INTERGEO – one of the largest GIS and mapping shows in the world – is back and in person this week, in Essen Germany.  DRONELIFE is on the floor at INTERGEO and the INTERAERIAL Solutions section of the show, dedicated to the drone technology powering mapping applications around the globe.

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On the floor of the show today, DRONELIFE met Masataka Yamakawa, Marketing Director of Osaka, Japanese-based drone services company humorously named Amuse Oneself.  The name is – well, amusing – but the application is serious: a green light LiDAR solution for aquatic applications.

The 10-year old Amuse Oneself makes the TDOT GREEN lightweight LiDAR solution designed to be carried on a commercial, off the shelf aircraft or the company’s proprietary gas and electric hybrid drone, featuring a 2 hour flight endurance appropriate for long-range missions.

TDOT GREEN is a drone-mountable laser scanner system using green light, which is not easily absorbed by water.  Delivering 60,000 pulses of laser per second toward the ground, the TDOT green can penetrate between 5 – 10 meters of water: the company is developing solutions that should increase the effective depth to 30 – 40 meters.

Right now, Amuse Oneself’s solutions are ideal for long surveys of shallow water, such as coastlines.  In Japan, which has a coastline of more than 18,000 miles (about 30,000 km) the Japanese government uses the solution to map the coastline.  The application can be a critical tool for climate change measurement and climate resilience efforts, as stakeholders use the 3D models of wet ground, shallow seabed, and riverbeds to establish water level baselines and study wildlife populations that may be affected by a change.  In Israel, the company recently participated in a project to map the floor of the dead sea.

Amuse Oneself has converted their software and documentation from Japanese to English: costs of the solution varies according to the solution details but is in the range of $350,000 USD for the LiDAR camera, and about $100,000 USD for the proprietary gas-electric hybrid drone.

Read more about LiDAR mapping: