LIDAR Magazine Podcast

In this episode, Austin catches up with Raul Bravo, a prolific inventor holding more than 70 international patent families. As president and founder of Outsight, Raul explains how his firm's technologies transform streams of lidar data into real-time 3D spatial intelligence. The conversation delves into the analytical capabilities of dynamic 3D databases and explores the technical challenges of orchestrating thousands of laser scanners into a cohesive sensing system.

In this episode, Mach9's co-founder and CEO, Alex Baikovitz, talks enthusiastically about the company's mission to improve geospatial workflows for generating information from point clouds, making heavy but considered use of AI, plus innovations from the world of robotics. His flagship product, Digital Surveyor, outputs the derived features to familiar CAD and GIS software suites and can be deployed from a web browser. Alex claims speed improvements of 5x compared to more traditional software approaches – and much more dramatic numbers in certain circumstances. The company emerged from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, but is now located in downtown San Francisco, where the availability of a top-quality workforce and closeness to other well-known geospatial firms have proved beneficial.

Dr. Florent Poux is an award-winning researcher and adjunct professor in 3D Data Science at the University of Liège. Based in Toulouse, France, Florent operates the 3D Geodata Academy, a training resource dedicated to building innovations with 3D technology. In this episode, Austin gathers Dr. Poux's thoughts on how to employ novel data processing pipelines to extract value from 3D data. They also discuss his recently published book, 3D Data Science with Python, which seeks to help readers understand modern algorithms and spatial AI models, with a focus on hands-on learning and automation.

Dr. Helen Fricker is a Professor of Geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, one of the world's most important centers for global earth science research and education. Prior to her current role, Dr. Fricker was a science team member for NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat); she is currently the science team lead for ICESat-2, and Principle Investigator (PI) for NASA's Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer (EDGE) mission. In this episode, we pick Helen's brain about spaceborne lidar altimetry missions, some of the amazing science and research projects they support, and what's over the horizon from a development perspective.

Angus Pacala is CEO and co-founder of Ouster, a major lidar supplier based in San Francisco. The company made headlines in 2023 when it merged with arch-competitor Velodyne. Speaking from the company's offices in Edinburgh, Scotland (home of Sense Photonics, an Ouster acquisition in 2021), Angus addresses the company's technical developments and the status of its forthcoming L4 and Chronos solid-state components and their likely effect on the product portfolio. He explains how the company addresses the four verticals into which it has divided the market and where UAV-lidar fits in. Ouster's software portfolio is covered too.