Category Archives: Surveying

Summertime, and the Surveying Ain’t Easy
Now that winter and even spring have finished thrashing half the country, we can officially enjoy summer. As a laser scanner operator I have a fairly easy job this season due to the limitations of the instrument—at least, it’s easier than being a field surveyor. If you’ve ever worked on a survey crew in the...

Surveying Statistics
Part 2: The Normal Distribution Part 1 of this series appeared in the May 2015 issue. Errors in observations can be classified as systematic or random. Systematic errors follow physical laws and can be mathematically corrected or removed by following proper field procedures with instruments. For example, the expansion or contraction of a steel tape...

The Normal Distribution, Part 1
Errors in observations can be classified as systematic or random. Systematic errors are errors that follow physical laws and can be mathematically corrected or removed by following proper field procedures with instruments. For example, the expansion or contraction of a steel tape caused by temperatures that differ from the tape’s standard temperature is a systematic...

Creating Energy From Images
Geospatial information has long played an essential role in the energy industry, but now a new technology is cutting costs while improving the flow of knowledge. Editor’s note: The energy sector, oil and gas in particular, has grown more rapidly in the past half dozen years than in the past half a century. New fields,...

xyHt’s 40 Geospatial Leaders under 40
Join xyHt in Celebrating Young Leadership in Geospatial Professions, Industries, and Sciences! Who are the current young geo-leaders internationally? And where are they making a difference? There is a maxim: “We teach children their future, and not our past.” With the exception (in the geospatial realm) of archaeology, forensics, monitoring, and boundary survey (where historical...

Robot Revolution
Clearpath Robotics CEO Matt Rendall discusses unmanned systems, land survey, and robotic industry trends. The robot revolution is hitting a big milestone. Robotic use is expanding beyond research activities, aerial applications, and industrial manipulators through a new kind of deployment: the service robot. These robots are autonomous, they’re geospatially aware, and they can manipulate...