All posts by Gavin Schrock
The Power of Light
xyHt visits Nikon’s optical surveying instrument production facility. [Photo above: Mika Takeda, inspector at the Nikon-Trimble Zao Operation Center, demonstrates the light weight of the compact instruments Nikon is renowned for manufacturing. In the background: environmental chambers to temper and test components and instruments.] A massive stone table sits in an environmentally controlled room in...
The Rise of Value-packed RTK
Barriers are being removed for adaptable and inexpensive, high-precision GNSS. Many of you may be familiar with traditional base-rover applications for RTK such as surveying and mapping—with precision that typically comes with a large price tag. However, Swift Navigation provides a multi-frequency, multi-constellation, fully RTK-capable GNSS receiver called the Piksi Multi with a smaller price...
Cool Stuff Seen at HxGN LIVE 2018
Juergen Dold, president of Hexagon’s geosystems division, walked onstage to deliver his annual keynote at the 2018 HxGN LIVE conference and exhibition, toting a small school-sized backpack. During the course of the keynote he pulled two new products from the backpack. BLK3D The first was the BLK3D, a pocket-sized 3D measurement device built for rapid...
Surveyors Invited to Join Research Delegation
Land Surveyors and other geospatial professionals are being sought to join a delegation to Switzerland in September of 2018 to research models for cadastral systems. This is the first of an envisioned series of international delegations and exchanges seeking to foster a broader understanding of cadasters and cadastral systems within the surveying community. This is...
A Fine Line
Notes from a visit to the new production facility for Topcon and Sokkia optical surveying instruments. I asked Tsutomu Ishibashi, a production line technician at Topcon’s Yamagata manufacturing facility, what message he would like to convey to the surveyors who use the products he helps produce. His answer was, “We are always trying to improve,...
I-Shoku-Ju
A joint interview with Topcon president and CEO, Satoshi “Steve” Hirano, and Topcon Positioning Systems president and CEO, Ray O’Connor. I recently had an opportunity to sit down with Satoshi “Steve” Hirano, president and CEO of Topcon Corporation, for a candid interview at the company’s global headquarters (THQ) in Tokyo. The timing of this visit...
