rapidlasso releases PulseWaves full waveform lidar format
With the latest release of its RiProcess software, RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems, a manufacturer of laser scanners for terrestrial, mobile, airborne and industrial applications, is the first hardware vendor to allow exporting of full waveform lidar data in a just-released open data exchange format.
Technology start-up rapidlasso GmbH on Monday rolled out PulseWaves, the new format for storing full waveform lidar data just in time for the RIEGL LIDAR 2013 user conference this week in Vienna.
The initial PulseWaves release comes with an open source reference implementation (LGPL) and a set of basic processing tools to display and convert the data.
PulseWaves standardizes storage and delivery for applications that benefit from information about the waveform such as forest management, biomass estimation, and lidar bathymetry.
It also complements the ASPRS LAS format for discrete returns and simplifies the exchange of full outgoing and returning waveforms.
The new format has been in development since December 2011 through discussions with stakeholders at the PulseWaves forum.
The development effort was supported, in part, by RIEGL and by Airborne Research Australia (ARA) at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.
RIEGL, headquartered in Horn, Austria, manufactures terrestrial (static), mobile (kinematic), airborne and industrial laser scanning hardware with proprietary software packages for data acquisition and processing for multiple fields of applications.
A compressed version of the PulseWaves format based on LASzip technology is in progress, Germany-based rapidlasso said.
