Points + Pixels Podcast Points + Pixels

The eighth episode of the Points + Pixels podcast includes an interview with GeoCue Group’s Vice President of Special Projects, Martin Flood. Martin is an experienced Lidar technologist who joined the industry in 1991. We’ll discuss his role at GeoCue, their technology offering, and the state of the industry.  
GeoCue Group was founded in 2003 by a group of engineers with extensive experience in developing hardware and software solutions for primary remote-sensed data acquisition. GeoCue’s initial products were aimed at reducing schedule and cost risk in geospatial production workflows by providing organizational, productivity and data management tools for base geospatial data production. In 2014, GeoCue Group started a division focused on using small, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for high accuracy mapping. Leveraging our expertise in production, risk reduction, and point cloud processing tools, we are continuing to bring new services and products to market to provide surveyors and other geomatics professionals exciting tools for geospatial data extraction using low cost drones.

The seventh episode of the Points + Pixels podcast includes an interview with Teledyne Optech’s Director of Product Management, Michael Sitar. Michael is a knowledgeable and well-respected mapping industry professional, who has been with Teledyne Optech since 2001. We’ll discuss his role, Optech’s new owner (Teledyne), and their new, UAS-based Lidar sensor, the CL-90.
Founded by Dr. Allan Carswell in 1974, Optech has become a global leader in the development and manufacture of advanced laser-based survey instruments. The firm provides client-driven solutions in airborne terrestrial mapping, airborne laser bathymetry, laser 3D laser imaging, space-based atmospheric monitors, and spaceborne landing/docking systems, mine cavity monitoring systems, and industrial process control.

The sixth episode of the Points + Pixels podcast focuses on the application of blockchain technology to support geospatial location intelligence. Ryan King, co-founder and CEO, launched FOAM in 2018. He is based out of the New Lab at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, an interdisciplinary workspace designed to support urban entrepreneurs leveraging advanced technologies.
FOAM is a company that specializes in protocols, applications and standards that connect geospatial data to the blockchain. FOAM is also the name of an open protocol for building a consensus-driven map of the world. This map will provide the basis for to-be-developed new applications in a range of verticals that can benefit from blockchain, a technology that focuses on decentralization and does away with intermediary parties.

The fifth episode of the Points + Pixels podcast focuses on the use of mobile Lidar data to support autonomous vehicle navigation. Joining us on the podcast is John Sullivan of Continental Mapping, who is based in Madison, Wisconsin and has completed several mobile Lidar data acquisition projects related to transportation, fiber optic networks, wireless 5G and autonomous vehicles.
John & I recently discussed Continental’s work developing high-definition (HD) base maps in support of autonomous navigation applications. He shared two YouTube videos that explained the need for HD base maps, so I invited him on the podcast to share his professional thoughts and perspectives.

The fourth episode of the Points + Pixels podcast focuses on the use of drones to support civil engineering project work. Company founder, Mary Wohnrade, and her son, Brendan Thompson, are the leaders of Wohnrade Civil Engineers, which is based in Broomfield, Colorado.
Mary and her team provide civil engineering services throughout Colorado and have used drones to capture high-resolution imagery for municipal project work. Wohnrade has since developed a service offering for “unmanned precision aerial mapping” and the firm has recently invested in a new, unmanned Lidar mapping system. Mary & Brendan share their thoughts about drone mapping, Lidar data, and the challenge of producing accurate geospatial derivatives from point cloud data.   

This episode of the Points + Pixels podcast focuses on the use open source software solutions to support the new U.S. Geological Survey’s 3DEP data portal on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Howard Butler of Hobu, Inc. discusses how this innovative project was conceived and how it’s design is based on the Landsat program, a federal government imagery acquisition initiative that has documented Earth’s “land features and coastal regions” since 1972.
This new Lidar data sharing capability allows users to browse a national map service for point cloud data, which can either be downloaded locally or processed in the AWS cloud environment. Hobu utilized Entwine Point Tiles (EPT), which is an open, static, implicit, and lossless octree-like tile service for point cloud data, that leverages the popular LASzip data encoding specification.