BIM

Documenting a Construction Project with Just One Click

A first look at RICOH360 Projects and its 360-degree camera.

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The view of an entire space can be captured with one click. You can swivel the resulting view a full 360 degrees at cameral level as well as up, up and down, and all around you at eye level.

The view of an entire space can be captured with one click. You can swivel the resulting view a full 360 degrees at cameral level as well as up, up and down, and all around you at eye level.

It’s hard enough managing a construction project without everyone looking over your shoulder in normal times. But with the pandemic, it got harder. Project stakeholders, unable to don hard hats and visit the sites in person, want construction managers to record their progress daily with images. You will be taking thousands of pictures, uploading them to Google Drive or some other cloud storage, and notifying everyone of your progress on a daily basis. You consider hiring a team of scanning specialists who could take 3D scans, trudging through your site with their fancy LiDAR scanners, setting up tripods smack in the middle of where your guys are working, but that is a cost that’s not built into the project.

It is a predicament for which Ricoh offers an elegant solution. You can take one shot with an inexpensive (relative to LiDAR scanners) 360-degree camera and click on a floor plan to indicate where you were when you took the shot. That’s it. You’re done documenting your progress.

Construction managers can use the RICOH360 Projects app to capture photos during site rounds. By tapping their location on the floor plan using a tablet, a 360-degree photo is embedded at the site. (Picture courtesy of Ricoh.)

Construction managers can use the RICOH360 Projects app to capture photos during site rounds. By tapping their location on the floor plan using a tablet, a 360-degree photo is embedded at the site. (Picture courtesy of Ricoh.)
The RICOH360 Projects interface is simple: select a floor plan and see red dots that indicate where 360-degree pictures were taken. Click on a dot and you will be transported into an immersive, interactive 360-degree view of the space. You can move from dot to dot to get a different view, or you can zoom in to get a closer view. There is no provision to move around by clicking on arrows, as is the case with Google Earth.

The RICOH360 Projects interface is simple: select a floor plan and see red dots that indicate where 360-degree pictures were taken. Click on a dot and you will be transported into an immersive, interactive 360-degree view of the space. You can move from dot to dot to get a different view, or you can zoom in to get a closer view. There is no provision to move around by clicking on arrows, as is the case with Google Earth.
A 2D representation of the 3D 360-view that a RICOH360 Projects user would see after picking a location spot in the app. (Picture courtesy of Ricoh.)

A 2D representation of the 3D 360-view that a RICOH360 Projects user would see after picking a location spot in the app. (Picture courtesy of Ricoh.)

If you thought Ricoh only made copiers, you need to get out more. People have used RICOH360 cameras and the hosting service to take 360-degree images a hundred million times. You might have seen the images if you have been shopping for a house, as residential real estate agents have jumped on this method of giving virtual tours of properties. With the recently introduced RICOH360 Projects, the company hopes to carry that success into the construction industry.

“We have the market lead,” said Yasuo Nishiyama, director of New Business Development from RICOH’s headquarters in Tokyo. Nishiyama gives us a demo of RICOH360 Projects.

A 360 camera, such as the Ricoh THETA, is held on a short stand. It takes a one-second exposure to create an image of its entire surroundings, wall to wall, and floor to ceiling. It has enough detail so you can zoom in and see 1/32-inch markings or millimeter markings on a rule. We find the resolution to approach that of a still camera if you are within 20 feet, says Nishiyama.

The commercial 360-degree photo cloud service, RICOH360 Projects, that hosts the images launched in 2015 and has proven to be a hit, we hear. It had 3,000 participating companies by 2018 and over 7,000 by the end of 2020.

A 360-degree camera shot is certainly more convenient than laser scanning, but what you gain in cost and simplicity does come at the cost of accuracy. Images can appear to have a fisheye effect, be distorted … and they have no precise 3D registration.

“We cannot use the THETA images for measurement,” says Nishiyama. Not yet, anyway. But in the labs is an improvement that, with the addition of LiDAR, will add and correct the distortions in a photographic image and provide 3D coordinates.

How Much Does It Cost?

The top-of-the-line THETA Z1 camera is no toy. It sells on Amazon for $997 at the time of this writing. The less expensive THETA V retails for $349 and is also supported by RICOH360 Projects. Its resolution is equivalent to a 23MP 2D image. It can be handheld for a one-second exposure because of built-in 3-axis image stabilization.

It will cost a minimum of $50 per month for a subscription to RICOH260 Projects. The base level includes 250 360-degree images. You get one month free with an annual subscription. Ironically, RICOH360 Projects has no per-project pricing.