Challenging UAV LiDAR Use Cases
May 22, 2018
Monitoring the Brazilian savanna with lidar and RGB sensors onboard remotely piloted aircraft systems
July 28, 2019
Over recent years, light detection and ranging (lidar) sensor technology has rapidly evolved and miniaturized. The reduced sensor size and weight have opened more doors for lidar sensors to be carried onboard unmanned aircraft systems (UASs). Compared with traditional airborne lidar mapping, UAS platforms offer more flexibility in terms of flight design and data collection, rapid response capabilities, and potentially cost at local mapping scales.
UAS-based lidar studies have primarily been focused on monitoring vegetation structure, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and so forth. A comparison between UAS and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS)-derived plant height for crop monitoring was made in. Descriptive statistics derived from polygon grids were analyzed and a correlation R2 = 0.91 was found in plant height derived from both methods. A lidar-based perception and guidance system was built on a helicopter to perform obstacle detection and avoidance, terrain following, and close-range inspection, and a high success rate was claimed by the authors. [register below to download full whitepaper]
