About

GeoAutomation™ is a joint venture between the VISICS department of the University of Leuven and a surveying & engineering company, SPC. It was formed in 2007 and since then GeoAutomation has continued to improve and remain at the top of the mobile mapping industry.

  • Before 2007

    SPC has been working on the archeological site in Sagalassos, Turkey, every year, sending surveyors and engineers to help create the digital map of the archeological site.

    Every year, researchers of VISICS' go to the Sagalassos site, to help the researchers reconstruct objects and scenes in 3D with high accuracy, using only cameras and computers.

    It wasn’t long before the SPC team noticed the potential of the Visics technology for the surveying and GIS markets, and they started working together on a technology that was more targeted to those needs.

  • 2007

    As a result of the collaboration between the University of Leuven and SPC, GeoAutomation is created, a company that focuses on optimizing mobile mapping through their innovative image-based mapping technology. Several projects were completed for the Flemish government in Belgium delivering a very high volume of high accuracy large scale maps.

  • 2008

    GIS plug-ins are created for other tools than Microstation, and GeoAutomation started the collaboration with Geocopia. Through this collaboration, the first Canadian projects have started, and several eastern Canadian cities were mapped.

  • 2009

    On the west Coast of Canada, a collaboration was set up with the engineering company McellHanney and for their projects of creating digital maps of –amongst others- British Columbia, Alberta and Vancouver. Also, the full-automated 3D reconstruction from the images was further developed and tested and prepared to go to market.

  • 2010

    The expansion continued further -setting up Northern American projects as well as continuing to be more present in the European market, with some projects in the Netherlands.

  • Today

    Several projects were started in North America, and some parts of New York and Boston were digitally mapped using GeoAutomation. Also, we carried out a project of 3D reconstruction of specific buildings using a helicopter for use in the film industry. After being researching and developing a solution for low light circumstances for months, tests on the BIM solution were carried out with successful results and is now ready to go to market.

  • Future

    Research and Development are focusing on further automation of processes and improving the features of the automated feature recognition functionality.

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VISICS

VISICS is part of the Centre for Processing Speech and Images (PSI) within the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven (Catholic University, Leuven). VISICS stands for VISion in Industry, Communications, and Services. VISICS are a research group working in the area of computer vision, with the aim of making computers understand the content of images, and to extract useful information from them like speeds of motion or the 3D structure of scenes. VISICS focus on 3 sub areas: 3D Acquisition and Modelling, Tracking and Gesture Analysis and Object Recognition. Importantly, there is also focus on the integration of the 3 fields.

Visit VISICS Site

SPC

Specialists in Geo-information, Studiebureau Patrick Casier (SPC) was formed in 1989 providing traditional surveying and cartography services. Soon afterwards, in close cooperation with KLM Aerocarto Belgium SPC expanded into providing mapping applications services using aerial photography. Today, SPC provide a wide range of services including surveying, cartography, measurement of underground sewer systems, GIS and geographic data conversion.

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KU Leuven

Situated in the heart of Western Europe, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven (K.U.Leuven) has been a centre of learning for almost six centuries. Founded in 1425 by Pope Martin V, K.U.Leuven bears the double honour of being the oldest existant Catholic university in the world and the oldest university in the Low Countries. With a strong scientific focus, K.U.Leuven offers approximately 60 Bachelor’s programmes and more than 125 Master’s programmes in 18 fields. Postdoctoral researchers are the backbone of the research that has placed K.U.Leuven at the foundation of scientific innovation in Flanders. By conducting research and by forming independent young people with innovative ideas, K.U.Leuven actively contributes to the international knowledge economy. Research expenditure at K.U.Leuven amounted to approximately 157 million euro in 1999. By 2009, this figure had more than doubled, to 330 million euro.

Visit KULeuven Site