The Worlds Most Powerful 3-D Laser Imager

A new military LIDAR chip shows promise for faster and more precise aerial mappingdoing in minutes what used to take days.

Airborne laser scanning has produced stunning maps and insights in the last few years, such as revealing the faint outlines of a vanished medieval city street grid obscured by the jungle surrounding Cambodias Angkor Wat (see Laser Scanning Reveals New Parts of an Ancient Cambodian City). The feat required 20 hours of helicopter flight time to map 370 square kilometers to a resolution of one meter.