Category: News

Lidar Robot Vacuum Privacy Breach Exposed by Engineer A recent deep-dive into a bricked robot vacuum, the iLife A11, revealed a critical privacy flaw rooted in its 3D mapping capabilities. An engineer found the device was running Linux and utilizing advanced software like Google Cartographer for real-time SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). While this tech enables efficient cleaning, it generates […]

The rise of “cascading hazards”, where one disaster triggers another, such as a landslide leading to flash flooding, demands smarter, faster predictive modeling. Indiana University is joining the new Center for Land Surface Hazards (CLaSH) to tackle this complex threat, moving disaster preparedness from reaction to prediction. The core of this $15 million project is high-resolution lidar technology. This generates […]

Mission Possible: A School Kid, His Surveyor Dad, and a Full 3D Scan of a Lost Landmark Luke Gutierrez, a 4th grader, was assigned a project to make a diorama of Mission Soledad. Luke soon found that there were no existing plans to draw from, so he went to his surveyor dad, Jesse, and asked “Why can’t we just scan […]

European Floating Lidar, Energy Intelligence Providers Join Forces in Brazilian Offshore Wind Market Brazil’s burgeoning offshore wind sector is getting a technological boost as energy intelligence giant TGS partners with floating LiDAR specialist EOLOS. This powerful European alliance is setting the stage to provide the definitive 3D data backbone for developers preparing to tap the vast potential of the Brazilian coastline. […]

Burkhard Boeckem, CTO of Hexagon, to Deliver Keynote at Geo Week 2026 Presentation on precision and intelligence to explore the next era of geospatial innovation  Portland, Maine – USA, November 4, 2025 – Organizers of Geo Week, the premier conference and trade show for geospatial and mapping professionals, have announced that Burkhard Boeckem, Chief Technology Officer at Hexagon, will deliver […]

Radar Technology Reveals Military base Under Ice A NASA study aimed at mapping the internal structure of the Greenland ice sheet made an exciting discovery: Camp Century, a secret Cold War-era U.S. military base, entombed 100 feet beneath the surface. This monumental find demonstrates the unparalleled power of advanced remote sensing for subsurface mapping and digital reconstruction. Using Uninhabited Aerial […]

Digital Twin Technology Preserves Alcatraz Island Alcatraz Island has been reborn as a pioneering digital twin! Unveiled at Intergeo 2025, this massive reality capture project created the most comprehensive 3D map of this landmark to create a data baseline and measure effects from of rising sea levels and seismic activity. The mission was an intricate project that blended high-precision terrestrial […]

Drone Surveys for Whale Health: Early Detection for Conservation Moving beyond slow, traditional counting methods, researchers are now deploying advanced drone surveys coupled with photogrammetry to monitor at-risk populations. This methodology uses high-resolution aerial imagery for precise 3D modeling and biometric analysis. This remote sensing approach allows for unprecedented detailed measurement of whale size and shape. By correlating these robust […]

Direct Dimensions and CAD BLU Announce 3D Scanning & 3D Printing Demo Day in New York City Engineers, designers, and makers are invited to explore cutting-edge 3D technology on November 5th at this free, hands-on event.  NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Direct Dimensions, Inc., a leader in 3D scanning, modeling, and digital measurement solutions, is teaming up with CAD BLU, one […]

Seeing With Machines: How Peiyan Zou turns LiDAR from a surveying tool into a cultural medium A unique take on the precise data from LiDAR is showcasing it as art. Artist-designer Peiyan Zou is changing the game, turning this simple measuring tool into an exciting new kind of art. His unique work uses a special way of seeing that welcomes […]

AI Insider: Capturing life with AI-enabled volumetric video Imagine stepping back into a moment, able to move around an object in full 3D. This is the reality of AI-enabled volumetric video, pioneered by researchers at UNSW’s 3DXLab. Multi-camera arrays capture a subject’s full 3D shape and real-time motion in space, transcending flat video by allowing viewers to virtually explore the […]

Cintoo widget unlocks seamless Lidar streaming in ArcGIS The Cintoo Widget for ArcGIS is officially a game-changer, breaking down the wall between high-resolution reality capture and GIS. This vital integration allows users to stream and explore colossal laser scan datasets right inside the familiar Esri environment, making dense point cloud data a seamless, actionable part of every project workflow. The […]

Lidar + Sonar = A Revolution in Seafloor Mapping The Florida Seafloor Mapping Initiative (FSMI) demonstrates a revolutionary approach to charting the ocean floor by strategically combining aerial topobathymetric Lidar with ship-based multibeam sonar. This synergy creates high-resolution digital elevation models of Florida’s complex coastal environments, blending the best of both worlds. The technical deployment is astounding. Lidar sensors are […]

180 Million Trees Mapped with Lidar in Australia Cutting-edge 3D mapping technology has led to the discovery of a monumental 81-meter-tall flooded gum (Eucalyptus grandis) in the New South Wales Northern Rivers region of Australia a tree as high as a 27-story building. This colossal specimen, alongside a 77m hoop pine, was uncovered during an extensive mapping study led by […]

Peer Inside a 2,000-Year-Old Egyptian Cat Mummy A project at the University of Aberdeen is using cutting-edge photogrammetry and CT scanning (or “cat scanning,” as they cheekily call it!) to unlock the secrets held within their Egyptian collection, particularly an ancient cat mummy. This effort is transforming objects that were once too delicate to handle into accessible high-fidelity 3D models […]

The World’s Largest 3D Object Library is Here : Created By Microsoft & NVIDIA A groundbreaking collaboration between Global Objects, Microsoft Azure, and NVIDIA is underway to create the world’s largest, most precise 3D object library. Technicians are employing advanced techniques like lidar scanning and photogrammetry to capture the physical world with unparalleled accuracy. The processing of these massive datasets […]

This Week in 3D – Curated and written by Adam Clark Mapping underground spaces—muon technology shows promise for 3D imaging of subsurface for archaeological excavations An exciting new technology that is adjacent to our normal articles: The integration of muon tomography is revolutionizing 3D subsurface mapping, offering an “X-ray vision” to complement traditional lidar workflows. Muons, naturally produced by cosmic rays, penetrate the […]

Lidar News Weekly RECAP – Curated and written by Adam Clark Exploring the potential of fused imaging and Lidar data for seabed classification Lidar provides highly accurate 3D morphology and robust radiometric data, independent of solar influence. This is combined with multi-band passive imaging (RGB or hyperspectral), which offers detailed surface characteristics, though requiring complex normalization to counteract water column effects […]

Lidar News Weekly RECAP – Curated and written by Adam Clark. UK and China develop 3D orchard mapping tool Researchers from the UK’s Niab and Nanjing Agricultural University have teamed up to create OrchardQuant 3D, a system combining drone imagery and LiDAR data to build detailed three-dimensional models of orchards. The tool measures traits such as tree height, crown volume, branch […]

Crowd Funding an Archeological Expedition in the Amazon “In 1925, legendary explorer Percy Fawcett embarked on his seventh and final expedition into the Amazon in search of a lost city he called ‘Z.’ He was never seen again.” Now, lidar may help reveal what has long remained hidden… “With the threat of deforestation all around, the preservation of these newly […]

Lidar News Weekly RECAP – August 18-21st Curated and written by Adam Clark. Archaeologists may have uncovered a hidden Amazon city using laser technology Missouri State archaeologists Daniel Pierce and Chris Bodine are using cutting-edge LiDAR imaging to scan beneath the dense Amazon canopy, revealing large, human-made features such as geoglyphs, geometric shapes, roads, trails and possibly buildings. This remote‐sensing technique allows […]

Commercial UAV Expo 2025 Highlights: BVLOS Rulemaking and Drone Industry Insights World’s leading commercial drone trade show and conference hosted 230 exhibitors and 3,400 professionals, featured landmark product launches, and offered hands-on training and demonstrations Portland, Maine – USA, September 8, 2025 — Commercial drone professionals from around the world gathered last week for the 11th edition of Commercial UAV […]

Lidar News Weekly RECAP – August 18-21st Curated and written by Adam Clark. Soybean yield estimation and lodging discrimination based on lightweight UAV and point cloud deep learning This study introduces cross-circling oblique photography and SfM-MVS reconstruction to generate 3D canopy models, combined with novel deep learning frameworks SoyNet and SoyNet-Res. By fusing spatial structure with RGB and vegetation index data, the […]

Lidar News Weekly RECAP – August 18-21st Curated and written by Adam Clark. A new tool to help map the Great Salt Lake Utah’s Department of Natural Resources has deployed topo‑bathymetric LiDAR to map the Great Salt Lake’s underwater terrain, penetrating through water to capture precise depth data. The initiative responds to inaccuracies uncovered when the lake dropped to historic lows […]