this is leica's new ap20 auto poll an inertial measurement unit or an IMU for data collection
with a surveying total station now the ap20 provides a lot of great benefits to anyone
that is doing surveying with their Total Station some of these benefits include a tilt compensator
Auto pull height calculations and Target ID which allows it to find this prism and not lock onto
any foreign objects now attaching the ap20 is really quite simple you would simply remove the
prism from your pole take the ap20 slide it onto leica's Auto pull make sure it's locked into place
put the prism back on and there we go everything is now set up and ready to be used now with the
traditional rods in order to capture a proper reading you need to make sure that the bubble is
in the center and the rod is Plumb this also means if the rod is slightly to the left or to the right
then the total station is going to measure that position even though it's not Plumb and it won't
provide us with the correct position of the point that we're trying to observe however that's not
the case when you use the ap20 now I can hold the a poll in any orientation or any direction because
the built-in IMU will use a tilt compensator to calculate the position of the prism and provide
my total station with accurate positions as though I was holding my rod Plumb another benefit of the
ap20 is the efficiency in which we collect data making sure you stop at every single point and
ensuring that your Rod is Plumb will take several minutes whereas if I'm able to just take an
observation on the Fly knowing that my compensator is working I'll be able to do a topographic survey
for example much quicker because I know that my positions are being calculated correctly and I
don't have to worry about Plumbing the rod at every single shot having the ability to take
a measurement on a slanted angle like this means that we can now observe positions of points that
we couldn't have with a traditional Rod this can include building coordinates rather than taking
a reflectorless shot or holding it close to the building and doing an offset it could also mean
manholes that are underneath cars that we need Rim elevations for or anything with a base that
would be very difficult to grab by holding the rod Plum so now that you understand what the
ap20 is and how it works let me show you how to install at a start you're going to go ahead and
just power on the ap20 okay very good and now in our controller let's set up the wizard to connect
to the ap20 so now in Leica Captivate I've created a job I've called it ap20 and I'm going to select
settings I'll come over here to connections and I'm going to select the AP connection wizard this
will ask me now for the sensor I want the ap20 and the sensor that's going to connect to is the
the total station's long range handle I'll go and hit next and now we'll hit next and now
it's going to search for the ap20 there it is ap20 and there we go now it is connected
to the ap20 the only other thing that's going to ask me for is the point at which the total
station is set up on I'm set up on point number one so I'll just hit finish all right now the
connection light has gone from green to blue which means we are now connected to a total
station and we see this red little prism right here and that just tells us that our ap20 is
not initialized and that we need to generate some movement in order for the IMU to begin
compensating for its position now what I'll start by doing is raising the rod so it's over my head
and that little beep means that the auto pole has generated a pole height and I don't need to insert
my pole height anymore no really look here I have the pull set to 5.2 feet all I'm going to do is
erase it to let's say six feet now the target height has updated and now it says that it's
six feet if I wanted to get a pole height that was really really high let's do I don't know 6.8
there we are now we have 6.8 and so this eliminates the error of having a incorrect pull
height input into the controller in comparison to the actual pole height and that's thanks to
our AP 20. all right now I'm going to have the total station search and find my prism
all right and it's locked to Target and while I have the total station locked to the prism I'm
now going to click on start tilt so now the total station is measuring the position of my prism and
it's got this beeping noise that shows that it's taking distances now in order to initialize the
compensation for the ap20 I'm going to need to move in a linear path move my rod around kind
of like I'm doing figure eights with a drone in order to initialize the IMU inside of the ap20
foreign
now the till compensation has started and our ap20 is initialized and as you
can see here the compensator is now green and it is initialized now the first thing
I want to test out is the speed at which I can survey the sidewalk I'm going to do
this traditionally without the ap20 and see how long it takes me and then I'll
attach the ap20 back onto our Pole to see how much faster we can survey this sidewalk
hmm
all right we're gonna go ahead and start measuring points I've got my phone out and start
thank you
foreign
two minutes and roughly 10 seconds to survey this
little bit of sidewalk without the ap20 all right let's go ahead and attach the ap20
all right we're connected to the auto pull I'll go ahead and raise this up to six feet
it's already updated the height
lock to Target okay perfect and I'm gonna pick up the rod and start the compensator and hopefully it
will connect and initialize the IMU compensation started well that was fast and let's start
foreign
and there it is a minute and four seconds it took us half as much time to do this with the
ap20 then conventionally with a rod now I know what a lot of you are thinking this might be a
cool little IMU that I can attach on to my survey rod and speed up my efficiency and
eliminate the potential Rod height error but how accurate is it well today I've put three
orange stakes into the ground now all three of these steaks were set on a little Hill here to
ensure that I have different elevations on all of them and what I'm going to start by
doing is removing the auto pull and measuring all of these sticks traditionally to get the
coordinates of them that's what's really going to test this AP 20s IMU and how well the Tilt
compensator can calculate the true coordinates of our points I'm actually going to use this
bipod just to really ensure that the bubble here is in the center and that our Rod is
Plumb okay looks good all right I'm gonna go ahead and make the total station search for me
there we go all right we're Plumbing on this point I'm at six feet everything looks good
and I'll hit store all right let's go and take our pole and head over to the next Point here
we go right everything looks good and we'll store this point okay great and now we'll pick
up our pool and go to the last point right over here and we will store okay great we've got all
three of those points stored now let's get rid of the bipods and add our AP 20. okay here we go
started we've started the Tilt compensator I'm going to come over to my first point
I'm going to go out and just I don't know lean this like that and I'm gonna store
I'll come over to our next Point here on my second point I don't know I'll lean it like this this
looks good all right the last point I want to show you guys how there is the graphic here on Leica
Captivate it can see graphically speaking where the pool is I'm gonna get really tilted here on
this one which I'll tilt to the right and to the back there it is and we'll hit store all right
let's take a look at those differences all right so let's take a look at the points
that we measured so the diamond number is the average between the first and second shot so
let's ignore those numbers for now the first number that you see is the shot that we took
with the prison alone the second shot is with the ap20 Tilt correction and for Point number 201 it
looks like in the northern we are exactly right on in the easting we have a difference of about
two hundredths of a foot and in the elevation we have a difference of about one hundredth of
a foot wow that's incredible for Point 202 we have a difference of five thousandths in the
northing about 100th in the easting and about six thousandths in the elevation while 202 I
have to say is pretty much right there and finally 0.203 looks like we got about 100th
of error in the northing about 100th in the easting and we're two hundredths in
the elevation with about one to two hundredths of a foot in error I can confidently say that
the ap20 is a great tool for any surveyor to use hope you guys liked today's video if you
did make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel for more great surveying content