“Lidar is the mapping and navigation technology of this age”

Ananda Fowler Manager, Terrestrial Laser Scanning Software Development, RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems

RIEGL VZ-400i 3D Laser Scanner – redefining productivity!’ Please elaborate.

The standard for productivity in 3D Laser Scanning extrapolates to a few key factors: area coverage, point density and spatial accuracy. The total workflow to produce a point cloud combining these factors must include planning, acquisition, registration, adjustment, filtering, and export. The VZ-400i will be the first commercially available 3D Laser Scanner with the processing power to execute all of these processes, in near-real-time. What this means is that the scanner will be able to produce georeferenced point clouds without the nee d for additional postprocessing, eliminating post-processing results in serious time-savings when considering overall productivity.

Please explain briefly major updates of RIEGL’s Terrestrial Laser Scanning Software Suite.

Foremost is the complete reconstruction of our point cloud storage technology. With this update, we’ve introduced a new point format along with an SDK for it that will take us into the future. The same format will be used for Terrestrial, Mobile, Airborne and future systems’ data and will allow us to provide drag and drop support between all of these data types.

A good example of the new technology is the introduction of the instant toggle between scan attributes. Once loaded, a user can now instantly switch between true color, reflectance, deviation and any of the 20+ other attributes produced by our laser scanners.

Combined with our new Filtering Tools and Registration capabilities, the workflow for Terrestrial data processing has become much easier.

In the near future, we’ll release a few add-ons that will provide faster data export to more formats and work to make the transition from the instrument to the cloud far simpler. This new set of tools makes that possible.

How do you see the growth potential of Laser Scanning business in next few years.

Lidar is the mapping and navigation technology of this age. This means we will continue to see growth in the technology and adoption in many more applications. As the technology becomes more widely adopted by a larger audience, awareness and competition will continue to force prices down. The demand for realtime will grow exponentially as systems reach video framerates and reach distances far enough to enable truly autonomous navigation in the very near future. Some form of laser scanners will be in phones, on vehicles, robots, machines, and will enable such an incredible level of accuracy and detail in 3D maps, that augmented reality will become a reality soon. The professional and scientific instruments we develop and manufacture will serve as the foundation for the navigation and mapping services of the future.