If you want to scan your building with millimeter precision and copy it digitally, you no longer have to resort to cumbersome standing scanners.
The Munich start-up NavVis offers an alternative that is child's play to use.
And would like to become Google Maps for buildings.
The Munich start-up NavVis creates digital twins of buildings
NavVis emerged from a research project at the Technical University of Munich
There are now 200 employees all over the world working for the company
Steve Jobs also started in the garage.
You know these anecdotes.
A simple student tinkers around, is firmly convinced of his idea - and ends up becoming a billionaire.
Stories are motivating.
And which Felix Reinshagen and his three colleagues Georg Schroth, Sebastian Hilsenbeck and Robert Huitl have also guided through gloomy weeks in recent years.
There were quite a few of them.
You can't even imagine yourself at Reinshagen.
When the 42-year-old recalls the happy Willi Weitzel from “Willi wants to know”.
In a good mood, he explains to people with the greatest IT aversion what he and his colleagues have been doing since 2013.
This is nothing less than a technical sensation.
NavVis is the name of the company that emerged from a research project at the Technical University of Munich - and now has 200 employees worldwide.
“We do what Google Maps and Google Street View do for buildings.
We create digital twins of offices, companies, hospitals, universities. "
There are around four billion buildings worldwide.
The NavVis developers thought: It's great that Google has digitally mapped the entire external infrastructure - but the music plays inside.
"We are not concentrating on private apartments, but on where very expensive value-adding processes take place," explains Reinshagen.
Because that's where the need for good data material is greatest.
In the auto industry, for example.
“They have huge areas that are constantly changing because the production lines are constantly being optimized.
You have a huge complexity problem to manage there - we help these customers with that. "
You can easily sit the NavVis scanner on your shoulders
And how?
Not with a cumbersome scanner that you see when surveying technicians take pictures on the highway.
The scanner developed by NavVis can be placed on your shoulders and comfortably walked to every corner of a building to display all areas - with an accuracy of six to eight millimeters.
“First we developed a little cart that was like the Google car for buildings.
In the past few years we have been working harder and harder on miniaturization - and were able to bring our portable device onto the market in 2020, ”says Reinshagen, not without pride.
Sure, that makes you much more flexible.
And nothing jerks when you walk over uneven surfaces.
The images that are created are photo-realistic and three-dimensional.
Reinshagen can show impressive videos of it: the Hackerbrücke, measured one-to-one and brought to the screen.
In another film, he shows how a surveying technician scans a building with a stand scanner - and one with the NavVis device at the same time.
If you look at this, you will understand quite well why the founders believed in their vision: What a relief!
While the surveying technician struggles with the conventional scanner for hours and heaves the unwieldy box through the area, sets it up, dismantles and tows it on, the other marches off the building in a few minutes.
"Here you can see that you can digitize these huge areas much faster and cheaper with our scanner." The Corona crisis, of all things, gave them a considerable boost.
"Many managers have now realized that having a digital version of the factory is really useful - in times when you can't fly from A to B."
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Unlike conventional surveying devices, you can simply strap the NavVis scanner onto your shoulders.
© NavVis
The digital building maps are one thing - but they should only be the beginning.
Reinshagen recalls the giant Google again: “Today you have millions of applications that are based on Google Maps.
And I think it will be exciting to see what will happen based on our data. ”When Google Maps came onto the market, one could not have imagined that this technology would one day lead to car sharing or pizza delivery services .
So what, ask the NavVis founders, when at some point the scanning technology will be available in every factory, in every building, in every office?
“Will the delivery robot then come straight to the desk with the pizza?” Dreams Reinshagen.
He thinks: “That is the most exciting question: what else will people think of?
Just as Apple does not develop every app itself, we want to give as many as possible the opportunity to try out their own ideas. "
Does he also have a little respect for what can come of it?
Again he laughs his Willi Weitzel laugh: “If you've created the monster yourself, you'll find it extremely cute.
And is happy about everyone who brings along ideas about what could be built on them. ”Again, one has to think of Steve Jobs - and is very curious to see how this story will continue.