August 13, 2018

FUGRO announces drone-ready RAMMS bathy lidar with no moving parts

This month, geospatial intelligence firm FUGRO introduced a new bathymetric lidar system that promises “to deliver an efficient and cost-effective solution, dramatically improving upon other bathymetric lidar mapping capabilities.”

RAMMS (for rapid airborne multibeam mapping system) is a multi-beam lidar sensor developed by FUGRO and Areté Associates. It is a pushbroom scanner, which generally means that the scanner does not move the laser but relies on the aircraft to move the laser (the scanning line of a photocopier is often cited as a common example of pushbroom scanning). The scanner’s technology is based on decades-old military technology for mine detection as filtered through 25 years of bathy lidar experience.

This design results in a scanner with no moving parts, which makes it compact enough to mounted on small aircraft—even fixed-wing unmanned aircraft. Don’t expect to mount it on just any drone, however, as the system weighs in at 14 kg. The design also makes it more reliable for use in remote areas, as well as more efficient, less expensive, and faster to turn around.

FUGRO adds that the flexibility of the system means that RAMMS can be mounted solo, or combined with other remote sensing technologies on a single airframe to collect a wider range of data types in a single flight.

For more information, see FUGRO’s website.

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