| LINK Newsletter - August 2007
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Why Rent a Ferrari to Go to the Grocery Store? As LiDAR customers become more and more educated about LiDAR technology, they are pressing LiDAR providers to acquire the best of the best in sensors to compete. “Best” is sometimes interpreted to mean “the newest sleekest model with the fastest engine.” But this begs the question-- is a “100KHz” or a “Gemini” sensor always the best”?
The answer is: not for all projects. It really depends on how large the project is and what accuracy and point spacing is needed for the final product.
A myth abounds that a lower rep rate sensor will not be able to achieve the same accuracy or spot spacing as a high rep rate sensor. Overall accuracy and spot spacing are functions of altitude, so using a higher rep rate sensor just allows you to fly higher and achieve the same result. This is, of course, beneficial on large projects to diminish flight costs, but the same product will be achieved for small projects as well.
There is an obvious data processing advantage in using low rep-rate sensors because of the amount of data points they collect. Airborne 1, like many providers, is forever upgrading our IT infrastructure to handle increasingly large data files, but the lack of IT infrastructure is still an issue for small-end user firms. Many of our customers are looking for a coarse gridded data set to orthorectify their digital photos or to supplement a previously collected data set. Many other customers only need data to support FEMA 2’ contours, which is easily achievable with our lowest rep rate sensor (25KHz). There is no point in collecting 4X or more data that will simply go unused.
Success is all about applying the right capacity for a given project. By adding 10 minutes of flight time on a 300 acre project, a 25kHz sensor can actually gather more measurements than a Gemini, and the Gemini might cost $3K per day more than the 25kHz. The additional flight time, on the other hand, is likely to incur a cost of around $75. It would therefore be reasonable to apply the 25kHz, get more data, and save the cash. The higher the volume of “small” projects, the more the rule that “newer and faster doesn’t always mean better” applies.
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