Leica CityMapper-2: How to create 3D city maps at a speed of 300 km/h?

Leica CityMapper-2: How to create 3D city maps at a speed of 300 km/h?

Leica CityMapper-2

Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon, is a leading global provider of mapping and surveying solutions . One of the flagship products is the Leica CityMapper-2: an airborne oblique imaging combined with LiDAR solution for generating high-precision 3D urban maps that combines optics, mechatronics, high-speed electronics and software. To speed the development of this highly complex system, Leica Geosystems selected Enclustra to provide key components.

CityMapper-2 icon

Leica Geosystems designed the Enclustra core board module into the system four years ago and uses the FPGA Manager PCIe communication solution in Enclustra IP products so that engineers can focus on the specific details of critical projects. By focusing on its core competencies, Leica Geosystems is able to bring the Leica CityMapper-2 to market faster.

The Leica CityMapper-2 is one of the latest solutions developed by Leica Geosystems using the Enclustra Mercury+ XU8 module and FPGA Manager PCIe IP solution. Leica CityMapper-2 is specially designed for airborne 3D city mapping, which uses images and LiDAR data taken from aircraft to create 3D digital models of cities.

The project is simple yet difficult

The project goal for the Leica CityMapper-2 is simple yet daunting: double the performance compared to the Leica CityMapper, which means twice the camera resolution and frame rate. Six 150-megapixel cameras and a LiDAR need to be synchronized with minimal jitter while capturing an image every 0.9 seconds. The image data is stored to four SSDs on a host running Windows 10 - it's particularly worth mentioning here that a non-real-time operating system is required to handle a data stream of nearly 2GBytes/s without any dropped frames. It is a huge challenge to core data processing technology.

solution

Because there was no one out-of-the-box solution that could meet all requirements initially, Leica Geosystems evaluated several different technical options. Two things were clear from the beginning: first, only an FPGA-based solution could achieve the required high bandwidth, low latency, and high integration; second, a highly integrated FPGA core board module should be used. Leica Geosystems ultimately decided to use an off-the-shelf module and devote valuable engineering resources to its core competency: building high-performance and high-precision optomechanical systems.

After carefully comparing various FPGA modules from different suppliers, Leica Measurement Systems decided to choose Enclustra's solution: the Mercury+ XU8 core board module released in 2018, which is based on AMD Xilinx's Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC series devices. It has fast DDR4 ECC SDRAM, eMMC flash memory, quad SPI flash memory, dual Gigabit Ethernet PHY, and dual USB 3.0, forming a complete and powerful embedded processing system. Enclustra's FPGA core board is not only a hardware platform but also a comprehensive ecosystem, including a Linux board support package (BSP), detailed documentation and reference designs, making it easy to get started. As a pioneer in urban mapping, Leica Geosystems is always looking for the latest available technologies to prepare for the future.

Mercury+ XU8 core board view

Mercury+ XU8 core board bottom view

FPGA SOM Block Diagram

write at the end

The Leica CityMapper-2 is the most advanced airborne solution for urban mapping today. Compared to past projects, using Enclustra's modular FPGA solution provided better cost and risk control than designing it in-house. The R&D team does not need to design core hardware, prototype, revise and redesign, write documentation, nor does it need to risk making mistakes without guaranteeing that the final result will be perfect. In addition to the engineering cost, the development team was also surprised by the module's competitive price. Due to the high and growing volumes of standard modules and Enclustra's long-term experience in optimizing production, the cost of the module is almost the same as the price of FPGA chips for low-volume requirements. "Enclustra provides a plug-in solution that we know will be successful," said Daniel Wintsch, head of the electronics development team at Leica Geosystems. "Using the FPGA SOM solution reduces the pressure on our team and allows us to focus on our core competencies. strength, which makes Enclustra our long-term trusted supplier." As a long-term customer, Leica Geosystems has been using Enclustra’s FPGA SoM solutions across its product portfolio for the past few years. At the same time, they will continue to evaluate new FPGA technologies and Enclustra’s SoM solutions for their future projects and developments.