It is impossible to make effective changes from a baseline if you haven’t accurately established a baseline. That’s the challenge for the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing IndyCar team when preparing their racecar for the track.

To establish that baseline and to measure subsequent modifications, the team is using a Zeiss ATOS LRX scanning system that maps the car’s surface before track sessions. The ATOS LRX is a fast, full-field shape measurement and digitization system for large parts that uses lasers to illuminate the target and an optical camera to capture the image.

The scanner’s super-bright narrow-band blue light projector allows for precise measurements even with dark and shiny part surfaces. Users apply matte stickers to the surface to help the camera see the car’s bodywork.

This is how the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team employs the ATOS LRX when preparing the car for the track, reports Reese Fokine, R&D engineer, in one of the team’s Tech Tuesday social media videos. “This is using, not necessarily lasers to capture a lot of our vehicle, like what they typically do with 3D scanners,” he said. “We’re using cameras to capture. That’s why we’re using, rather than retro-reactive dots, we’re using these matte-textured dots across the vehicle.”

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A crucial benefit of the image-based system is its speed, according to Fokine. “As we take pictures, it only needs about four for a frame of reference, so that we can take one, two, three different photos an area and move on.”

The integrated Zeiss ATOS LRX system combines the blue laser light source with the imaging camera. ZEISS

That means that the car isn’t stuck, being checked by engineers after the mechanics have prepped it for action. “When we go to roll out for a weekend, we come out, once the mechanics have finished up and have the car ready, we roll out to the bay, take a handful of photos, be done in 30 minutes, go back up to our desks and analyze the car before we roll out to the race,” said Fokine.

The ATOS LRX can scan an area as large as 4 square meters, capturing 2×12 million coordinate points with a single measurement. The projector’s laser light compressor focuses multiple laser elements to one very bright light source. This way, the entire measuring area of 2000×1600 mm² is evenly illuminated at a short exposure time.

That light source is laser-based, but the system has built-in safety systems to ensure that the light causes no harm. The ATOS LRX includes a radar sensor that monitors the distance between the laser light source and the user, to reduce the intensity, if necessary.

This lets the system be rated as a non-critical laser safety class 2 device that can be operated without further protective eyewear.

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