Thermal Extension: inspect what stays invisible

Best mobile mapping thermal camera

Heat loss, moisture and assets about to fail leave no visible trace. The Horus Thermal Extension captures infrared imagery in the same drive as your regular survey, georeferenced to your system’s own trajectory, so inspection and mapping become one run instead of two.

Georeferenced and repeatable

One drive, two datasets

Fits your existing system

Best mobile mapping thermal camera
Applications

Where thermal pays off

Infrared turns a survey run into an inspection round. Across five applications the pattern is the same: the problem is already there, it has a thermal signature, and nobody can see it from the road. The drive you already make becomes the moment you find it.

Power network inspection

Power network inspection

Overheating connections, cabinets and pole-mounted equipment stand out in infrared long before they fail. A route that is driven anyway becomes a condition screening of the whole network, with every anomaly recorded at its own location. Instead of climbing poles on a schedule, crews are sent to the ones that need attention.

Building insulation and heat loss

Screen thousands of façades per day and rank them by heat loss, instead of inspecting building by building by appointment. Housing corporations and municipalities see which streets to start with and where insulation budget pays off first. A second survey after the works shows what the investment actually delivered.

Tunnel inspection

Water ingress causes most tunnel deterioration and stays invisible until concrete starts to come loose. A wide-angle camera array covers the full cross-section from floor to crown in a single pass, so a tunnel is inspected at driving speed instead of closed for a manual walkthrough. Every survey adds to a record you can compare year on year.

District heating networks

Leaks in buried pipes warm the ground above them. A drive along the route shows where heat escapes, so crews dig in the right place instead of searching a network kilometre by kilometre. Surveys can be repeated each season, with the same vehicle and the same crew.

Heat stress in cities

Surface temperatures across streets, squares and building fronts show where a neighbourhood holds heat. Measured at street level, where people actually experience it, rather than estimated from above. Useful input for climate adaptation programmes that have to justify where the shade and the greenery go first.

Talk to our team about your use case

From inspection round to predictive maintenance. Every observation is georeferenced and repeatable, so you can compare surveys across seasons and years, and act on a trend instead of an incident.

Your system stays your system

  • Click-and-go mounting

    Sealed housings on prepared mounting, fitted or removed without touching the base system.

  • Synchronised to your trajectory

    Hardware synchronisation through your system’s own sync interface, so thermal data inherits your positioning.

  • Georeferenced from the start

    No separate processing step before the thermal imagery is usable.

  • Readable on screen

    Values can be read directly in the image for fast evaluation, interpreted as relative contrast.

  • Self-contained recording

    A ruggedised recording unit with swappable storage and its own power management.

  • Built for the field

    Housings rated against dust, water and condensation, suitable for tunnels and long survey days.

Underneath it all runs Horison, the Horus sensor fusion framework that handles the recording pipelines and keeps the thermal stream aligned with the rest of your data. 

Ready for the systems you already run

Two configurations are standard, pre-integrated and proven in the field. Both are supplied as one kit, mounted without modifying your base system.

Thermal Infrared Extension for Trimble MX systems

A complete thermal kit for the MX line, delivered as one package with mounting, recording unit and software. Lens configuration is chosen with you: narrower for detail at distance along roads and façades, wider for full coverage in confined spaces such as tunnels.

Compatible across the MX portfolio. Training and support come from Horus.

Thermal Extension for Leica TRK systems

A thermal camera array for TRK mobile mapping systems, synchronised through the platform’s own sync interface so every frame carries the system’s positioning.

Camera count and angles are calculated from your vehicle and the surfaces you need to cover.

Choosing your camera setup

Both solutions use the same camera platform, so the choice is about lens and camera count, not about which product. A narrow lens gives detail at distance for façades, road furniture and network assets. A wide lens trades detail for coverage and suits confined spaces such as tunnels.

Most projects start with four cameras in a fan arrangement, calculated from your vehicle and the surfaces you need to reach, and the cameras refocus remotely so a setup can be adjusted between projects without opening anything.

Running something else?

The extension framework is not tied to one platform. If you work with another mobile mapping system, an older generation, or a setup you built yourself, the starting point is the same: your positioning and your recording chain, with a thermal layer added to them.

We calculate coverage from your vehicle geometry and the surfaces you need to reach, select camera count and lenses for your use case, and work out the mounting with your engineers. Rail and off-road platforms are included, not an exception.

Tell us what you run and what you need to inspect, and we come back with a configuration proposal.

One case does the recording

All camera streams land in a single ruggedised case that records as a slave to your mapping system. No second operator, no laptop on the passenger seat.

 

Look at your thermal data the way you captured it

Thermal imagery is only useful when the right person can open it. Horus Movie Player plays back your survey as it was recorded, with the thermal view next to the optical view and the map, so you always know what you are looking at and where it is.

Scan a route, stop at an anomaly, switch the colour palette until the pattern stands out and read the values on the image. No specialist thermography workstation needed, and no separate file hunt to find the location back.

Thermal extensions, explained

The questions that come up most in conversations with mapping teams, answered without the sales layer. If yours is not here, ask us directly.

Discuss your extension

Tell us what you inspect and what you drive today. We size the configuration around your vehicle, your use case and the system you already own, and come back with a proposal. Where it helps, we join your team online to walk through real thermal datasets.

 

Have a different question? Contact us

Deployed in 40+ countries

across professional mobile mapping operations

Built and supported in Europe

by our dedicated engineering team

Georeferenced at vehicle stop

thermal frames come off the drive ready to review, with no separate processing step

Backed by Horison

the Horus sensor fusion framework that keeps every sensor on one timeline