ChASA-Capture Unit (CCU)

Area of application

The CCU is a recording device for intelligently recording the actual condition of pipework on industrial construction sites. The reference data for the components to be detected comes from a CAD planning model. The device can also be used for access route inspections in retrofit scenarios. 

How it works

The model data is prepared offline on the PC in a suitable form before the construction site is inspected and transferred to a tablet PC of the ChASA Interaction Unit (CIU). CIU and CCU are connected via USB. After locating the CCU against a reference point, the planning data is transferred to the CCU in a suitable position-based form and the components found (pipes, flanges, etc.) are transferred back to the CIU. The actual status recorded on the construction site is then fed back into the planning software in the office via software import. 

Technical parameters

• Non-contact measuring method
• Use of the planning data as a reference, no learning phase
• Parallel image equalisation and feature extraction for all image sensors with minimal latency in the FPGA
• FPGA-based Hough coprocessor for fast object recognition 

The combination of several technologies (time-of-flight and stereo) in 3D acquisition achieves a particularly robust mode of operation.

Consortium 

The ChASA* project was carried out in co-operation between three research institutes and three companies. 

• Hahn-Schickard-Gesellschaft
• Hensel Elektronik GmbH
• Augsburg University of Applied Sciences
• FORTecH Software GmbH
• SKM Informatik GmbH
• Fraunhofer IGD

*Funded by: Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy based on a resolution of the German Bundestag