All posts by Gavin Schrock

When a Drone Just Can’t Do It

There is a growing ebb in the tide of UAS adoption for aerial surveying, mapping, and remote sensing—finding the right balance between manned and unmanned aerial operations Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or just plain old “drones”—call them whatever you wish—have had a tremendous impact on geospatial industries.   A decade ago,...

GNSS on Bench Marks?

The GPS on Bench Marks campaign of the National Geodetic Survey is a triumph of constituency participation to improve the nation’s geodetic infrastructure. The initiative is seeing success, but also faces challenges. Multi-constellation support, and acceptance of short RTK/RTN observations, will add a productivity boost. The “GPS on Bench Marks” program of the U.S. National...

AutoPole – Tilt, Height, and Target Identification

An innovative prism pole, the first of its kind, addresses three troublesome sources of error for robotic total station operation. Leica Geosystems (part of Hexagon) has just announced the AP20 AutoPole, a very smart new prism pole system for use with total stations. It incorporates multiple innovations that add up to—how else can I say...

The New Datum and Real-Time GNSS Networks

We asked U.S. RTN what their plans are for the upcoming changes to the National Spatial Reference System. When it comes to geodetic reference frameworks, “shift happens.” Surveyors (and others) have been through this before, like changes from NAD27 to NAD83, NGVD29 to NAVD88, from NAD83(CORS96) to NAD83(NSRS2007), and to the current NAD83(2011). Remember the...

FieldLink MR

Full-on, Mixed Reality Stakeout

Now, with a heads-up display visor and hand gestures—no controller needed—mixed reality construction layout just went from “sci-fi” to the job site. Stakeout – Struggling and Juggling Sorry, but I need to geek out a bit…. If you’ve ever done construction/survey staking then you know how cumbersome and time-consuming it can be. While there have...

In a multi-path test, the Oscar is one of only a handful of rovers we’ve tried that fi xed in this test location under a power-line tower. It checked into a conventionally established surveyed mark under the tower as well as the others.

What is Tersus GNSS?

I had seen the name Tersus GNSS in geospatial social media for several years before our xyHt team stopped by their booth at the INTERGEO exhibition in Berlin in 2017. For a startup, launching in 2014, the company appeared to be making a lot of the right moves. As high precision GNSS was entering what...