YDQA: Ep 25 - "What is LiDar drone technology and how is it applied?"

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John Dickow: [00:00:00] hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Drone Questions Answered. I'm John Dicker with the Drone Launch Academy.

Here to find the answers to the questions that you submit. And today's question is, What is lidar Drone technology? How does it work and how is it applied? So today I have with me Jackson Rector Jackson is a drone pilot and also a lidar technician with Wiser Consultants. Thanks for joining me today, Jackson.

Jackson Rector: Absolutely, It's nice to be here.

John Dickow: I just kind of wanna give you an opportunity to introduce yourself, kind of talk about what you do with wiser consultants, how

Jackson: you use drones. Absolutely. Wiser is a, LIDAR surveying and engineering company, and my role with, wiser is, basically their entire aviation department is me.

I maintain the, the drones. I plan all the flights. I execute the flights and then I take, the data that I collect, from the aerial unit, and I process that into, what the rest of the company uses, for its product. So I'm their drone pilot, and then I also help with, processing and collecting the LIDAR data.

John Dickow: Very cool. Very [00:01:00] cool. And is it, I'm assuming a lot of the kind of work you do is like mapping and that kind of thing, or, I don't want to give away too much when it comes to our question, but that's really

Jackson: cool. Absolutely. Yeah, it's, on a broad spectrum. You are mapping and surveying large areas.

also just some nice progress photos, you know, completed job photos that you can collect with standard drones as well. But, basically making maps and making nice file formats. data that you can present to, to.

John Dickow: Awesome that you get to fly a drone for your full-time job.

A little jealous.

let's just start with this before we kind of get into the meat of the question. What is LIDAR technology? Because I remember I first heard about it just a few years ago when, the latest iPhone had come out and it had LIDAR technology, and I was like, what the heck is this?

So could you just explain what Lidar technology is?

Jackson: So. LIDAR stands for light detection and ranging. that's the common name that, I've always heard. Some people have different, terms for the acronym, but it's always been light detection and ranging. And [00:02:00] basically what it is, no matter if it's on a drone or on the back of a car or in your iPhone, it's a sensor that shoots out.

Thousands or millions of laser, light points. The light points bounce off of something, whatever it hits, and then comes back to your sensor. And then that is all collected and processed into whatever you're looking for. it's radar but with light. So you're sending out light points, you are measuring what it bounces off of.

and the time and the distance that it takes to bounce off and come back to you. That's, that's essentially lidar.

John Dickow: Well, thank you that, that kind of sets the foundation here for this question, it kind of makes sense now, and especially when you harken back with your iPhone camera drones now having that kind of ability.

So if a drone has lidar technology, Does that work any different than it would be, say, on your phone? how would it be used and

Jackson: applied? so it doesn't work fundamentally any different, depending on what you are using it on, Oftentimes at my company we have a mobile lidar unit on the back of a, truck and an aerial lidar unit on an [00:03:00] aircraft.

And those two work hand in hand to, map or survey the desired area. so the fundamentally, whether it's on your phone, whether it's in a vehicle, whether it's on an airplane or a drone, you're sending out. laser points and you're measuring what comes back. The difference is in the application. So your cell phone will probably be able to, detect your face or something close up to it.

on the back of a vehicle, you can have a very large unit, it can have very good detail within hundredths of centimeters. and you can map. Anywhere you can drive a car. So usually standard roads, on an aircraft though, you're gonna be able to cover a, a lot larger of a distance.

and that is the advantages of drone lidar. we usually run a vehicle down the main road that we're mapping to get very, very, accurate data within. tents or hundredths of a centimeter, and then we run aerial over the entire project to collect the outer boundaries that the [00:04:00] car can't go to, and that that sensor can't reach.

And aerial lidar, depending on. The settings that you are flying at. So, your distance from the ground, the distance between, the lines that you're flying, your speed, everything, you know, can get into different variables. But the main thing is it's not gonna be as accurate as on the back of a vehicle really close to the ground.

But the great thing, like I said, is you can cover large distances we're talking accuracy of centimeters or tenths of centimeters. So, in the grand scheme of things, it's, it's very precise, very accurate, and can be used in a lot of different ways.

John Dickow: so the drone that you're using, can I ask, I don't know if like a consumer level drone has lidar technology, what kind of drone do you fly?

Jackson: we fly a, DJI Matrice 300. so it's a consumer level, aircraft. It's on the pricier side of consumer level. we don't have the drone with lidar technology built into it.

we have, a [00:05:00] drone to carry our package, our payload. So we have the Matrice 300, and then we have a lidar unit, I believe the G O Q five 15. From the company, G O Q in, Huntsville, Alabama. they make different lidar units for different aircraft. So kind of you can customize what you want to. We picked our aircraft and we picked, the lidar unit that that can attach and it attaches just like, any other camera system that would attach to, the D g I would.

John Dickow: Wow. And you mentioned mapping, it's kind of like one of the, the larger uses for lidar, with wiser consultants. Do you mind just giving a couple examples of the kind of areas, whether it's who your clients are or just what in general you're mapping?

Jackson: Absolutely. we tend to work with cities, counties and overall state, departments of transportation. Most commonly we'll be doing, an interstate, an off ramp or a, a road of that nature. And what we do is we'll scan the entire area, and then with lidar, you're measuring what the light [00:06:00] hits and how high it is.

You're getting millions of data points and you're processing that into a point cloud. So then within that point cloud, you can strip away different layers and take away all the trees. You can take away the leaves, the wires, the power lines, everything you can get just the ground. And you use the ground to create, an orthogrametric map.

So within our lidar unit, we also have two side facing cameras, the slight angle, and those also capture at intervals. And then you can stitch those together and make an or gram metric, map. And that's a big part of any, drone operation.

So we do that, but you need the surface for that. you need to know where the ground is. In addition to that, we take lidar and we upload it into a point cloud, and then within that point cloud you can see everything, the paint lines on a road, whether it's dashed or solid, the curb, the brake line behind the curb, the drainage area where the water's gonna flow.

And so we take that point cloud into, another computer system. And then we just collect it all. And so whether it's running computer [00:07:00] processes or whether it's doing it manually We're getting in there, we're drawing lines right on top of where that paint is. whether it's a stop bar or a turn signal, the dash line down the road that you're driving.

And you can place lines within the data right on the curb, right on the sidewalk where it goes. And so once you've collected everything, you can then remove the point cloud and you have a a three D model, to the 10th of a foot of that interstate, exit that off ramp, whatever you're mapping, and then you can pass that along either to your client or you can pass it along to.

your own engineering firm. we have our own design firm that we can pass it off to And then you have a three D model. imagine a blueprint, but in three D space that you can manipulate, you can say, okay, this is exactly how, I 65 at this spot looks. This is exactly how this road looks.

We wanna add a sidewalk, we want to add another lane. This is how we move it. and it's so much easier than looking at a blueprint that was drawn in the [00:08:00] eighties and saying, okay, well this is the scale and let's get the rulers out and let's start. You have a a three D model that you can then manipulate and then you can bring.

The point cloud back in and collect assets. So you can say, this is exactly where this street sign is, this is exactly where this stoplight is, where the strain pole, the catch base and everything on that road, you can in three D space, in the real world, you can say this is exactly where, that is very cool.

That's the bread and butter, that's the main thing that we do. and it's become revolutionary, in the transportation industry.

John Dickow: honestly we've talked to on this, even on this podcast, other people who are leveraging drone and map areas, whether it's a parking lot or a construction zone, home inspections.

But it sounds like LIDAR technology just takes everything to the next level when it comes to position and accuracy. And that's really cool. One last question, ' a lot of our audience where. They're kind of just starting off in the drone game.

They're trying to, you know, look to apply either a drone to their job or, or find a job that uses drones. you're in the thick of it. Do you have any advice for [00:09:00] somebody who's looking to use a drone in their work?

Jackson: My advice, can be varied and it's, and it's based on my own experience. the aerial industry and the drone industry right now is still emerging and people are still finding new ways to work with drones. And so my general advice when you're looking to get into the drone industry, I.

One, you get your part 1 0 7, you get some hands-on training, flying specifically manually flying a lot of these drones that we have now are great and they have G p s and they have position holding all of that is amazing. But there's always gonna be an instance where something goes wrong and you need to manually take control of the aircraft.

And so really having your fundamentals down is really important. Uh, on top of that, just being open. To learning other aspects of a company or a job is really important. I came from a solely based background. That's college's what I working in. And when I moved into my position here, they [00:10:00] needed a full-time pilot.

They needed someone to fly, to plant, do everything I knew how to do, but they also wanted me to learn the lidar aspect of it, the computer processing aspect of it. I found in, looking around at different jobs and working in the industry, Drones are emerging still, but they're usually supplemental to a company or a position.

And so if you can find, a company that you enjoy the atmosphere of, and, another technology something that you really enjoy doing in construction or in mapping, utilities, whatever it be, and then you can bring that. Flight certification and that experience to that position, you can be multifaceted.

So you're not always flying every day. You're also integral in other ways to your company. And, and that can only grow. but that would be my advice. That's

John Dickow: great. thank you for sharing that. And thank you for coming on today and answering this question. This is Jackson Rector. with, wiser Consultants.

We'd love to have you on again, if we have a, a similar question when it comes to [00:11:00] the lidar space in mapping. and in the meantime, you, our audience can submit your own question and we will find the answer for you. You can submit a question over y dqa.io or submit a question over the drone launch Connect, private community.

If you're a part of that, we'll see that and we'll go ahead and, uh, take your question, find the answer. In the meantime, we'll see you in the sky.