Scanning speed and accuracy numbers move up a little with almost every product cycle. This time, something more structural seems to have changed. Leica announced it is replacing two separate scanner families and built one platform that hopes to do both jobs.
The announcement was that that Leica Geosystems has replaced two of its longest-running product lines in one move. The company announced the Leica RTC series, a set of three terrestrial laser scanners, the RTC300, RTC500, and RTC700, that consolidates the RTC360/LT and ScanStation P30/P40/P50 families into a single platform.
According to the company, this launch was built around what it called customers’ “number one wish” – to get the accuracy of the P-Series in a form factor as compact and fast as the RTC360. Rather than pick a side, Leica spent this development cycle merging the two.
“This is really a new benchmark, and a new dimension in laser scanning,” said Juergen Mayer, president of Reality Capture Division at Leica Geosystems, when Geo Week connected with him about the launch.
The Hardware
According to Mayer, the goal was to provide both speed and accuracy without the tradeoffs that used to come with picking one scanner family over the other. Leica says the new RTC series can capture data more than 35 percent more accurately than its nearest competitor and up to 3.5 times faster, while combining the RTC360’s speed and versatility with the ScanStation P-Series’ accuracy and robustness. That’s a direct answer to a challenge surveyors have had for a while, which is having to choose between a fast general-purpose scanner and a slower, higher-precision one depending on the job.
The new sensors on each also bring a 30 percent speed increase over previous models, and a new six-camera ring system cuts imaging time in half, while also setting up the hardware for future capabilities like capturing images at the same time as the scan itself. All models also run background self-calibration automatically. They also carry a Visual Inertial System, or VIS, that registers scans on site as the crew moves, so the point cloud starts coming together in the field instead of back at the office. The self-calibration itself isn’t necessarily new, automatic calibration has been standard on high-end scanners for years. What’s new here is that it runs continuously and automatically in the background, triggered by temperature swings or a physical bump, rather than requiring the operator to run a manual check-and-adjust routine. On the durability side, all three carry an IP55 rating and run in temperatures from -20 to 50 degrees Celsius, so the same unit holds up on a dusty summer site or a cold winter survey.
The three tiers of the series run on the same platform, so a team that outgrows the RTC300 can move up to the RTC500 or RTC700 without replacing hardware. The RTC300 gives general productivity teams an entry point into the new platform, capturing up to 1 million points per second, while the RTC500 targets the same AEC and land applications but doubles the scan speed to 2 million points per second for teams that need to move faster. A full dome scan and spherical HDR image at 6 mm resolution takes about two and a half minutes on the RTC300 and about a minute and forty seconds on the RTC500 and RTC700. The RTC700 gets a distinct pitch aimed squarely at surveyors rather than general AEC use. It’s built for a 270 meter range and can measure specific targets for geo-referencing, putting it closer to a total station than a typical scanner. It’s the only model in the series that handles true survey workflows like setup over a known point, known backsight, resection, and traverse, plus target measurements out to 75 meters and a dedicated area scan mode down to 0.8 mm. (Additional details can be read on Leica’s product page).
Livelink and the push toward real-time collaboration
Juergen Mayer, president of Hexagon’s Geosystems Reality Capture Division, called Livelink the “big news” of the launch, and spent some time walking through what it actually does.
The core function is real-time data transmission. Connecting the scanner to the cloud means field data reaches the office instantly, saving the time it normally takes to transmit files after the fact and letting someone start working on the data right away.
That connection also changes who can be involved in a scan. Mayer described it as a way to put a supervisor in the office who can see what’s happening in the field live and advise in real time, effectively linking an office expert with a field crew as the work happens.
The multi-scanner scaling is where Mayer got most animated. What Leica is calling swarm scanning lets two or more people scan the same construction site simultaneously, each seeing what the other has already covered, so nobody wastes time re-covering ground or wondering where to stop. Additional team members can walk the site with tablets, adding notes, close-up photos, or extra data that becomes visible to everyone connected to the same project in real time.
“If the two of us are now scanning on the construction site simultaneously, I will see what you have already covered. I know where to stop here, and I can link my data to your data,” shared Mayer.
“The big thing here is that you leave the site with peace of mind that the work is done, and no one is coming back the next day to fill gaps that someone might have overlooked.”
Reducing that coordination time and ultimately preventing multiple scans has tangible savings in time, effort, and costs on a project.
Mayer framed Livelink as more than a feature update. He described it as a shift in how field teams and office teams work together, one he expects to become a meaningful part of how the industry operates going forward.
“I truly believe we are changing how people will work together.”
Why it matters
Reality capture has spent years optimizing the capture step itself, through faster scanners, longer range, and higher point density. What’s changed more recently, in reality capture and in geospatial data collection generally, is a push toward closing the gap between capture and usable data. Autonomous survey platforms are increasingly pairing sensors with cloud processing that starts working on data almost as soon as it’s collected, instead of waiting for a crew to return to the office. Livelink is Leica’s way of applying that logic to terrestrial scanning, letting an entire multi-person job function more like one connected system than a set of independent scans stitched together after the fact.
That’s a significant mindset shift for firms managing scanner fleets, since it turns “did we cover the site?” from a question answered the next morning into one answered in the field, before anyone goes home. For a return trip that used to cost a day of labor and travel, that’s not a small efficiency gain, it’s the difference between one data collection and two.
It also raises the bar on what customers will expect from every scanner vendor going forward. If Leica’s swarm scanning approach works as described, coordinated, real-time, cloud-connected capture across multiple scanners becomes the new baseline conversation in AEC and surveying RFPs, not a premium add-on, and that could change AEC reality capture workflows significantly.