OWL EYE® MOBILE MAPPING

OWL EYE · Mobile LiDAR for working machines

Mobile LiDAR scanning: survey while you load.

OWL EYE® Mobile Mapping is an industrial LiDAR system mounted on wheel loaders and vehicles that continuously maps stockpile volume during normal operations to ±1 % accuracy — no production stop, no surveyor.

OWL EYE® MOBILE MAPPING is a 3D-LiDAR + GNSS/SLAM unit bolted on top of your wheel loader, excavator or haul truck. As the mobile equipment moves between piles, the system continuously builds a 3D model of the yard.

No production delays. No survey crew. The volume model is updated every time the operator moves the equipment — and is available in the OWL EYE® dashboard seconds later.

„The wheel loader is your survey crew now."

In production at proFagus charcoal works (yard inventory while the loader moves coal) and at K+S salt-mine satellite yards.

Core capabilities

Three properties that make the survey crew obsolete.

Mounted on the machine

3D-LiDAR + GNSS/SLAM unit clamped to the cab roof. No civil works, no foundations.

Pile inventory while working

The 3D yard model rebuilds itself every time the operator drives between piles. No dedicated pass.

Indoor + outdoor SLAM

Works inside warehouses (SLAM, no GPS) and outdoors (RTK GNSS for mm precision).

How it works

Drive. Scan. Done.

A 3D-LiDAR sensor + GNSS/SLAM unit on the cab roof captures the surroundings as the machine moves. The point clouds are stitched into a continuously-updated 3D yard model — automatically, in the background.

Applications

Any machine — any yard.

Wheel loaders, excavators and haul trucks operating in stockyards, quarries and warehouses.

Wheel loaders Excavators Haul trucks Outdoor stockyards Indoor warehouses Quarries & pits Recycling yards Wood yards

Technical specifications

Industrial grade. Cab-roof mountable.

Built for vibration, dust, weather and shock — the real life of working machines.

Volume accuracy

± 1 %

Positioning

RTK GNSS · SLAM

Temperature range

−40 … +80 °C

Protection class

IP65+

Sensor type

3D-LiDAR · multi-vendor

Interfaces

REST · OPC UA · SAP

Connectivity

WLAN · LTE · Ethernet

Mounting

Cab-roof clamp

Why OWL EYE^®

Why mobile LiDAR beats fixed survey.

Mobile mapping turns every machine pass into a fresh inventory.

Survey crew → operator

Any mobile equipment — wheel loader, excavator, haul truck. No production delays. No survey crew.

Indoor + outdoor coverage

RTK GNSS outdoors (mm precision), SLAM indoors (no GPS needed). Same hardware, same dashboard.

Field-proven at proFagus, K+S

Hardened on charcoal-yard wheel loaders and salt-mine satellite yards.

ERP / fleet integration

REST API, OPC UA and SAP — pile volumes and machine routes direct into your fleet system.

FAQ

Mobile Mapping — answered.

The questions we hear most from operations and surveying teams when they first evaluate OWL EYE® MOBILE MAPPING. Need something more specific? Ask us.

How does Mobile Mapping work without a survey crew? ＋

 The 3D-LiDAR + GNSS/SLAM unit is bolted directly onto the cab roof of your wheel loader, excavator or dump truck. The machine works as normal — every drive between piles becomes a fresh measurement pass, and the system stitches the point clouds into a continuously-updated 3D yard model in the background.

Outdoors the unit uses RTK-GPS for centimeter-precise positioning. Indoors, where there is no GPS, it switches to SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping) using the LiDAR itself. Same hardware, same dashboard, no operator change in workflow.

Which vehicles can be equipped with OWL EYE® MOBILE MAPPING? ＋

 The standard kit (3D-LiDAR + GNSS + IMU + edge computer) is designed for wheel loaders and excavators in the 5-50 tonne class — Caterpillar, Komatsu, Volvo, Liebherr, Hitachi etc. We've also installed it on dump trucks, telehandlers and even a UTV for survey work.

The mounting bracket is custom per machine model; the rest of the hardware is identical across vehicle types. Power: standard 12 / 24 V from the cab — no extra battery needed.

How accurate is mobile mapping indoors without GPS? ＋

 Indoors the system switches from GNSS to SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping) using the LiDAR itself as the positioning reference. Typical drift is below 0.5% per 100 m of travel, which translates to a volume accuracy of ±2-3% across a normal warehouse.

With known ground-truth markers (e.g. corner targets in the storage building) we pin the SLAM solution to <0.1 m and reach the same ±1% as the outdoor RTK-GPS mode.

Which vehicles can OWL EYE® mobile LiDAR be mounted on? ＋

 The standard OWL EYE® mobile LiDAR kit (3D-LiDAR + GNSS + IMU + edge computer) is designed for the working fleet found at almost every bulk-material site. Most common: wheel loaders in the 5–50 t class (Caterpillar, Komatsu, Volvo, Liebherr, Hitachi) with the cab-roof clamp. Underground: LHD / load-haul-dump scoops (Sandvik, Epiroc, Caterpillar) running in pure SLAM mode where there is no GPS.

We have also installed the same kit on excavators for stationary survey work from the boom, on dump trucks for haul-road tracking and bench-face capture, and on telehandlers and UTVs for one-off campaigns. The mounting bracket is custom per machine model; the rest of the hardware is identical. Power: standard 12 / 24 V from the cab — no extra battery, no civil works, no rebuild.

How is wheel-loader scanning different from a stationary stockpile scan? ＋

 A stationary stockpile scan (our OWL EYE® STOCKPILE solution) uses fixed LiDAR sensors mounted on masts or walls. Field of view is constrained to what each sensor can see from its post — perfect for piles that stay in roughly the same place, but blind to whatever sits behind another pile or outside the cone.

A wheel-loader scan moves the sensor with the machine. Every drive between piles sweeps a new viewing angle, so the 3D yard model rebuilds itself from many vantage points — no shadowed zones, no fixed coverage geometry, no civil works for masts. The trade-off: the model updates on machine activity, not continuously. A loader sitting idle does not refresh its pile.

Most large yards run both: fixed sensors on the high-value primary piles (continuous, real-time), wheel-loader LiDAR for the rest of the site (full coverage, no civil works). Same dashboard, same ERP feed, same volume figures.

Volumes
captured by mobile equipment.

The full system — in 36 seconds.