RIEGL at the First European LiDAR Mapping Forum in The Hague

When Peter Rieger, Product Manager Airborne Laser Scanning, was asked last March by Alastair MacDonald, Chairman ELMF 2010, to join the Technical Committee for this event, we considered this as a gesture of appreciation for our technical standards and our innovation potential, and were, thus, delighted.

The first LiDAR Mapping Conference in Europe was to take place November 30th -  December 1st, 2010 in The Hague, The Netherlands.
We decided to display highlights from our main branches, that is, terrestrial, mobile and airborne laser scanning, at our booth. VZ-1000 and LMS-Q680i met with lively interest as well as MLS demo drives outside the building.
 
A RIEGL workshop focusing on Mobile Laser Scanning treated basic tools and potentials of mobile data acquisition. Current technical developments, like the modular camera system VMX-250-CS6, were introduced.
Our contribution to the technical session consisted of a presentation entitled "A Novel Approach to Laser-Based Hydographic Data Acquisition“. Martin Pfenningbauer, RIEGL Director Research & Intellectual Property, author and lecturer of the paper, "By decree of the European Water Framework Directive, monitoring, evaluating and studying reservoir sedimentation, river degradation, water flow, structure of rivers and riparian areas gain in importance. Hydrographic airborne laser scanning has high potential for surveying of shallow inshore waters. Currently, airborne laser scanning systems with exceptionally high pulse energy and large beam diameter and divergence are used for hydrographic and bathymetric applications. With the development of a new hydrographic laser scanner operating at a wavelength of 532 nm, RIEGL takes a novel approach by employing a narrow laser beam and providing a net measurement rate of 110 kHz.
We teamed up with the Unit of Hydraulic Engineering at the University of Innsbruck for a joint research project. First tests of the system under controlled conditions in an appropriate test basin show very promising results."
(Read the entire paper)

New results and latest developments in this sector are going to be presented in "Multi-Wavelength Airborne Laser Scanning" at the ILMF 2011 in New Orleans.

Besides technical and practical presentations, our team on the spot in The Hague made use of the event as a meeting point with clients, partners, and universities. Directly after the conference our VMX-250 system performed test drives for CycloMedia Technology B.V., www.cyclomedia.com. CycloMedia is an inventory control company working with mobile photographic data acquisition -  hence their interest for mobile laser scanning, for merging pictures and scandata and offer a combined data set. Data acquisition of a typical dutch streetview under heavy snow was possible in only one day – this including data editing.

Due to winterly weather conditions the journey to/from The Hague was rather exhausting, but the conference was worth it. We agree with many in stating that ELMF 2010 has been a real enrichment of the European LiDAR discourse.