Category Archives: Lidar/Imaging
3D Cities from a Single System
Above: This screenshot is of CityMapper output. A look at the hybrid airborne system that combines lidar with oblique and nadir imagery. Over the last five years I’ve built and used a lot of 3D GIS and BIM models. Almost all of this has required the capture of stereo imagery and oblique imagery and a...
3D Straight Down
Seeing down manholes in detail is an innovation made possible with 3D scanning. [Above image: Deploying the camera system down a manhole to access the Hooksett, New Hampshire sewer system. No breaching of the hole happened, which is a serious OSHA consideration. (The GibbetMount shown here has a steel casing that’s since been upgraded to...
Surveyors Are Like Musicians
Don’t underestimate the value of talent. All 26+ years that I worked in the geospatial industry were with survey instrument manufacturers (Trimble and Leica Geosystems, plus start-up Cyra Technologies). But it was only in the most recent years of my time in the laser scanning segment that a major realization hit me about the full...
After the Storm
Above image: Puerto Rico was surveyed using the Coastal Zone Mapping and Imaging Lidar system to provide efficient damage assessment. Image courtesy of the Joint Airborne Technical Center of Expertise. Post-hurricane coastal mapping is a complex process made easier with airborne bathymetry. Lately, large storms such as hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons have been wreaking havoc...
Learning to Scan
An interior scan of an auditorium by undergraduate students gave them a thorough lesson. Florida Atlantic University (FAU) is the only school in the southeast that offers geomatics engineering, and the professor for the terrestrial laser scanning class, Dr. Sudhagar Nagarajan, asks a lot of his students to succeed. During this past spring semester (2018), we students had...
Cool Stuff Seen at HxGN LIVE 2018
Juergen Dold, president of Hexagon’s geosystems division, walked onstage to deliver his annual keynote at the 2018 HxGN LIVE conference and exhibition, toting a small school-sized backpack. During the course of the keynote he pulled two new products from the backpack. BLK3D The first was the BLK3D, a pocket-sized 3D measurement device built for rapid...