Drone LIDAR

Integrating Drone LiDAR Into Your Business. Propelling by Microdrones


Propelling: 10 Things to Know about Drone LiDAR and your Business

With Irene Jimenez

In the surveying, engineering, inspection, mining, and construction industries, there is a strong buzz about LiDAR — and for good reason. These industries are experiencing intense benefits from the technology, which are allowing teams to safely complete more projects in a fraction of the time, without sacrificing data quality.

If you have ever had to access challenging terrain, deal with heavy vegetation, or complete an extremely time-consuming surveying or mapping project, then this podcast with Irene Jimenez is for you. Jimenez is the sales manager for southern Europe for Microdrones, so she’s seen this technology in action through countless projects. “LiDAR is a technology that has existed for some years now,” said Jimenez, “but the applications that drone LiDAR offers have been opening new opportunities for our clients.”

Enjoy this episode of Propelling, where Irene discusses the benefits and advantages of Integrating drone LiDAR into your business.

Don’t have time to listen? Below are the top ten take-aways from Jimenez’s podcast:

10 Things to Know about Drone LiDAR and your Business

1.  Drone LiDAR can increase your profits

“You save time in the field and you save time in the process. You can have more projects — and, therefore, you can have more business going at one time.”

2.  LiDAR is great in areas with thick vegetation . . .

“One of the main benefits of having a LiDAR is the capability of being able to go through vegetation. For projects where, with photogrammetry, you would not be able to have a view of the ground, with LiDAR, this is no longer a barrier.”

LiDAR can penetrate multiple layers of thick vegetation

3.  . . . but LiDAR is not only for use in areas with thick vegetation

“Sometimes LiDAR can be positioned as something that you would use only if you need to go through lands with vegetation, but actually you can use it anywhere and just be more efficient, be more productive with your time, and in this way do more projects, do more business, and keep on keeping going towards more success.

4. With drone LiDAR, teams can work more safely in hard-to-access areas

“We worked with EDF, the national French electric company. They needed to scan a dam and some water banks. Normally, these were areas that were very difficult and dangerous to access. This is where we can see the benefits of the drone.”

A pointcloud of a dam created with LiDAR

5.  Drone LiDAR completes jobs in a fraction of the time

“EDF had to scan three kilometers of banks and told me that, with traditional methods, this would have taken weeks because you need to work through the trees and you need to go over all of this. But with drones, it only took them 110 minutes to fly over these three kilometers of banks and also the dam.”

6.  Drone LiDAR quickly produces high-quality data

“After around 30 minutes of processing the data, EDF already had a colorized point cloud of very good quality. Processing the data with traditional methods would have taken them at least 10 to 12 hours. This is one perfect example of how we gain efficiency with drone LiDAR. In doing it faster, but also in the processing.”

7.  Drone LiDAR is simple — much more simple than a helicopter

“One of the advantages of drone LiDAR is the cost. With other kinds of aerial LiDAR, like when used with helicopters, the cost can go very, very high. Just deploying the helicopter is complicated and takes time. Rather than just getting to the terrain, setting up your drone, using mdCockpit to plan your flight, and then the flight is practically almost automated. At the end, you end up with a great quality dataset.”

A colorized pointcloud of a river bank created by using LiDAR

8.  Microdrones mdLiDAR is a complete solution — and that’s important

“Microdrones is the only provider of end-to-end drone LiDAR solutions. We have fully integrated systems. We don’t only offer a drone or a payload or a software, but we really own the full process of our integrated systems.

It is very important to have a fully integrated system because there is communication between all of our components, from the drone to the planning software we use, mdCockpit, to the payload, to the softwares we use to process the data. In this way, we can ensure that, at the end, you're going to have a good experience and high quality data to make better decisions.”

9.  Consolidated support is good when investing in new technologies

“I think one of the main strengths of Microdrones is that we're able to support you with a full solution. With other UAV systems, there is a drone with one brand, the payload is another brand, and the integration happened with another company. When there is an issue, users don’t know who to call. It can be a headache dealing with a number of different contacts. With Microdrones, that's not the case. There is one point of contact and we'll be here to support you in every aspect of your experience. We have our team of engineers who will provide solutions, and one point of contact to support all of your needs. We have been in the market for 10 years. There's a lot of experience on our team; we know what we're doing. Surveying and mapping are day-to-day activities for us.”

10.  Drone LiDAR will improve your workflow

“Challenge yourself to ask, ‘how can I be better in my current workflow? Which kind of tools can make me better?’ This is where drone LiDAR is very strong. It can reduce your time in the field, can reduce your time for processing the data, and can deliver very high-quality data sets for you to build the final deliverables for your clients. And all of that will increase your business.”

Would you like to learn more about how you can put drone LiDAR to work for your business? CLICK HERE to get in touch with one of our systems experts.