Neptec Technologies Corp. announces availability for its OPAL-360 series of laser scanners at SPAR International

OTTAWA, April 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ - Neptec Technologies Corp. today announced that it is accepting orders for June delivery of the OPAL-360 series of 3D laser scanners, part of the OPAL 2.0 family of sensors, which it is exhibiting at SPAR International in Colorado Springs this week.

These rugged, multi-purpose 360⁰ LiDAR sensors are uniquely suited for autonomous off-road vehicles and robotics applications in harsh environments. Unlike conventional laser scanners, OPAL 2.0 scanners can see through obscurants such as dust, smoke or fog and are packaged to withstand the physical abuse they will be subjected to in applications in the mining, oil and gas, and construction industries, and for defence and security applications.

The OPAL-360 is the first in a family of 3D sensors being developed at Neptec Technologies for intelligent machine vision applications in harsh environments. It is environmentally sealed (IP67) with no externally moving parts, has a -40⁰C to +65⁰C operating temperature range achieved without fans or heaters for improved reliability, and is ruggedized to withstand significant vibration and shock levels. It delivers an unprecedented combination of range, data density, acquisition speed and obscurant penetrating capability - all packaged for harsh environments. Different versions in the OPAL-360 series support ranges of 400m out to 3km at accuracies of one centimeter and data acquisition rates of up to 200,000 points per second.

More Information, Less Data!

"3D sensors that can operate in harsh environments are one of two building blocks required to deliver 3D machine vision solutions to the autonomous vehicle and robot vision based automation markets," said Mike Sekerka, Chief Operating Officer at Neptec Technologies. "But you also need the software intelligence to extract actionable information from the sensor data in real-time and while moving."

OPAL 2.0 sensors are compatible with Neptec's 3DRi (3D Real-time intelligence) software toolkit, which includes "out-of-the-box" features such as automatic change detection, automatic scan alignment, and object recognition and tracking. OPAL and 3DRi products make it easy to integrate optimized 3D machine vision solutions and reduce development and life cycle costs.

About Neptec Technologies Corp.

Neptec Technologies Corp. develops innovative 3D machine vision products for machine automation and robotics applications in harsh environments. The company was founded in 2011 to commercialize space-technologies developed by Neptec Design Group Ltd., an award-winning space flight technology company and NASA prime contractor. Our first products are a family of obscurant-penetrating laser scanners (OPAL) and a software development tool kit (3DRi)  with advanced features such as automatic change detection and object recognition and tracking. Together, these out-of-the-box "building blocks" make it easy to integrate intelligent real-time machine vision applications on autonomous off-road vehicles, and for more familiar LiDAR-based survey and measurement tasks in harsh environments. The company is located in Kanata, Ontario. For more information, visit www.neptectechnologies.com .

SOURCE Neptec Technologies Corp.