One of North Rhine-Westfalia’s proudest inventions is a self-contained speed detection, video recording and fine-processing unit mounted within the luggage compartments–called panniers–of six of the force’s motorcycles.
Design software transforms standard-issue BMW motorcycles into sophisticated speed-enforcement machines to improve highway safety.
If you think Germany is the land of unbridled roadway speed, think again, especially if you’re in North Rhine-Westphalia. The local police force in that state used Geomagic software to transform their standard-issue BMW motorcycles into sophisticated speed-enforcement machines.
Local Engineering For Local Enforcement
Located in the sprawling Rhine-Ruhr region of Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia is a hybrid region; although, almost 52 percent of the state is agricultural and forests cover another 25 percent. It contains the major industrial cities of Cologne, Bonn and Dusseldorf.
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Roads throughout the state have to cope with the heavy traffic associated with an industrialized region, and while Germany is known for its autobahns without speed limits, roads in populated areas are subject to the same speeding laws as in other countries.
The job of enforcing those speed limits falls to the North Rhine-Westphalia police, but unlike state police in the U.S., North Rhine-Westphalia has a powerful resource to support it; fully equipped in-house facilities to design, develop, test and produce special law-enforcement equipment.
One of North Rhine-Westfalia’s proudest inventions is a self-contained speed detection, video recording and fine-processing unit mounted within the luggage compartments–called panniers–of six of the force’s motorcycles. The units were made possible by the ability of Geomagic Studio software to create accurate 3D digital models of existing products for customization and production.
Re-Purposing Existing Equipment
The standard motorcycles used by the police in North Rhine-Westphalia are green and white BMWs, with blue lights mounted on the front and rear and “Polizei” signs. They are meant to be a visible presence.
The new bikes operate in stealth mode. They are finished in a neutral color and there are no obvious lights or signs to indicate that they are police motorcycles. The secret lies inside the standard-looking panniers that are mounted to each side of the rear wheel.
The project to develop the new cycles was lead by Lieutenant Helmut Benninghoff. The challenge for Benninghoff and his team was finding a way to securely fit all the equipment into a normal-sized pannier and make it all function as a self-contained system.
“Unfortunately, there was no design information available to us on the make and model of pannier we had chosen for the job–and certainly no CAD data,” says Benninghoff.
The development team turned to Geomagic Studio software to capture the existing pannier and redesign it to house the enforcement and fine-processing equipment.
From Physical To Digital
Geomagic Studio streamlines the process of creating accurate 3D digital models from scan data of existing physical objects. The models are then used for CAD, engineering analysis, rapid prototyping, custom manufacturing, digital archiving and other applications.
The first step for the North Rhine-Westfalia team was scanning the inside of one of the panniers using a Quantum FaroArm portable measuring arm. Measurement data was collected as a dense point cloud comprising tens of thousands of individual 3D coordinate points. The measuring system is accurate up to 13 microns, providing a very detailed 3D representation of the pannier.
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| The first step for the North Rhine-Westfalia team was scanning the inside of one of the panniers using a Quantum FaroArm portable measuring arm. The point-cloud data was then decimated to reduce file size without losing accuracy, and automatically smoothed to remove any anomalies. |
The point cloud was brought into Geomagic Studio, which aligned the series of separate scans taken from different viewpoints of the pannier and merged them to create a single 3D model. This was achieved using a combination of the software’s manual alignment and automatic global best-fit capabilities.
The point-cloud data was then decimated to reduce file size without losing accuracy, and automatically smoothed to remove any anomalies. Geomagic Studio’s patented Wrap capability was then used to cover the point cloud with a polygonal surface.
Tools within Geomagic Studio then allowed the development team to refine the polygon model. This entailed filling any holes that might have been left by the scanning process and smoothing, fitting, trimming, projecting and extending boundary edges as necessary. The result was an accurate, water-tight digital polygon model of the pannier’s internal surfaces.
At the press of a button, Geomagic Studio then automatically converted the polygon model into a NURBS (non-uniform rational b-spline) surface model, ready to be transferred to the North Rhine-Westphalia CAD system.
Geomagic software was also used to calculate the dimensions of various aspects of the pannier and to create 2D cross sections of the 3D model for export to the CAD system.
The NURBS model and dimension information from Geomagic software made it easy for designers to work within the CAD system to create the various attachments and compartments needed to hold the video camcorder and other equipment in place.
Completed Design In Three Days
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| The North-Rhine Westphalia Police now has a fleet of new motorcycles fully equipped to enable officers to record the traffic offenses of motorists who are causing a danger to other road users |
It took the North Rhine-Westphalia team just one day to complete the scanning and 3D modeling of the pannier and two days of CAD work to design the equipment mounting rack inside the pannier.
“Without the 3D digital model of the pannier and Geomagic’s ability to calculate accurate dimensions and cross-sections we would have had to rely on taking manual measurements of the actual pannier,” says Benninghoff. “That would not only have been less accurate but it would have cost us time because it would have required much more work on the CAD system to arrive at an accurate 3D model of the pannier on which to base our new design work.”
The North-Rhine Westphalia Police now has a fleet of new motorcycles fully equipped to enable officers to record the traffic offenses of motorists who are causing a danger to other road users, show these motorists the evidence, collect payment of the fixed penalty, and issue a receipt right where the offense took place.
“If this new equipment helps to save the life of just one innocent driver in North Rhine-Westphalia, then the exercise has been well worthwhile,” says Benninghoff.
For more information visit www.geomagic.com