Is LIDAR at a Breakthrough Point?

CEO Adam Zayor, VP LiDAR Chris Clay, and VP Operations Nicholas Boone, at FlyGuys sat down with Grant Guillot, host of Drones in America, and shed some light on an emerging trend in their industry. “A lot of people have made that transition from recreational hobbyists to commercial pilots. It’s funny, because prior to COVID, the idea and where the trends have been leading in terms of the market, we expected a huge amount of recreational sales over the past couple years for drones that’s not really happening,” Zayor said.

What they have seen, as opposed to the recreational hobby industry, is a massive growth in the commercial industry. Zayor believes that a lot of these hobbyists are moving into the commercial realm, or else they’re already in user industries and they’re just bringing the skills they had as a hobbyist into their commercial applications and the industries in which they are employed. “It’s definitely interesting to see how this technology is being implemented on such a broad scale by so many people,” Zayor noted.

For those that are interested in flying drones, you’re likely to hear the term LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) used frequently. LiDAR is a remote sensing technology that utilizes rapid laser pulses to map out the surface of the earth. This technology can be useful when creating high resolution digital surfaces, terrain and elevation models. According to Clay, LiDAR is, “Just a lot of laser beams being fired out at once. And you have a system that is able to receive those returning laser beams and register them in their according place in the world. So with LiDAR, we’re obviously able to do some very big things here.”

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