Category Archives: Lidar/Imaging
Trimble in the Wild: Scanning the Roundest Bear
Katmai National Park broke new ground in laser scanning this October when a survey-grade scanner was used for their annual “Fat Bear Week.” Traditionally, the fatness of many a Katmai Park brown bear has been voted on by awe-struck online onlookers—the park has several webcams—and has been a matter of personal opinion gauged by eye....
Outlook 2020’s 40 Under 40
The following is xyHt’s 2020 collection of 40 under 40: profiles of motivated and accomplished young professionals under 40 years of age. Click on each name to view their profiles below. Kwabena Obeng Asiam Researcher & Lecturer – Leibniz University Published PhD candidate in land administration; FIG Young Surveyors Ghana Evaluating the evidence and making...
First Look at a New Scanner
Above: xyHt publisher Neil Sandler checks out Trimble’s X7 at INTERGEO. With the Trimble X7, there’s no going back (for calibration). About a month before INTERGEO 2019, I started to hear rumblings about a new device from Trimble. Some said it was a laser scanner, some a new total station, but no one was ready...
Walkaround Mobile Scanning Part 2
Above: A backpack type of walkaround mobile scanning system was used to capture this site for a standard topo survey. Credit: Wantman Group Inc. Part 2: Applications and addressing challenges In Part 1 of this two-part article, I noted that walkaround mobile scanning is being rapidly adopted by the market. I described it in general...
A Dam Good Mix
Above: A view of the Brighton Dam in Brookeville, Maryland, from one of the project’s UAVs. Combining UAVs and 3D computer vision can make infrastructure inspections cost-effective. More than 70% of the 90,000 dams scattered across the U.S. are, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), half a century old. The age of dams,...
3D Evidence
Diagram software helps the New Mexico State Police enhance their extensive forensics work. Reconstructing what happened at the scene of a traffic accident or a crime is a complex undertaking involving scientific methods, physical evidence, deductive reasoning—and their interrelationships. It also requires hardware to gather data and software to analyze it and display it. Laser...