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eNewsletter March 2008 eNews Archive

LiDAR Advances and Challenges

by Rod Franklin, Reporter

Standing room-only crowds at this year's

International LiDAR Mapping Forum (ILMF) An expanded version of this story
conference in Denver provided evidence of the will be featured in the Spring 2008
technology's status as a three-dimensional issue of Imaging Notes, which will
mapping technique that continues to grow in be mailed and posted on the website
popularity. The two-day event, held Feb. 21-22, in April.
included workshops for beginners, as well as
advanced presentations detailing many of the technical advantages and challenges associated
with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR).

Attendance was more than double that of the 2007 conference. With more than 580 delegates
from 32 countries participating, registrants set up nearly twice as many exhibit booths this
year. Some vendors reported substantial new orders from the show floor.

The healthy turnout was reflective of growth that in recent years has added variety to the list of
players contributing to the LiDAR art. Since its genesis in the mid-1990s, LiDAR has advanced
a respectable distance beyond the realm of hardware production. Affiliate roles now include
system operator, support services vendor and government sponsor. However, though certain
developments have pushed the modality into more diversified applications, LiDAR remains a
technological work in progress. In many scenarios, it continues to serve in an adjunctive
capacity to alternate imaging techniques, rather than taking the lead role.

Some of the reasons for this subordinate role have to do with market forces and the
requirements of individual projects. Others have to do with technology.

James Wilder Young, LiDAR manager for the Sanborn Map Company of Colorado Springs,
profiled an industry that has evolved significantly since its commercial debut, with a number of
defining parameters improving by orders of magnitude. For instance, systems which once
hummed along at a meager 5 to 10 Khz now operate in the 150 to 300 Khz range. Another
development has been the advent of multi-pulsed LiDAR, which effectively put an end to one-
and two-pulse configurations. Also, the nature of LiDAR data itself—typically millions of
pulsed light elevation data points that require formatting, importation and processing—isn't
quite as vexing a problem as it used to be for those off-the-shelf software packages that are
designed to groom it into textured vistas of urban and rural beauty.

Despite these advances, LiDAR has its limits. Young observed that mapping options such as
interferometric synthetic aperture radar are better tailored for certain projects. And on a
broader level, LiDAR suffers from the same kind of software development gap that plagues
other high-tech industries, due to the fact that programs coded to work with advanced LiDAR
hardware generally fail to optimize the full potential of device circuitry. Young showed a slide
which asserted that the LiDAR market "is growing all around the world, but LiDAR handling
software is not," and identified three-dimensional urban modeling, automated classification
and vegetation mapping as markets where this is especially problematic.

Others who spoke at the conference share his thoughts on this issue. Jennifer Whitacre, who
gave a presentation on the simultaneous use of LiDAR with large format camera imaging, cites
automatic data filtering as a feature that LiDAR experts rank high on their wish list of
processing functionality. Specifically, she said, they want filtering capability robust enough to
processing functionality. Specifically, she said, they want filtering capability robust enough to
"clean up" LiDAR points so topographic features in complex elevation profiles can be
distinguished, but not so aggressive that the targeted data itself is also stripped away.

"I think the higher technology systems are becoming so advanced that software does lag
behind," said Whitacre, who handles LiDAR sales for Kansas City company M.J. Harden
(now a GeoEye company). See Figure 1.

Figure 1. This LiDAR image of Kansas City was generated by M.J. Harden
Associates Inc. from unedited first return data captured at 0.9-m postings.
Since the raw data was not modified by point classification at this stage,
building features took on a rather spiky appearance.

The firm currently uses a software package that's capable of providing everything from data
calibration to project management, tile parsing and data filtering. But because any given
mapping assignment may call for modifications that program developers can't plan for in
advance, "it's really important to be able to go in and tweak those algorithms to make them fit
your specific project," Whitacre says. "I think all software has to be tweaked."

In his presentation on feature extraction from LiDAR data, Overwatch Textron Systems Chief
Operating Officer Stuart Blundell observed that "software development is always chasing after
advances in sensor capability." To some degree, that's just natural in the high-tech imaging
marketplace: "I think it's always kind of been this way. It's a function of the physics (and) how
optics are built, and (because) engineering capabilities are so sophisticated."

Blundell is dedicated to resolving the specific requirements of LiDAR in three areas that create
bottlenecks during the feature extraction process. The first of these has to do with the use of
multiple sensors during data acquisition. A second chore that taxes software involves the need
to merge RGB color data or intensity data with XYZ data points. Third, high spatial resolutions
and very large datasets present an additional set of challenges. Logjams result when the
software chokes while trying to accommodate all of these characteristics of LiDAR. According
to Blundell, these bottlenecks are most likely to occur at the data registration stage, during
feature extraction, or when attributes are applied to the data so it can be useful in a GIS
database.

If LiDAR data can be manipulated in a way that aligns with GIS-ready vector or shapefile
formats, mapping experts should be able to move beyond the mere visualization of a scene and
into the extraction of smaller physical features from within that scene. LiDAR Analyst is an
Overwatch Textron Systems software product designed to provide this functionality in 2004 as
a plug-in for ArcGIS and ERDAS Imagine (and available in 2008 as a plug-in for Remote View
and ELT).

Denver's ILMF conference showed that the ranks of LiDAR technologists are swelling. With
more brains working in tandem and a very capable array of hardware waiting, LiDAR should
be well positioned into the future as a modal option for digital mapping experts. But, as
Blundell observes, "the software guys like us now have to deliver on that the best we can."
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Index of eNewsletters

#35 - DigitalGlobe Names CEO, ILMF Summary, News from RapidEye, MetaCarta, Merrick,
Hexagon, Aerometric & Tuck Mapping, GeoCue & LizardTech
#34 - Implications of Privacy Laws for Geolocation Companies, DigitalGlobe 8-Band Research
Results, George Clooney Satellite Project for Sudan
#33 - News about Solar Maps, CompassData, SPADAC, Astrium, Environmental Monitoring,
LizardTech
#32 - Jim Crocker of Lockheed Martin Speaks, GeoInt News, Colorado Companies to Watch
Awards
#31 - GeoInt Symposium and Fall Issue Previews
#30 - IGARSS Summary, News from NGA, ITT, Merrick, ERDAS
#29 - Hexagon buys Intergraph; News from ESRI, Intermap, ITT, PCI Geomatics, Pictometry
#28 - Trimble Acquires Definiens, Infoterra's TanDEM-X Launches, News from Merrick,
MapMart, EarthData, Intergraph
#27 - Obama's CTO to Keynote IGARSS, News from InfoTerra, Intermap, ERDAS, RapidEye
#26 - Space Data Center Formed for SSA; Vexcel and ERDAS News; Join the Forum for EO in
June
#25 - News from Intermap, MDA, Merrick, and Reports on Haiti's Disaster Relief
#24 - Director Annoucement, Updates on Haiti, and More Imaging News
#23 - Imagery focuses on Haiti + Deforestation Tool, NGA SAR Contracts
#22 - Climate News from Copenhagen
#21 - News Roundup from GeoInt Symposium Intergraph, ERDAS, DigitalGlobe, Appistry &
NJVC
#20 - Iranian Nuclear Facility Image
#19 - Remote Sensing GIS Summit Summary from ESRI U.C.
#18 - ESRI User Conference News Roundup
#17 - Intermap's AccuTerra Wins Apple Design Award
#16 - Reports on 3 Conferences: NSS, GITA and SPAR
#15 - RapidEye First Image and Conference Deadlines
#14 - Northrop Grumman Buys 3001; National Geographic Closes MetaLens; GeoEye-1
Launches
#13 - Climate Change Implications for National Security
#12 - LiDAR Advances and Challenges
#11 - ASAT Missile Hits Satellite Target
#10 - Launch of RADARSAT-2 and Ball’s Opticks Open Source Software
#9 - United Nations, Google and Cisco Partner to Monitor Progress on UN Millennium
Development Goals
#8 - ESRI and Spot Image Are Co-founders of Planet Action
#7 - WorldView-1 Launch & Digital Earth Final Overview
#6 - Google Earth Enterprise Announcements & Digital Earth Technical Advances
#6 - Google Earth Enterprise Announcements & Digital Earth Technical Advances
#5 - Senate Committee Hears Remarks on Earth Science Research
#4 - The Weather Channel's Use of Satellite Imagery
#3 - Earth Observations Decadal Study Released
#2 - MicroSatellite Successfully Launched for U.S. Air Force
#1 - Microsoft Virtual Earth™ 3D Releasing Tuesday

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