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The American Surveyor

Tons of New Products Introduced at Intergeo in Germany

Written by Marc Cheves, Amerisurv

Saturday, 31 October 2009

Tons of new products were introduced at Intergeo in Germany. A buzz on the floor involved the new line of total stations from Spectra Precision and Nikon, in particular the Nikon Nivo series (right) and Spectra Precision Focus series. These full-featured "baby" total stations from Trimble stand less than 12 inches tall and weigh less than eight pounds! It is simply amazing that so much power and capability can be built into such a small package.

Also creating interest at the show were the new Viva handheld controllers from Leica Geosystems (left). According to Leica, the controllers work with all its gear and integrate a 2 Mpixel camera for convenient field documentation. They also support a wide range of data storage and transfer capabilities such as wireless LAN, USB, Bluetooth and CF/SD-cards. Leica also released several other GNSS/GIS products.

Bruce Carlson of Carlson Software gave a technical session about a new feature (a European resection) the company had coded for the European market. It was almost humorous, but Bruce said that one German surveyor told him that it would be illegal if they surveyed without starting from a resection! (See my last newsletter for an explanation of how European surveyors use control.)

Many other companies released new products, including the APS-3 from Altus Positioning, feature

and the VMX-250 mobile scanner from Riegl (right). Trimble released three new GNSS receivers, a new total station and new software. Pacific Crest released its new ADL Vantage datalink. Magellan Professional released the ProFlex500 Base Station. Hemisphere GPS released the new XF102 DGPS Receiver and two new dual-frequency antennas. Pentax released a complete new range of total stations. Finally, DataGrid, a Florida company with roots in Sweden and the U.S. space industry, exhibited its line of GNSS gear, including the Chamelon, a centimeter-level RTK system.

The event was very well-attended (16,000+) with nearly 500 exhibitors. The reason why Intergeo is so successful is because Germany is the size of Colorado. If all the surveyors in the U.S. lived in an area the size of one state, they would likely attend such a show. If you'd like to read more about Intergeo check out my October editorial.