GPS World

Tag: International Lidar Mapping Forum

  • Speakers, program announced for Geo Week conference

    Speakers, program announced for Geo Week conference

    125+ speakers and 50+ sessions are confirmed for the 2022 edition of Geo Week in Denver

    Image: Geo Week 2022

    Organizers of Geo Week, which brings together geospatial technologies and the built world, have announced its conference sessions and speakers for the 2022 event, which will take place Feb. 6-8  in Denver, Colorado.

    The conference program features more than 125 speakers across 50 sessions with content that explores best practices in 3D capture, working in the built environment, gaining return on investment (ROI) from building information management (BIM), defining what’s possible now with lidar, and more.

    The coming together of AEC Next Technology Expo & Conference, International Lidar Mapping Forum, and SPAR 3D Expo & Conference to form Geo Week reflects the increased integration between the built environment, advanced airborne/terrestrial technologies, and commercial 3D technologies.

    Partner events taking place in conjunction with Geo Week include ASPRS Annual Conference, MAPPS Winter Meeting and USIBD Annual Symposium, ensuring the presence of geospatial and built-world industry experts in one place.

    Presenters represent Autodesk, Esri, USGS, The Beck Group, Hexagon Geosystems, GM, Caltrans, Velodyne Lidar, Draper, MLB and NASA. These experts will share their expertise on a range of topics. Sessions include:

    Geo Week will have multiple tracks with content clearly identified as relevant to one or more of the audience groups feeding into Geo Week.

    • The International Lidar Mapping Forum (ILMF) audience has historically been comprised of precision measurement professionals in surveying and mapping who use airborne and terrestrial lidar and related remote sensing technologies.
    • The AEC Next audience has historically been comprised of professionals in architecture, engineering and construction that use technologies such as reality capture, automation, artificial intelligence and XR to bid and manage projects and improve workflows.
    • The SPAR 3D audience has historically been comprised of professionals who use 3D capture, scanning, visualization and modeling technologies across a variety of verticals.

    “We’ve witnessed the growing convergence between geospatial and the built world,” said Lee Corkhill, group event director at Diversified Communications, organizer of Geo Week. “We believe the market is ready and eager for this next step of leveraging the confluence of technologies for improved collaboration, increased efficiency, and better outcomes. Much of the conference content and technology being showcased will reflect and support this increasing integration. At the same time, we recognize that individuals and organizations are at differing levels of adoption, and so there will be ample content more focused on what were traditional AEC Next, ILMF and SPAR 3D topics.”

    Geo Week will provide education, technology and resources for professionals in industries including AEC, asset and facility management, disaster and emergency response, Earth observation and satellite applications, energy and utilities, infrastructure and transportation, land and natural resource management, mining and aggregates, surveying and mapping, and urban planning and smart cities.

    More than 80 companies have confirmed booths on the Exhibition Floor with additional companies being confirmed every week and more than 100 associations and media companies are signed on as supporters.

    Geo Week takes place Feb. 6-8, 2022, with conference programming and exhibits all three days. Additional features of the programming are vendor-delivered product reviews, exhibition theaters, workshops and programming hosted by ASPRS, MAPPS and USIBD. Visit www.geo-week.com for more information on attending or exhibiting. Register before Dec, 10 for early bird rates.

  • 2022 Geo Week to replace, include other conferences

    Geo Week 2022A major geospatial conference encompassing previous annual conferences is scheduled for 2022.

    The AEC Next Technology Expo & Conference, International Lidar Mapping Forum and SPAR 3D Expo & Conference will unite as one show. The new Geo Week show will also encompass partners U.S. Institute of Building Documentation (USIBD) and American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS).

    Geo Week, which takes place Feb. 6-8, 2022, in Denver, will bring together the best of 3D technology for the built world, geospatial applications and more. The joining of the events reflects the increased integration between the built environment, advanced airborne/terrestrial technologies and commercial 3D technologies, according to organizers.

    Geo Week will provide education, technology and resources for professionals in industries including AEC (architecture, engineering and construction), asset and facility management, disaster and emergency response, Earth observation and satellite applications, energy and utilities, infrastructure and transportation, land and natural resource management, mining and aggregates, surveying and mapping, and urban planning/smart cities.

    “We’ve witnessed the growing convergence between geospatial and the built world, and we received positive feedback from customers about holding the events together, which had been the plan for 2020 and 2021 before the pandemic forced us to cancel due to the unavoidable consequence of the worsening magnitude of the public health and safety issues caused by the COVID-19,” said Lee Corkhill, marketing director at Diversified Communications.

    “We believe the market is ready and eager for this next step of leveraging the confluence of what are becoming ubiquitous technologies for improved collaboration, increased efficiency, and better outcomes,” Corkhill continued. “Much of the conference content and technology being showcased will reflect and support this increasing integration.”

  • International Lidar Mapping Forum looking for speakers

    Organizers of the International Lidar Mapping Forum (ILMF), taking place Jan. 28-30, 2019, in Denver, are looking for speakers.

    ILMF is a technical conference and exhibition showcasing the latest airborne, terrestrial and underwater lidar, as well as emerging remote-sensing and data collection tools and technologies.

    According to organizers, the show will allow attendees and exhibitors to connect with hundreds of professionals seeking lidar and other 3D geospatial data collection technologies to support asset management, civil infrastructure, coastal zone mapping, emergency services and disaster response, land and natural resource management, urban modeling and more. It will also cover the latest advances in lidar technology.

    Keynote speakers at the event will include the U.S. Geological Survey’s Jeff Sloan, who will discuss if data from UAS sensors will overtake manned and satellite sources; Colorado State University’s Michael Lefsky, who will discuss reconstructing historic land use and forest structure using aerial photos and structure from motion analysis; and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Eric Larour, who will address a new tool from NASA for coastal planners.

    ILMF will be co-located with the ASPRS Annual Conference. The combined event will feature a single exhibit hall. The two events will still have their own technical programs, and attendees will have the option to purchase a conference pass for programs of their choice or a universal pass for all offered programs.

    Learn more about the event here.

  • PNT Roundup: Inertial, acoustic, lidar, Wi-Fi and beacon news

    Independence, redundancy at sea

    Acoustically aided inertial navigation technology will enable a specialized sea vessel maintain dynamic positioning through GNSS disruptions in challenging environments.

    Sonardyne Inc.‘s dual Ranger 2 Pro DP-INS systems aboard the ultra-light intervention vessel Brandon Bordelon will track remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) during inspection, repair and maintenance activities, providing an independent position reference for the ship’s Marine Technologies Class 2 dynamic positioning system.

    The Lodestar motion sensing instrument platform (attitude and heading reference system, or AHRS) is tightly integrated with Sonardyne’s acoustic positioning components, providing power and control of surface and subsea transceivers as well as instruments such as Doppler velocity logs. The seamless integration of acoustics and inertial technologies exploits the long-term accuracy and precision characteristics of acoustic positioning with the continuous availability and fast update rate from high-grade inertial sensors.

    Specialized vessels such as this normally rely on GNSS and ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustics as their primary sources of dynamic positioning reference data. However, a vessel’s station-keeping capability can be compromised if the USBL is affected by noise or thruster aeration and the GNSS signal is simultaneously interrupted. GNSS signal interruption is particularly common around Equatorial regions and during periods of high solar radiation.

    Wideband Acoustic. The integrated acoustic-inertial system addresses this vulnerability, exploiting the long-term accuracy of Sonardyne’s Wideband  2 acoustic signal technology with inertial measurements.

    The resulting navigation output can ride through short-term acoustic disruptions and is completely independent from GNSS.

    The equipment includes Sonardyne’s ship-mounted inertial navigation sensor and two HPT 7000 acoustic transceivers. The HPTs have been installed on the Brandon Bordelon through hull deployment poles and are optimized for tracking and dynamic positioning in ultra-deep water.

    The equipment includes three ring laser gyroscopes that measure the angular rate and three accelerometers that measure the specific force of the moving platform. The INS output is low noise and accurate in the short term, but degrades over time. Therefore, it must be seamlessly aided with complimentary acoustic positioning observations.

    Ranger 2 DP-INS uses a tightly coupled integration of range and bearing measurements from seabed transponders to aid the INS and control integration drift.

    Industry effort pushes beyond-LOS UAV flight

    At the International Lidar Mapping Forum in February, two organizations announced an industry consortium to push for removal of barriers to use of drones in long-distance inspections.

    The presentation by Sharper Shape and Edison Electronic Institute made the point that UAVs — specifically, lidar-equipped UAVs — offer potential for more frequent and more affordable inspection and data capture for overhead assets such as power lines. Currently, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations restrict commercial operations to visual line of sight (VLOS). The EEI Sharper Utility project will advocate for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights.

    The presentation explored such issues as:

    • Types of information obtainable during UAV inspections and how that information can be used to improve infrastructure and asset management programs.
    • How UAVs provide a cost-effective alternative to traditional inspection methods, and the critical factors contributing to cost-efficiency.
    • Why industry-wide coordinated effort is required to institute change.
    • Steps and the key principles to enable commercial-scale drone operations for the electricity industry.
    • Identification of stakeholders and the regulators.
    • The anticipated date of permitted BVLOS drone flights in U.S. utility inspections.

    The Eyes of Texas. In related news, Xcel Energy announced a UAV flight research and development mission that traveled beyond the operator’s line of sight during survey of a transmission line in the Canadian River Breaks region north of Amarillo, Texas, in early February. Two contractors piloted the lidar-equipped Vapor 55 drone. Xcel began using unmanned aircraft to visually inspect substations in 2015, and is the first utility to receive and use the FAA’s certificate of authorization to perform a mission for research and development purposes beyond visual line of sight.

    Xcel Energy inspects 320,000 miles of electricity and natural gas infrastructure, including more than 1,000 substations, gas regulator stations and dozens of major power plants in eight states. GPS World will carry further news of this flight in a subsequent issue.

    Indoor Nav at Vast Mobile World Congress

    Add Infrared Aiding in Retail Show

    A scalable indoor positioning hybrid technology from Pole Star of Toulouse, France, combining GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, and motion sensors, and MOCA of Barcelona, Spain, with a location-based mobile engagement platform, provided show navigation, guidance and tracking for the GSMA Mobile World Congress in February.

    The joint solution delivers three service levels that combine users’ geolocation with other data to provide expanded contextualized messages. As many as 95,000 show attendees — iOs and Android users alike — were guided through the 240,000 square meters (2.6 million square feet) of the FiraBarcelona, receiving personalized notifications from an intelligent recommendation system based on proximity.

    Using geofencing, the 2,200 exhibitors could interact with attendees and attract them to theirs booths. Finally, indoor location analytics enabled the event organizers to visualize and correlate behavior and preferences of attendees.

    Infrared. Pole Star also announced at the Retail Big Show in New York in January that it is integrating its NAO Campus indoor positioning technology with the Pricer Product Location solution based on Infrared trilateration. The combination will enable shoppers, once inside a store, to optimize their shopping route and be guided to the products and promotions they are looking for. Hyper-local targeting for shoppers and Indoor location-based analytics for retailers and brands are among the benefits touted.

    Pricer, based in Uppsala, Sweden, offers in-store automated product positioning using infrared (IR) communication, combined with tracking algorithms to calculate the position of its electronic shelf labels (ESLs). A typical Pricer label response signal is seen by multiple points in the communication network reading different signal strengths depending on the distance from the label.

    Automated in-store product positioning in retail is a “holy grail” for retailers, according to the company. By mapping in real time where the products are placed on the sales floor using the IR technology, companies can engage customers in the aisles, help customers find products and manage product placement compliance.