Articles Archives - Page 14 of 15

Top 5 Considerations for Choosing Lidar for Outdoor Robots

May 20, 2016 2 comments

Designing a robot for outdoor use – for example, in agricultural or mining robots—comes with a unique set of considerations when selecting navigational hardware. For example, outdoor robots must contend with inclement weather, blinding sunlight, and variable temperatures that can interfere with scanner function and impair reliability. But choosing the right laser scanner (Lidar) ensures accurate navigation and extends the […]

Automated Feature Extraction Goes Mainstream

May 13, 2016 Leave a comment

Background Civil Maps is an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up based in Silicon Valley. Over the past couple of years, they have developed industry leading technologies for the autonomous vehicle industry. Their key technologies include automated registration of LiDAR point clouds without the need for ground control points, automated feature extraction to rapidly produce large area maps, and Scout, their low-cost […]

Delights and Challenges When Scanning in Africa

May 4, 2016 Leave a comment

A hidden Ethiopian treasure history of Yemrehanna Kristos Yemrehanna Kristos is one of Ethiopia’s lesser known and, maybe for that reason, better preserved churches compared to churches of Lalibela. Built by a Zagwe king-priest of the same name, around the 12th century, this church is an outstanding example of a late Axumite design. It was, and still is, an important […]

Dignity in 3D

April 30, 2016 Leave a comment

Direct Dimensions has had the opportunity to work on many amazing art projects in the last fifteen years ranging from documenting famous sculptures for museums to working with talented local artists. One of our recent projects has been a partnership with Zachary Oxman, a sculptor based in nearby Bethesda, Maryland. Mr. Oxman is known for his bronze art work as […]

The Impact of Software on the Lidar Industry

April 6, 2016 Leave a comment

The Trusty Slide Rule I’m sitting here looking at the Sun Hemmi slide rule that I keep on my desk (I have been using it as a ruler over the past several decades) and I reflect that this wonderful device never required any software updates or battery charges, yet it still delivers very accurate advanced mathematical calculations. One could postulate […]

“Commercial” Drones, but Just Barely

April 6, 2016 Leave a comment

FAA Section 333 exemptions allow operators to fly drones in the national airspace for commercial purposes. We were excited in May 2015 after receiving ours. At last we could use this new technology to expand our remote sensing and mapping operations. We were primed for starting a new profitable business doing amazing things flying drones. On the surface the approval to fly “commercially” sounded great. […]

Thurber Engineering Case Study

April 5, 2016 One comment

Thurber Engineering Ltd. is a Canadian consulting firm that provides a variety of geotechnical, geo-environmental, and construction materials engineering and testing services. The company takes a multidisciplinary approach to projects related to earth, environmental, and materials science. One of the major components of the GIS-based analysis work that Thurber undertakes is identifying geological landforms and assessing their suitability for a […]

Incorporating High-Definition Scanning in the National Register of Historic Places Nomination

April 1, 2016 Leave a comment

Incorporating High-Definition Scanning in the National Register of Historic Places Nomination of the Proposed Miller Tract/Center-Soll Historic District in Des Moines, Iowa By Colleen Kinney, local project coordinator, NorthofGrandHistory@gmail.com Aaron West awest@mecresults.com and Ted Black tblack@mecresults.com at McClure Engineering Company In 1924, Better Homes & Gardens magazine touted the efforts of a Des Moines, Iowa community group as a national […]

TopoDot User Conference Keynote

March 26, 2016 Leave a comment

Geospatial visionary is developing world class transportation asset management system for Budapest, Hungary Recently I had the opportunity to interview Gyula Sz. Fekete, Department Head, GIS Application Development and Data Capture for the Road Management Company of Budapest, Hungary. Gyula has his degree in Survey Engineering. He is currently leading the development of one of the most advanced, 3D transportation […]

Africa’s Other Pyramids

March 24, 2016 2 comments

It is little known and generally ignored that more than 800 years after the last pyramids were built in Egypt, a new era of pyramid construction began in an African country south of Egypt. Over a period of more than 1,000 years some 200 pyramids, more than twice the number of known Pyramids in Egypt, were built for royal cemeteries […]

Solution-Based Remote Sensing Analytics

March 17, 2016 Leave a comment

Solution-based mapping for a variety of applications has become predominate over the last five years as a result of advancing technology and the need to provide solutions with a variety of sensors for a given application. Merrick & Co. has been applying a variety of mapping technologies to address these applications. They include but are not limited to positive train […]

GNSS – The Rest of the Picture

March 14, 2016 Leave a comment

Matching the GNSS solution to the project continues to be an issue. In the previous article we looked at projects that were widely varying in requirements. First we reviewed the most general case requiring positioning to only a meter or more. Next we saw how an RTK system may be an appropriate solution for UAVs with the LOS restriction and […]

The Zamani Project – Preserving Rock Art “Virtually”

February 20, 2016 Leave a comment

Dams are built across rivers and rivers attract human activities. The construction of dams is thus frequently associated with the destruction of heritage and archaeology. Well known examples are Abu Simple at the Aswan dam and the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze river. Climate changes and increases in population will undoubtedly result in the need for more dams and subsequently […]

Where Are We With Feature Extraction?

February 14, 2016 Leave a comment

Feature extraction and automated feature extraction were the main topics of discussion at conferences and during presentations about five years ago. Now, focal plane LiDAR and UAV’s are all the buzz. Feature extraction is still a vital part of what we do and are trying to do better. Where are we with feature extraction and how have we progressed? Companies […]

HERB Gets a New Eye

February 14, 2016 Leave a comment

Background HERB 2.0, also known as the “robot butler”, is an ongoing project in the Personal Robotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Velodyne’s Frank Bertini recently had the opportunity to visit CMU and experiment with integrating the VLP-16 Puck LiDAR sensor onto HERB’s head. David Butterworth, a graduate student at the CMU Robotics Institute, has been hypothesizing and testing […]

The Growth of Mobile LiDAR Mapping

January 23, 2016 Leave a comment

Introduction The use of mobile LiDAR systems to map and document the condition of horizontal infrastructure, as well as the associated assets has moved out of the early adopter stage and it is now beginning to cross over into a much larger market. From its early days of being used to locate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) for the military in […]

I Told You So…

January 23, 2016 2 comments

Scenario My firm, Eco3D recently worked with a client on a $800 hundred-million-dollar project on the east coast and to validate the elevator shafts and staircases of a newly constructed corporate headquarters. The general contractor is a very large and well known national company that not only has a VDC/BIM Division, but aggressively markets that as a differentiator to owners […]

Lidar System Accuracy

December 18, 2015 Leave a comment

A client told me the other day that some vendors are promising vertical accuracy of LiDAR deliverables that exceed the LiDAR manufacturer specifications for that system and asked: Is it legitimate for a service provider to promise better accuracy than manufacturer specifications? Or, are service providers overselling their LiDAR services by promising high vertical accuracies? The short answer is “Yes”, […]

Lidar Holiday Art Finalists 2015

December 14, 2015 10 comments

The following images have been selected as the final candidates for the 2015 Lidar Holiday Art contest. We were amazed by the quality and quantity of the submissions. Thank you to everyone for these outstanding images. We have had such a positive response to this event that we want to continue with this idea by featuring images in the Showcase […]

From World Heritage Monument To 3d Urban Model – “Digital Avila” Project by Ingeniería Insitu

December 1, 2015 Leave a comment

Ávila is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in Spain. Its world famous walls stand over the centuries-old artistic and cultural heritage found inside. Walking along its narrow, winding streets, one easily sees vestiges from its past. But being an old city like Avila does not mean being anchored to the past. The city of Avila has adopted […]

A Dithyramb on GNSS and Mobile LiDAR Mapping

November 22, 2015 Leave a comment

by Jeff Fagerman, Lidar USA Location, location, location. For most businesses to succeed this is absolutely essential. While the business location is not nearly as important for mobile mapping as a restaurant or clothing store, location is very important for a mobile LiDAR system to be useful. It is not possible to generate a point cloud from a moving platform […]

Iowa DOT Deploys GeoSLAM Survey Solutions to Monitor Salt Stockpiles and Improve Service Provision

November 18, 2015 Leave a comment

Monitoring Stockpiles Question: When ‘Mother Nature’ determines demand for road salt consumption in winter, how does a State Department of Transportation (DOT) strategically balance reserves? Answer: Iowa State DOT invested in Simultaneous Localisation & Mapping (SLAM) technology from GeoSLAM to accurately measure salt stockpiles in 109 maintenance areas in order to streamline salt distribution across 24,000 lane miles of state […]

What Services Are You Selling?

November 9, 2015 Leave a comment

Test Calling all laser scanning service providers out there!! Test time! I need you to answer the following question—and please answer honestly since nobody is going to grade your paper: What are you selling? Naw, I don’t mean the aerial mapping, laser scanning, modeling, BIM, etc.; I am asking a simple question that everyone on your team should be able […]

Costs Shrink for Conrad Gargett When Using ZEB1 for Measured Building Surveys of Heritage Assets

November 4, 2015 Leave a comment

Scan-to-BIM with ZEB1 and Autodesk Revit Conrad Gargett is at the forefront of architecture in Australia and is a progressive firm with a vibrant legacy of prominent and enduring designs. Since 1890, the practice has continuously evolved and grown both organically and through acquisition. Today Conrad Gargett operates from offices in Brisbane, Sydney, and Townsville to deliver projects across a […]

From Scanning Film to 3D Online Mapping

November 4, 2015 One comment

THE HISTORY This mapping story begins with a small company that was dominating the scanning market some 15 years ago, but it wasn’t the 3D laser scanning market – it was the scanning of large format aerial film. In those days digital cameras were just coming onto the scene and established aerial mapping companies were still looking to recover their […]

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