Sign InCMS Collaboration with Matterport
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and home to the world's largest particle accelerator – the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), faced challenges in visualizing and managing its complex underground facilities.
The 14000 tonne, $500M Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) particle detector, located 100 metres underground, is one of the main experiments at the LHC and involves 6000 scientists, engineers and technicians from around the world. CMS has been operational since 2010 and has undergone a series of upgrades over the past 15 years. Starting in 2026, it will undergo an extensive 3-year upgrade, evolving to the HL-CMS, or High Luminosity CMS. This new upgrade requires a complex infrastructure of state-of-the-art sensors, cooling systems, and service pathways. Because these environments must also be upgraded along with the detector itself, managing them becomes a logistical challenge, requiring precision, extensive planning, and frequent interactions between technical teams and external contractors. The operation of the LHC produces radiation, which can, in turn, result in residual (low-level) radiation around the detector. And with space being extremely limited for access and maintenance of the detector, specific sequences of work for people, equipment and vehicles (cherry pickers and scissor lifts) are also required.
As the CMS collaboration embarked on the HL-CMS project, it became crucial to plan for future work efficiently, so recording installations accurately was necessary to reduce the risk of errors on the extensive and varied upgrade projects.
To address these challenges, CMS adopted several new tools, including the use of Matterport’s 3D digital twin technology, to improve infrastructure management. This approach allowed CMS to:
Improve efficiency by reducing the time previously spent traveling to the facilities to perform underground inspections. With a typical travel time of 30 minutes between sites, projects can now be planned more accurately from remote locations.
Enhance collaboration through the integration of digital models with Catia, the existing design software. Further complementary information can easily be retrieved, reducing errors during project design and execution phases.
Enhance planning to prepare for intervention on the detector. The digital twin enables the technical team to optimize the work on site, reducing the potential radiation exposure of personnel.
The implementation of immersive views of the CMS experiment has served as a useful support in the preparation and study phases for the upgrade projects, including the installation of over 700 metres of advanced cooling systems for the detectors.
The CMS experiment is also performing an outreach activity, using the same Matterport software to create a digital twin and provide virtual tours of the facility for members of the public.
Figure 1. Matterport space in the experimental cavern of CMS, 100m underground. In this image the detector is in its “open” configuration, for maintenance and upgrades.
Figure 2. Matterport space of one of the service galleries subjected to a complex upgrade program.
