architects, designers and contractors who work in interior spaces, and identified paper-based processes that could be replaced by a digital process.

The two cameras on the BLK3D allows you to capture a 3D record on-site that can be taken back to the office and shared as a JPG file. The device does not require anything to be uploaded to the cloud for post processing, it does all the processing itself. Once a 3D image has been created, you can tap on the screen on two locations, and it will measure and display the distance between the two points. if has edge and corner detection so that if you tap near a corner or an edge, it will snap to the exact corner or edge to ensure you get a precise answer (mm precision at up to two or three meters.)  It replaces the process of making a measurement  with a tape measure or laser range finder, writing the measured distance down on a piece of paper and then repeating the process over and over again for every measurement you need,

The BLK3D allows contractors to easily record images of their work at the time they do it so that afterwards if there are legal issues that have a permanent record of their work including what was there before they installed a cable or pipe and what the installation looked like after they completed their work.

This device is well designed as the BLK360 is and really lowers the bar on ease of use much as the BLK360 did for laser scanning.  I have used other Leica DISTO devices which are clearly professional devices.  I actually held and used the BLK3D for a few minutes and the basic functionality does appear to be usable by anyone - take a picture and then measure a distance by tapping on two points on the screen is a no-brainer. There is more advanced functionality which I didn't attempt to use. For example, you can create floor plans and import existing ones. You can also add measurable images. I expect that if I could sit down with the device for an hour, I would be able to use most of its capability.

Simplifying the integration of reality capture and asset management

The construction industry in the UK, as in many of the world's advanced economies, suffers from low productivity compared to other industries, a situation which hasn't improved in 25 years according to Simon Rawlinson of the Construction Leadership Council.  Various types of laser scanners, software that creates point clouds from photos, and handheld scanners have the potential to dramatically improve productivity, but users of these devices in the construction and asset management industries are finding that these devices are creating a major data management problem which has to be addressed to enable the technology to achieve its full potential.  At Geo Business 2017 in London I had a chance to chat with Pascal Martinez, Director Business Development at Bentley Systems about Bentley's vision for converging reality capture, reality modeling, and asset management assist in improving productivity in the construction and maintenance of building and infrastructure assets.

Pascal was originally with Acute 3D which was acquired by Bentley two years ago. Acute 3D, now called ContextCapture, was originally targeted at creating point clouds from photos captured with an ordinary digital camera.  The latest version of ContextCapture is able to integrate point clouds from LiDAR and photo cameras to generate a common 3D mesh using imagery from both sources.  

Bentley's vision for the evolution of reality capture is to be able to integrate data from multiple sources, both 2D and 3D, to create a common 3D mesh, classify it by associating areas of the mesh with existing data from other sources stored in databases such as Bentley's Assetwise and Projectwise and then link objects in the mesh to information about the specific assets stored in the databases.

At the conference the model of what already exists or what has actually been constructed was frequently referred to as the digital twin of a building or other type of infrastructure (previously BIM).  Associating classified elements of 3D meshes from reality capture with vector elements in the digital twin has a number of applications.  In the case of a new building or new infrastructure it enables monitoring compliance with design during construction, even on a day by day basis, to catch issues early.

Being able to automatically associate areas of a 3D mesh with buildings, facilities and equipment in plants, and linear assets such as transmission lines, railways, and roads would have a dramatic impact not only on the efficiency of construction monitoring but also on asset management by reducing the time require to scan all or part of a facility and compare the captured reality with the digital as-builts. Pascal showed a very simple, but very cool, way to do this now, by placing a QR code on each piece of equipment which then can be clicked on in the mesh (scan) to bring up information stored in Assetwise about the piece of equipment.

Handheld 3D scanners rapidly approaching consumer pricing

I have just spent an incredible three days in Houston at the SPAR3D 2017 conference.  There is so much going on right now in the 3D world with several key technologies just coming to fruition and finding broad application in the real world. 

 

Many see handheld scanners as potentially revolutionizing the construction sector.  Handheld scanners had a high profile at SPAR3D this year, with several vendors showing new products and many promising future products in the $400 price range.  One vendor is already selling a 3D imaging product that attaches to an iPad and sells for $400.

 

First exhibited at the 2013 SPAR3D, Dot Product has released a products DPI-8 and DPI-8X (short range) similar in its basic technology, multisensor (IR and photo cameras) to their first handheld.  I saw it first at the SPAR3D 2014 conference. Targetted at professionals, especially in the engineering and construction sector, their latest product incorporates SLAM and works with Android handhelds and tablets.  All the processing is done locally on the handheld - no cloud processing is required.  The captured point clouds are small - you can even cull the point clouds on the fly. The working range of the DPI-8 is from 0.6 m to 3.7 m. It export in PTS, PTX, PLY, and PTG. Binary files integrate directly with AVEVA LFM, Autodesk ReCap, Trimble RealWorks, CloudCompare,  ClearEdge3D, Veesus Arena4D, and PanoMap. The DPI-8X lists for US$ 5150.  Dot Product has been working with Google on Project Tango and says there is a $450 scanner in the future.

Mantis Vision has also offered a handheld scanner F5 for professionals for several years.  Their latest offering is the Mantis Vision F5-SR scanner/imager. It has a range from 0.5 meters (m) up to 4.5 m with an accuracy of a few millimeters (mm).  It also relies on IR and photo cameras.  It uses triangulation to locate objects and is in lower end of the the F5 price range of $20-50,000.  Mantis Vision promises to make its technology available for everyone - being able to scan an object, share the 3D model online, and send it to a 3D printer—from a smartphone.  At the end of May Mantis Vision will be releasing a new scanner, the F6 at a price of $15,000.  The F6 can perform dynamic as well as static scanning and it is possible to scan collaboratively with up to 16 of the devices.

 

A handheld scanner that garnered a lot of attention at SPAR3D was the Matterport Pro from Matterport Immersive Media Systems.    Originally targetted on the real estate industry, the Matterport Pro allows you to scan a house in an hour or less, upload the captured data to the cloud (Amazon Web Services) and a couple of hours later you will have a fully-rendered model that can be used for walkthroughs with potential buyers.  It provides a dollhouse view to see a whole property at once, an inside view for walkthroughs, and a floorplan view for a traditional top-down perspective. It relies on IR and photo cameras.  It is pretty well restricted to indoor scans and requires multiple scans for a room - scanning every 1.5 to 2.5 meters.  It is claimed to be 95.5 % accurate - it can be used for measurement for sales not for engineering or construction purposes.  Its biggest advantages are the speed with which you can scan a house, for example, and the small size of the resulting file.  It can also provide a 3D context for facilities management.  For example, it can provide a mechanical room walk through with tags on different pieces of equipment and a way of directing anyone to any location in the facility.   The Matterport Pro 3D Camera lists for US$ 3600.00 plus US$ 49/mo to US$ 149/mo for cloud processing.

 

I have already blogged about the Leica Geosystems BLK360 which includes Autodesk Recap Pro.  It is a bit of a stretch to call it a handheld scanner but it weighs only 2.2 lbs (1 kg) and is incredibly small 6.5 inches (in) by 4 in.  Unlike the other devices described here it is a full laser scanner and imager. It captures 360,000 points/second with a range of 0.6 - 60 meters.  It has one button and can capture a full 360 degree scan in less than 3 minutes.  All aspects of the operation of the scanner can be controlled remotely from an iPad Pro.  It can perform all the processing required for visualization in the field on an iPad Pro.  It lists for US$16,000 and includes a one year license for Recap Pro. 

 

I blogged about the Faro Freestyle previously.  It can scan objects within a range of half a meter to 3 meters away with a resolution of  better than 1.5mm with a image point density of up to 45,000 points/m² at 0.5m and up to 10,500 points/m² at 1m.  The scanner is attached to a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet for visualizing the point cloud as you scan.  It sells for $11,000 to $12,000.  It is targetted on the architecture, accident reconstruction, civil engineering, construction, facility management, and industrial manufacturing sectors.

 

The least expensive scanner shown at SPAR3D was the Structure sensor with Canvas software from Occipital.  A new screw-on lens increases the field of view to 120º so that it requires fewer scans to capture a room.  Its range is 0.3 - 5 meters with a precision of 0.17%. It is targetted on the home owner as well as interior designers, architects, and contractors.  It can be used to capture 3D models of interiors, share them, measure with them or convert them to formats supported by AutoCAD and Sketchup.  The vendor offers a Scan To CAD service, that converts scans into editable CAD files (.skp, .dwg and .dae) for use with  tools like SketchUp, AutoCAD, and Revit.  It retails for $379 - $499 and attaches to several models of iPad including the iPad mini 4.  At the end of April it will be possible to purchase Bridge, a headset that makes it possible to mix real world and virtual realities with an iPhone.

Leica lowers the bar with a $16k imaging laser scanner

Leica Geosystems has announced the “BLK360,” a miniaturized 3D imaging laser scanner. The BLK360 captures full-color panoramic images overlaid on a high accuracy point cloud. The one-button Leica BLK360 and included Autodesk software is intended to be easy to operate so that anyone who can operate an iPad can use the imaging laser scanner.  It is incredibly small - it weighs only about a kilogram.

It collects 360,000 points per second and has a range of 60 meters with 4 mm accuracy.  In addition to a LiDAR sensor, the BLK360 includes infrared sensors for thermal imaging and 360° cameras.  It is completely wireless and streams image and point cloud data to an iPad. A complete 360° laser scan with panoramic image capture and transfer to the iPad Pro requires 3 minutes. 

With an anticipated retail price of the scanner and software is $15,990/€15,000, this really lowers the entry barrier to laser scanning.

Hand held scanners closer to revolutionizing the construction industry

At the SPAR International Conference in April 2014, Kirk Knorr from Burns & McDonnell and Gregory Lawes of point3D gave a presentation about their experience using a handheld scanner from DotProduct LLC , a relatively new startup.  This is a professional device intended for engineers and others working in the construction industry.  It is basically a 7" Android tablet with a compact near infrared structured light and rgb 3D imaging system.  It weighs less than a kilogram and is accurate for engineering purposes at distances up to 3.3 meters.  It costs thousands of dollars, much less than the tens of thousands of dollars for terrestrial laser scanners.  Kirk Knorr and an engineer from Bechtel reported that he had been using the device on live construction projects for a year and in their view the DotProduct and similar handheld devices are going to revolutionize how we do construction. They foresaw this happening very soon, within a year.

Now a major metrology company FARO has announced the Freestyle3D Scanner, which is a high precision, handheld scanner which generates high-definition point clouds.  It can be used to scan objects within a range of half a meter to 3 meters away with a resolution in 3D of  better than 1.5mm with a image point density of up to 45,000 points/m² at 0.5m and up to 10,500 points/m² at 1m.  The total scan volume can include up to 8.1m³.  The device weighs less than a kilogram with dimensions 26cm x 31cm x 10.5cm.  The scanner is attached to a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet for visualizing the point cloud as you scan.

Some of the applications of the scanner include architecture and interior design, restoration and 3D modelling, construction and facility management, and forensic applications including accident reconstruction.

Thanks to LiDAR News for pointing me to this.

Handheld scanners set to revolutionize construction

At the SPAR International Conference today Kirk Knorr from Burns & McDonnell and Gregory Lawes of point3D gave a presentation about their experience using a handheld scanner from DotProduct LLC.  This is a professional device intended for engineers and others working in the construction industry.  It is basically a 7" Android tablet with a compact near infrared structured light and rgb 3D imaging system.  It weighs less than a kilogram and is accurate for engineering purposes at distances up to 3.3 meters.  It costs thousands of dollars, much less than the tens of thousands of dollars for terrestrial laser scanners.

To use it, you walk through or around the area of interest holding the scanner in your hand.  It is particularly good at getting into spaces that a traditional tripod-mounted laser scanner can't see.  Another major advantage is that the processing is done in near real-time on the Android tablet so that when you have finished scanning you have a point cloud on the tablet that you can visualize in 3D and verify that you've got everything you need before you leave the site.  You can then download the point cloud from the DotProduct device to a laptop or other device running the same industry standard software for manipulating, analyzing measuring or visualizing the point cloud that you've always been using.

Kirk Knorr described how he successfully used the DotProduct device on a live engineering project.  Another engineer from Bechtel reported that he had been using the device on live construction projects for a year and in his view the DotProduct and similar handheld devices are going to revolutionize how we do construction.  He added that he foresees this happening very soon, within a year.  Another engineer in the aerospace industry said that his company intended to get one of these devices into the hands of all of their technical staff.