Category Archives: Lidar/Imaging

Safety First: Using Small Drones to Map Unsafe Sites

Traditionally, photogrammetry based on aerial images and stereo plotting, has been the realm of large mapping companies capable of affording the onerous ownership of planes and the high personnel cost of pilots, navigators and camera operators. The equipment used to convert the stereoscopic pairs into contour line maps cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and...

Geospatial Adventure: Mapping Ruins from Above in Peru

It wasn’t quite an Indiana Jones adventure, but Alabama-based lidar consultant Robert Graham says it’s as close as he’ll ever come to the hair-raising exploits of an audacious archaeology professor. Graham’s adventure last April did not revolve around an ark, though it did include ancient ruins, small planes landing in grass fields, machetes hacking through...

Processed time slice with Condor, 34 inches below ground surface. Underground utilities present at that depth show up as linear features in the data.

A New Dawn for 3D Ground Penetrating Radar Arrays

I was first immersed in ground penetrating radar (GPR) as a PhD student at Lulea University in northern Sweden in the mid-1990s, and I immediately fell in love with the technology. I love the ability it gives me to see hidden things so quickly and elegantly. I also love the notion that the equipment is...

Army Corps’ (JALBTCX) data improves coastal projects

In a hotel conference room on Long Island, New York, a team of experts is processing data and information on computers. Alongside them is a large display monitor that is projecting the information. The team is the Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of Expertise (JALBTCX). “It’s a beautiful thing. On the screen they are...

Chevron beta tested Cyrax on an oil & gas field in Kazakhstan. These images show the 3D laser scanner’s camera image of the vessels and the resulting point cloud scan.

The Early Days of 3D Scanning, Part 3: Cyra Unleashed

In Part 1, I described how in 1996, while working for Trimble, I first became aware of 3D laser scanning. It was being developed by Cyra Technologies Inc., a small start-up that had approached Trimble seeking a potential partnership. The jaw-dropping technology demo hooked my interest. In Part 2, I described my role in evaluating...

xyHt Weekly News Links 7/17/2020

*Click here to visit xyHt’s Virtual Trade Show* Congress Moves Against FCC’s Ligado Decision Bad Elf Flex™ Adopts the Hemisphere Phantom™ Module Honeywell Refines Navigation Revealing the World from Satellites Common Ground Alliance Launches New Expo