Tag: lidar data

Trimble Applanix: Unmanned aerial vehicles aid survey efforts

L’avion jaune, a French UAV and aerial photogrammetry company, uses the Trimble Applanix APX-20 UAV GNSS-inertial OEM solution and a YellowScan VX-20 lidar on its M600 multirotor UAV. (Image: L’Avion Jaune)

The breakdown of limestone cliffs generates landslides and loose debris that threatens the environment, people and wildlife below. These conditions make it impossible to safely operate traditional survey equipment from the ground for landslide detection. Using UAVs for direct georeferencing is an efficient way to take traditional survey efforts to the sky and enables users to accurately assess land formations while mitigating risk.

One way to implement direct georeferencing on UAV platforms is with the Trimble APX-20 UAV, which is a GNSS-inertial OEM solution that increases the mapping efficiency of small UAVs. It consists of small, low power, precision GNSS and inertial hardware components and POSPac UAV post-mission differential GNSS-inertial office software. The APX-20 UAV eliminates the need for ground control points and reduces the sidelap required to be flown per flight.

The APX-20 UAV contains a precision, survey-grade GNSS receiver and dual inertial measurement units (IMU), so it automatically supports integration on gimballed platforms without requiring an external interface to an autopilot or on a mount. It computes at 100 hz using the embedded IMU while simultaneously logging the raw IMU data from both the internal and external IMU at 200 hz for post-processing in POSPac UAV. The postprocessed position and orientation solutions are suitable for direct georeferencing of cameras, lidars and other sensors.

Trimble Applanix UAV Put to the Test

For fast and safe landslide detection, the Trimble Applanix APX-20 UAV for direct georeferencing was put to the test using a Multirotor M600 manufactured by French company L’Avion Jaune equipped with a VX-20 lidar sensor made by YellowScan, also a French company. This combination produces cost-effective and reliable high-resolution UAV lidar-derived DTMs and 3D models for hazard mitigation and planning.
L’Avion Jaune has performed more than 600 successful mapping missions globally. After pursuing mapping activities with mainly crewed aircraft, it began developing UAVs for long-distance applications for marine, tropical forest and polar regions such as the Multirotor M600/YellowScan VX-20, which offers high-precision, cost-effective and efficient aerial mapping.

The APX-20 UAV and the M600/YellowScan VX-20 were combined and deployed to evaluate landslide activities in France. The mission parameters for this configuration included: high point density; x, y, z precision of 5 cm; access to dangerous zones; map generation under dense vegetation area, and fast deployment. The goal of this project was to enable the implementation of safety and prevention plans for the protection of pedestrians, infrastructure, wildlife and more.

During the six-hour duration of the project, the APX-20 UAV and M600/YellowScan VX-20 configuration was flown four times for 15 minutes each during sunrise. It flew more than 75 ha in surface area with a flight speed of 5 m/s at 60 m in the air, following the topography. Checkpoints were surveyed with differential GPS following the conclusion of the flights. Data processing included computation of the georeferenced trajectory, matching flight lines and point cloud classification, which took two days.

The Results

The flexible UAV deployment of resources enabled the acquisition of dense point clouds and the generation of DTM in less than three days. During this project L’Avion Jaune was able to optimize the choice of material and discover the best practices to collect and process lidar data for mapping in dense vegetation.

April 10, 2023
OxTS product now available with additional features

Image: OxTS

OxTS has released its Georeferencer 2.5 with the anyNAV feature and eight lidar sensors from RoboSense. Georeferencer 2.5 featuring anyNAV software is suitable for survey applications.

Users of Georeferencer 2.5 with anyNAV feature enabled can boresight payloads and georeference lidar data using the user’s navigation data. The anyNAV software enables lidar surveyors to create accurate pointclouds quickly.

Georeferencer 2.5 now takes navigation data from third-party inertial navigation systems, which enables users to use that data to georeference raw lidar data from multiple sensor families. The resulting data can then be viewed in many pointcloud viewer software packages.

March 31, 2023
How navigation data is used for video game development

The realistic racetrack in the Assetto Corsa game. (Screenshot: Dronezone)

News from OxTS

The possible applications for 3D point clouds are almost endless. When you think of lidar, the mind naturally wanders to applications of the autonomous vehicle navigation or geospatial survey type. In fact, navigation and lidar data are useful for all manner of applications—including video game development.

When a new technology, such as lidar, is first brought to market, a number of factors affect its price. Initially, the cost-per-unit is likely to be high to ensure recovery of research and development costs. However, as technology ages and manufacturers innovate and bring out new versions, price invariably comes down.

As this process occurs, it puts the technology into the hands of a much wider audience, increasing the number of new and innovative use cases.

Point clouds are useful for many wide and varied applications. Autonomous vehicle developers may use point clouds to aid object detection and avoidance, while geospatial surveyors could use a point cloud to determine road degradation over time or monitor the rate of coastal erosion.

These are however some of the more common use cases. But how can navigation data be used in applications such as video game development? Let’s first look at how navigation data works alongside lidar.

Lidar and Inertial Navigation

To create a 3D point cloud, users must combine the position, navigation and timing measurements from an inertial navigation system (INS) with raw lidar data. Without accurate INS data, it is impossible to create a point cloud. This is because the lidar sensor needs to know its position in space and time and its orientation.

To avoid complicated software engineering work, simple-to-use software such as OxTS Georeferencer is available to georeference the lidar data. Once georeferencing is complete, OxTS Georeferencer will create a PCAP file that users can view in many point cloud viewer software applications.

Enter Dronezone

As lidar technology becomes more accessible, new and inventive ways to use point clouds are coming to light. OxTS partner Dronezone is one such company finding new uses for lidar.

Dronezone builds and hires out professional unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They build UAV payloads with Velodyne VLP-16 lidar sensors and OxTS INS devices they sell or rent to customers.

Cover: Kunos Simulazioni

Dronezone’s customers have used the payloads for a variety of projects. One used a payload to scan an aging railway bridge looking for possible weaknesses and deterioration over time. Besides geospatial mapping projects, Dronezone is seeing an increasing need to cater to niche applications.

Dronezone undertook surveying the Transylvania Motor Ring racetrack for a video-game developer Kunos Simulazioni, which publishes racing simulator “Assetto Corsa.” The company wanted an accurate digital representation of the track contours. The results, which you can see in the video and screenshots, are particularly impressive.

Point cloud of the Transylvania Motor Ring. (Image: Dronezone)

Point cloud of the Transylvania Motor Ring. (Image: Dronezone)

Racing Simulator

For this project, Dronezone moved away from traditional UAV-based mapping. To survey the track precisely, the company used the flexibility of its UAV payload by repurposing the hardware for use on a car. With many off-the-shelf solutions, this wouldn’t have been possible. The setup enabled Dronezone to complete multiple laps of the track and create a high-density point cloud.

“Using different components to build a UAV payload meant that Dronezone could reuse the hardware and build a different setup suitable for use on a car,” said Paris Austin, head of new product technology, OxTS. “It’s this flexibility that allows Dronezone to serve multiple applications.”

To further improve results, Dronezone used the Boresight Calibration feature within OxTS Georeferencer to calibrate the coordinate frames of the lidar sensor and INS. This process, which involves a short survey of two retro-reflective targets, increases the clarity of the final results and eliminates blurring and double vision.

The OxTS INS and lidar payload on an auto for racetrack mapping. (Photo: Dronezone)

The quality of the data produced has given Dronezone confidence it can win more business from the same customer to map further tracks for the game.

This is just one example of the new and unique applications we’re developing alongside our customers.

The original article appears on the OxTS website.

October 17, 2022
Engaging data for scooters, cars and trains

Swift Navigation designs, manufactures and integrates GNSS receivers, as well as providing the Skylark wide-area GNSS corrections service. Its markets are automotive, transportation (last mile delivery, commercial trucking, rail), robotics/machine control (construction, mining, precision agriculture, landscaping), UAVs, micromobility and mobile devices and applications.

The company’s technology is compatible and interoperable with most major GNSS receivers for multiple markets. Its Starling positioning engine and Skylark corrections “are scalable to bring precision to legacy low-cost single-frequency receivers, all the way to the most sophisticated state-of-the-art triple-frequency multi-constellation systems,” said Joel Gibson, Swift’s executive vice president of Automotive. “By working with a multitude of receiver vendors for different applications, Swift leverages all constellations and all signals and maximizes the performance required for the application.”

The most accurate and reliable navigation system for every application would take advantage of all available GNSS signals, as well as all available corrections, dead reckoning and fused data from other sensors, such as cameras, lidar and radar. However, of course, that is not possible due to cost, size, weight and power considerations. Swift’s approach to the trade-offs required depends on each use case.

Micromobility

In the area of micromobility (such as scooters), the main constraints for implementing a positioning solution are cost and power, coupled with the challenge of satellite signal outages and multipath in dense urban environments where these vehicles primarily operate, Gibson explained. “Cost-effective dual-frequency GNSS receivers are now showing up in micromobility architectures. Pairing them with our Starling positioning engine, which integrates inertial sensor data and wheel ticks, and augmenting them with Skylark corrections data, makes it possible to meet such compliance requirements as geofencing and limiting sidewalk use.”

Additionally, by achieving decimeter-level positioning, Swift’s micromobility solution makes it easier for both users and service staff to find scooters, which increases the scooter companies’ revenues.

Photo: Swift Navigation

Automotive

In the automotive industry, inertial sensors and wheel odometry are ubiquitous and pair naturally with GNSS to mitigate satellite signal outages, Gibson pointed out. Likewise, cameras and radar — cornerstones of ADAS — are very complementary to GNSS for safety applications, and lidar further complements GNSS in feature-rich environments such as dense urban areas.

Rail

Rail applications, such as Positive Train Control, have traditionally needed an accuracy of one or two meters, coupled with ruggedized hardware. “Swift’s precise positioning solution is deployed across continental rail systems today, and we are now engaging rail OEM and operator programs requiring sub-meter accuracy to ensure track-to-track accuracy and safety requirements in support of the transition to more autonomous rail operations,” said Gibson. “Leading rail companies are also looking for operational efficiencies by transitioning away from the high operational costs of maintaining reference base stations along track routes, instead moving to the more cost effective, reliable and seamless Skylark corrections coverage.”

December 28, 2021
Hexagon selected for Innovate UK rail infrastructure artificial intelligence project

Innovate UK, the United Kingdom’s innovation agency, has selected Hexagon’s Geospatial division to conduct a research project that will result in faster and higher-precision mapping of railway infrastructure through the use of artificial intelligence.

The project is funded by Network Rail, the owner and operator of Great Britain’s railway infrastructure, under its R&D portfolio and delivered by Innovate UK through the SBRI competition, Innovation in Automated Survey Processing for Railway Structure Gauging, Phase One. A small group of teams was selected for this effort.

Image: Hexagon

The project will enable Network Rail to automatically identify and measure railway structures from lidar data, saving valuable time and resources, while also improving planning and operations across the rail network. The current, manual process takes analysts months or even years due to the size of the data and the labor-intensive tasks involved.

“The combination of cross-sectional area, shape, length and speed all place a space requirement on today’s railway,” said James Sweeney, senior engineer at Network Rail. “We anticipate this project will offer us a more efficient way to capture, analyse and measure railway features along 20,000 miles of track, which is important to railway safety and the growth and capacity of our network.”

Network Rail collects detailed information about its track and the surrounding features, such as bridges and tunnels. The data is then analyzed to assess clearances between trains and the infrastructure around them, which is key to safety.

Image: Hexagon

The new project aims to automate the extraction and calculation of railway features from sensor data, leveraging AI to automatically analyze point-cloud data, identify different structure types, and perform measurements on the structures. The data will be collected from reality capture solutions from Hexagon’s Geosystems division.

“Network Rail, supported by Innovate UK, is leading the way in the use of AI to automate rail structure identification and measurement,” said Mladen Stojic, president of Hexagon’s Geospatial division. “We are excited to be part of a project that can help transform the gauging process for UK railways.”

September 4, 2020
Lidar pairs with unmanned helicopter

Photo: Lidar USA

The UAV market has been growing rapidly for the past several years, especially in the U.S. with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 107 regulations becoming active in August 2016. Before then, it was impossible to tell what systems were real and would weather the marketplace, and which were just a dream. Multicopters dominate the marketplace. (DJI’s M600 — out since 2016 — offers a 1–6-kilogram payload option). In late 2019, InnoFlight introduced the Galaxy 950 unmanned helicopter, a single-rotor platform capable of carrying more than 6 kilograms. It is available with battery power only, providing flights under an hour, but soon will support a gas-driven option for flights exceeding 2 hours. The system can be ready to deploy in less than 10 minutes.

Lidar USA provides a range of available lidar systems weighing about 5 kilograms, which work well with heavy-lift systems such as the Galaxy 950. In 2019, the Optech CL-90 was released; later the same year, the CL-360 hit the market. Lidar USA integrated each scanner into its product family and immediately saw the possibilities with the Galaxy 950.

The Lidar USA CL-series, together with the Galaxy 950, easily falls in the under-55-pound category set by the FAA. This means users can tackle small (5-acre) and large (500- to 5,000-acre) mapping jobs with confidence in their drone platform, the quality of the scan data, and the resulting lidar point cloud. The Galaxy 950 can easily support the CL-series with supporting cameras. The Optech CL-series provides survey-grade lidar accurate data: +/– 0.01 foot from a car on a paved surface. The system can operate from 400 feet with scan lines every inch at speeds of 14 mph (6.3 m/s). Of course, not all pulses make it to the ground due to vegetation, but the Optech CL-series provides up to four echos per pulse with a small beam size of 0.3 milliradians. Depending on the clipping angle, the scan width can range upwards of 1,200 feet, equating to about 34 acres per minute along a corridor. This system provides the surveyor with high-quality, accurate and dense lidar data.

April 1, 2020
Small-scale topo and bathy lidar ready for UAVs

Photo: ASTRALiTe/SBG Systems

The ASTRALiTe Edge is a small-scale topographic and bathymetric scanning lidar that can detect underwater objects, measure shallow water depth and survey critical underwater infrastructure from a small UAV platform.

The patented 2-in-1 topo-bathy Edge can see beneath the water surface at depths of 0–10 meters. It is self-contained with its own INS/GNSS, battery and onboard computer. It weighs under 5 kilograms and is designed for deployment on UAV systems for faster, safer and more accurate bathymetric surveys. From coastal mapping and surveying to infrastructure inspection and military logistics, the applications of this innovative lidar are numerous and widespread.

Geo-Referencing Solution. ASTRALiTe needed a motion and navigation solution for its cutting-edge lidar. “Our requirements included high accuracy along with low size, weight and power,” explained Andy Gisler, director of Lidar Systems. Also, the system needed to be able to apply a PPK correction to the lidar data to provide higher accuracy results to ASTRALiTe’s customers.

Photo: SBG Systems

The company chose the new Quanta georeferencing solution from SBG Systems, an INS designed to be integrated into mobile mapping systems. “The weight of the INS solution was especially important to us,” Gisler said. The Edge scanner will be flown on UAVs, where light payload capacities are required. “The ability to use two GPS antennas was key in our choice as we required good heading knowledge at slow flight speeds,” Gisler said.

Quanta directly and precisely geotags the point cloud in real time and provides even higher performance in post-processing. One year of post-processing with Qinertia, SBG’s in-house PPK software, is offered for UAV applications.

“Accurate and lightweight IMU performance leads to high accuracy lidar point clouds,” Gisler said. “Combined with the ASTRALiTe scanner and lidar performance, point clouds with typical densities of 100-300 pts/m2 and centimeter-level resolution can be achieved.”

April 1, 2020
Bluesky launches MetroVista 3D city models online

San Francisco. (Image: Bluesky)

Highly accurate, UK city-wide 3D models are now available to view and download from Bluesky’s online Mapshop.

The geographically accurate, photo-realistic MetroVista mesh models are available in a variety of formats ready for use in 3D GIS, CAD and other modelling software as well as visualisation, gaming and Virtual Reality workflows.

Captured using Leica’s large-format imagery and lidar hybrid airborne sensor and generated in Skyline’s PhotoMesh software, the Bluesky MetroVista datasets of major UK cities are available online offering a compelling alternative to traditional photogrammetrically produced models.

Now in America. In December, Bluesky launched its 3D data capture programme in the United States. The MetroVista product suite allows high-resolution imagery, both vertical and oblique, to be captured simultaneously with high-accuracy, wide-scale 3D data using an advanced Leica camera, the CityMapper. Specifically designed for 3D city modeling and urban mapping, the system includes a traditional vertical camera as well as survey-grade oblique cameras.

The CityMapper also includes high-performance lidar technology to accurately collect elevation data — even in shadows that are common in urban environments and can make photo-based collection difficult.

“Since launching in the UK the MetroVista product range has received enormous offline interest from sectors such as infrastructure and building development, risk assessment, telecommunications and environmental mapping,” said Rachel Tidmarsh, managing director of Bluesky. “By making the data easy to access and consume via our online Mapshop, we hope to increase the take up from traditional users of 3D models and encourage applications such as smart city management, autonomous vehicle testing, virtual reality experiences and gaming.”

Two seasons in the UK

Bluesky has been capturing MetroVista data in the UK for two flying seasons. Visitors to Bluesky’s Mapshop will initially be able to select an area and download MetroVista mesh models of London, Birmingham and Cambridge with other UK and U.S. cities coming online in the future.

Data can be supplied in a variety of proprietary and open source formats including OBJ, FBX, I3s and 3DML for use in Skyline’s TerraExplorer product suite.

The Bluesky Mapshop also offers complete nationwide coverage of aerial photography from multiple epochs, 3D models, lidar data, thermal mapping and Bluesky’s National Tree Map. Blueskymapshop.com is easy to use and purchasing of data is simple, straightforward and secure. Account options are also available and data can be purchased with a range of easy to understand licence options, including the option of a Sub Contractor Licence.

January 27, 2020
Lidar data fused for understanding of tropical forests

A University of Queensland, Australia, environmental project fused data from terrestrial and UAV lidar collections to estimate forest biomass.

Forest ecosystems contain more biomass than any other ecosystem. Estimating biomass — a critical endeavor to detect the health of ecosystems — can be difficult. Traditional methods can be destructive, such as harvesting trees to measure the weight of the different components.

“We know that forest ecosystems contain more carbon biomass than any other above-ground ecosystem on the planet,” said Kim Calders, Ghent University, on the TERN website. TERN is Australia’s land ecosystem observatory, under the University of Queensland.

It’s estimated that Australian forests store about 10 billion tonnes of carbon, but calculating an exact figure without cutting down trees is difficult. “Traditional methods of estimating aboveground biomass are based on volumes calculated from cut trees and expensive field measurements of tree diameter and height,” Calders said.

Enter 3D-FOREST

The three-year 3D-FOREST project is funded by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office led by Calders and Hans Verbeeck from Ghent University, partnering with Harm Bartholomeus and Martin Herold from Wageningen University.

Tracking progress towards meeting major global environmental agreements and targets, such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and The Paris Agreement, require detailed accounts of carbon stocks and how they’re changing over time.

To meet this need, the 3D-FOREST project is developing new on-ground remote sensing techniques to measure biomass and forest structure and validate global-scale satellite measurements.

“The concept of the project is to capture data to create ‘virtual forests’ with high level detail,” Calders said. “The combination of ‘bottom-up’ terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and ‘top-down’ UAV lidar data improves biomass estimates and knowledge on how we can upscale plot-based measurements to the landscape level.”

Harvesting virtual forests

Representatives of the 3D-FOREST team undertook terrestrial laser scanning and UAV lidar data collection at three TERN sites: the TERN Litchfield Savanna SuperSite in the Northern Territory; the TERN Robson Creek SuperSite and the affiliate TERN Daintree Rainforest SuperSite in Queensland.

Back in the lab, virtual 3D forests created from the lidar data are then ‘virtually harvested’. Quantitative structure models (QSM) digitally weigh individual trees by calculating their volume and converting this to carbon mass.

“These 3D structural metrics and biomass estimates allow us to scale-up the spatial patterns of tree structure and evenness from the 1-hectare plot scale to entire forests,” Calders said. “This information is crucial for more efficient forest management, but also for better understanding of the spatial variation of forest structure in ecosystem models.”

Scaling up to global carbon budgets

As Europe’s, America’s and India’s space agencies get ready to launch satellites to measure and map the planet’s forests in high-resolution 3D, the value of on-ground and UAV lidar data collected by Calders’ team at TERN sites is even more apparent.

The data from 3D-FOREST will be used to calibrate, validate and improve the accuracy of global bio-geophysical satellite data delivered by space missions including the European Space Agency’s BIOMASS, NASA’s GEDI, and the joint Indian Space Research Organisation and NASA NISAR.

“The ability for these space missions to scale-up estimates of forest biomass to the global carbon budget and monitor ecosystem disturbances is dependent on the high-quality ground reference measurements collected at ecosystem research infrastructure sites, including TERN’s,” Calders said. “The emerging methods and technologies for data collection, and the speed of their development, are truly exciting.”

The field campaign was made possible thanks to collaborations with the CSIRO, James Cook University and the Australian Government Department of Environment and Energy.

For more information on the TERN Ecosystem Processes platform, its network of 12 open-access SuperSites and eddy covariance flux towers, and the data they collect, click here or explore the open data via TERN’s Data Discovery Portal.

November 15, 2018
Dewberry to update lidar for Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands after hurricane

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has selected Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm, to collect and process Quality Level 1 topographic lidar data of Puerto Rico, including the islands of Culebra, Vieques and Isla de Mona; and the U.S. Virgin Islands of St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas.

The new data will be used to identify the impact of Category 5 Hurricane Maria, which struck the territories in September 2017.

Digital elevation model of El Yunque National Forest produced from 2016 topographic lidar data. (Image: Dewberry)

The project will be completed under Dewberry’s Geospatial Product and Services Contract with USGS to support the agency’s 3D Elevation Program.

Dewberry has been performing mapping, mitigation planning and sea-level rise studies in Puerto Rico for more than 10 years, primarily serving the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

In a similar effort, the firm recently collected and processed more than 3,400 square miles of topographic and bathymetric lidar data for USGS, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

For that project, the data were collected prior to Hurricane Maria’s landfall, and the new data will be assessed in comparison to that dataset to evaluate the storm’s impact. Lidar data have not been collected for the U.S. Virgin Islands in more than 10 years.

Digital Elevation Model of the Guajataca Lake Dam produced from 2016 topographic lidar data. (Image: Dewberry)

The new lidar data will be collected, processed and delivered by the spring of 2019. Dewberry will perform all ground surveys and its geospatial team will complete the processing and creation of digital elevation models and other ancillary products. The firm’s subconsultant, Leading Edge Geomatics, will perform the data acquisition using two Riegl VQ1560i sensors.

“The pre-storm data we had collected and processed under our prior task order was instrumental in assisting FEMA, its partners and the local Puerto Rican government in planning and conducting its post-Maria disaster recovery work,” said Amar Nayegandhi, CP, CMS, GISP, vice president of geospatial and technology services for Dewberry. “The new data are being collected at a higher density to also support the infrastructure community and will show how the storm has altered the terrain.”

June 6, 2018