- Courses in 3D laser scanning are almost non-existent in either 2 or 4 year college programs in the US.
- Dr. John Yu and the NSF have created and implemented a valuable model course curriculum.
- We all need to accept the challenge of making this happen in our local communities.
According to Professor John Yu, Professor of Engineering at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, CA courses in 3D laser scanning are almost non-existent at the community college level in the US. I don’t think it is much better at the 4 year schools. In fact, many civil engineering programs do not even require a surveying course. That may have made sense 10 to 15 years ago, but there is just too much 3D innovation taking place to ignore laser scanning, and the collection of 3D data. It is now central to the design process.
The course itself sounds very well thought out, consisting of 12 lecture modules and 13 lab exercises. Being funded through a NSF Advanced Technological Education program grant this should serve as a model for other educational programs. The curriculum was based on an industry survey and input from an advisory committee. Topics covered include the theory of distance measurement, performance of laser scanning devices, available hardware and software, post processing, 3D modeling – the list of topics is extensive.
Kudos to Dr. Yu, the NSF and all those involved. The first class completed the course this spring. They only had one scanner for 21 students, which you can imagine was not adequate, but overall the course was a tremendous success. Anyone have a an old scanner they would be willing to donate to the program?
Now is the time to get these programs in place to support the next upturn in the economy. Dr. Yu has done a lot of the hard work.
This is great to see. During my graduate studies at University of Florida they offered a course called “Airborne Laser Scanning: data processing and analysis”. It was offered jointly between Civil and Electrical Engineering and was taught by Dr. Clint Slatton. It covered the gamut of lidar from photonics, to lidar equation, to system design and error aspects, to deriving the 3d coordinates. Very enjoyable course and they then also offered a follow on course in Integrated Navigation and Kalman Filtering geared towards mapping applications.
Good to know that there is more awareness now to start formal LiDAR courses. Here at IIT Kanpur I have been offering a course on Laser Scanning from past 5 years. The course is now well developed and consists of 24 theory and 12 laboratory classes. The students are exposed to basics of laser, laser equation, time measurement principle, types of laser scanners, scanning mechanisms, commercial sensor, principle of airborne, terrestrial and mobile scanning, primary data processing including geolocation process, data classification and vector model generation for different features etc. Laboratory classes run in sync with theory classes and currently we use in-house and Terrasolid softwares for completing laboratory projects.