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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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”, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
Read more 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 […]
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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 […]
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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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In the world of airborne lidar and remote sensing, there is a lot happening these days. The most prolific topics over the past 5 years have been with respect to the explosion of UAV and UAS technology. Most recently, we have seen much discussion on new lidar sensors employing Geiger Mode and Single Photon technologies pushing the limits of the […]
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Author: John M. Russo, AIA If you haven’t noticed there are a lot more people jumping into the laser scanning business lately. Perhaps this is due to scanner prices dropping, or maybe it’s because the software is making it easier to process the data. Maybe the growth of the market is just creating a lot of opportunity. Many of the […]
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Author: Kutalmis Saylam, Research Scientist Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin In July 2014, the Bureau of Economic Geology, a research unit at The University of Texas at Austin, was contracted to conduct an airborne survey in the Alaskan North Slope. The purpose of the project was to further determine, understand, and map the local […]
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Thanks to Dr. Michael Olsen at Oregon State University for the following recap of last week’s ISPRS Geospatial week held in France. Some guys have all the luck. Bonjour! This week I had the privilege of attending the ISPRS Geospatial Week held in La Grande Motte, France and will provide you with a short overview. Basically, the ISPRS Geospatial Week […]
Read more Ken Smerz interviewed Ted Mort to get his thoughts on last week’s USIBD 2015 conference in Las Vegas. So…. What were your expectations going into the event? My only expectation was that the attendees would receive tangible value, it was our number one goal for the event. What we didn’t realize was just how much support and interest we were […]
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Our world of 3D imaging frequently takes us to amazingly interesting places to scan amazingly interesting things. Often our interest level alone drives us to go out and scan. Having learned in the local news about a major maintenance project underway for the famous USS Constellation and her equally historic cousin, the submarine USS Torsk, Direct Dimensions’ president Michael Raphael […]
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(Thanks to Dr. Kamel Saidi at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (www.nist.gov) for the following summary of the work that was done to develop a first-of-its-kind standard test for laser scanners.) The ASTM E57.02 sub-committee on Test Methods for 3D Imaging Systems has recently published the first standard for time-of-flight, spherical coordinate laser scanners. These instruments measure a […]
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(This article is based on a peer reviewed paper written by I. Toschi, et al) Mobile Mapping System (MMS) is nowadays an emerging technology, whose development began in the late 1980s and is constantly growing. From a technological point of view, MMS is a multi-sensor system, that consists mainly of three components: mapping sensors (active and/or passive 3D imaging systems), […]
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