Category Archives: Surveying
UAV Stakes Out New Ground
Above: A prototype of the Civdrone UAV preparing to drill a stake into the ground. A flying/staking robot has taken a huge step forward in automation for site layout, including road, rail, utilities, and energy applications. Working the traditional way, how many surveyor-days would it take to mark the 300,000 points needed to lay out a...
Seen at HxGN LIVE 2019
BLK2GO SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) lidar handhelds have become popular for BIM, as-builts, and rapid 3D modeling. The new Leica Geosystems BLK2GO shares some of the core technologies of earlier members of the BLK family (like the BLK360 scanner). What distinguishes this from many of the other SLAM handhelds is that it utilizes cameras...
Shake, Rattle & Roll: Disruptions to the Geodetic Fabric
On July 4, 2019 the desert region near Ridegcrest, California was hit with a magnitude 6.4 earthquake, resulting in minor damage in the area, most significantly to the infrastructure at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake. Approximately 44 hours later on July 6th, a larger earthquake of magnitude 7.1 struck the region, causing...
2019 National Trig-Star Competition and Trig-Star Scholarship Recipients
Sponsored by the National Society of Professional Surveyors, Trig-Star is a competition that recognizes and rewards high school students who excel in mathematics, particularly Trigonometry, and their teachers. The goal of the program is to demonstrate practical uses for mathematics and bring greater awareness of the surveying profession. The Trig-Star Scholarship program (https://trig-star.com/scholarships) offers the opportunity for...
New Video Promoting Surveying as a Career
US Careers Online has partnered with WithersRavenel to highlight Geomatics and Surveying as a possible career path. North Carolina based US Careers Online—a leader in helping students find a career in new and interesting fields for over a decade—has released its newest video profile highlighting the field of Geomatics and Surveying. The video is collaboration...
Search for the Missing Pier
Above: The Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory is now a community park. My tale of locating the latitude pier of the Cincinnati Latitude Observatory, one of six international latitude observatories now defunct but historically significant. It was 1974, and I’d been working at the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) for two years. One afternoon my boss told me...
