About us
TopScan GmbH is an interdisciplinary service provider with employees qualified in surveying, photogrammetry and geography. The focus of its activity has been the planning, realization and evaluation of laser scanning projects.
TopScan was created in 1992 by Dr. Peter Frieß and Dr. Joachim Lindenberger. The partners based their company on the knowledge and experience acquired in several years of scientific work in the special research project 228 "High Precision Navigation - Integration of Navigational and Geodetic Methods" of the German Research Foundation. The first results of test flights carried out by the Institute of Photogrammetry of the University Stuttgart 1989 showed the potential of airborne laser measurements for ground surveying.
TopScan developed Airborne Laser Scanning in cooperation with the Canadian company Optech. Up to this day TopScan is committed to pushing technological development further.
Practice-oriented development
The founders of the company were awarded in 1997 the Carl-Pulfrich Award for their practice-oriented further development of the laser scanning technology. This award was established by the Carl Zeiss company to promote outstanding scientific, application-oriented design and/or manufacturing activities in the field of land surveying in connection with geodetic or photogrammetric instrumentation.
The latest addition to our range of services is, since mid-2008, Mobile Laser Scanning. This is a method similar to Airborne Laser Scanning, in which objects are mapped by vehicle-borne distance measurements, and converted into a point cloud using GPS/INS data. With Mobile Laser Scanning, TopScan closes the gap between the better-known methods of Airborne Laser Scanning and Terrestrial Laser Scanning.
In June 2011 TopScan formed a partnership with CycloMedia and took responsibility for the marketing and production of panoramic images (so-called cycloramas) in Baden-Wurttemberg, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. This addition to the range of products offered makes it possible to provide high-quality image data that complement the highly accurate geometrical data of the MLS method.