LiDAR scans are finding hidden Roman roads and cutting crime

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/lidar-mapping-environment-agency-2020-flood-defence-waste-dumping

by rbanffy • 8 years ago

138 77 8 years ago

wired.co.uk

fredley4• 8 years ago

For those unaware, all scientific press releases in the UK must express areas in football pitches, and volumes in double-decker buses.

mrec• 8 years ago

I disagree. IMHO "area the size of Wales" is more commonly used. For everyday magnitudes the nanoWales [1] may be more convenient.

[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-conv...

digi_owl• 8 years ago

And this is why people should not take El Reg too seriously.

Or as one incarnation of Joker put it, "why so serious?".

gadders3• 8 years ago

And height in double decker buses as well.

fredley4• 8 years ago

Actually yes, I think I'm wrong: Double Decker Busses is height, and for volume it's Olympic Size Swimming Pools.

danmaz74• 8 years ago

It's funny, but please, let's not turn HN into Reddit ;)

lostlogin2• 8 years ago

It is unhelpful when it’s 32 million of them, and especially so when the size of a football field is variable.

diggan• 8 years ago

the size of a football field is variable

Sure, maybe the local, community field you and me play on, but not the ones where "real" matches are played. They have a standard size.

FIFA for example have the dimensions in their first law: http://www.fifa.com/mm/Document/FootballDevelopment/Refereei...

Probably they mean a standard football field.

amelius2• 8 years ago

I have a question about self-driving cars (SDCs).

Some time ago it was mentioned that SDCs can't use deep-learning because it is not sufficiently reliable, and that instead techniques like LiDAR should be used to recognize objects.

However, this made me wonder: how does the car recognize road-signs and traffic lights?

fredley4• 8 years ago

I think you're confusing things. Deep Learning is a method of machine learning. LiDAR is a tool that collects depth data. Using Deep Learning on flat image data to try and detect depth is unreliable, hence SDCs use LiDAR to detect depth. They also use image data from the visible spectrum and beyond to read road signs. etc.

amelius2• 8 years ago

Ok, but what if the deep learning software of the SDC confuses a "no entry" sign with a 100mph sign?

Or is DL classification at 100% accuracy?

pjc50• 8 years ago

The car sends a photo of the sign back to google and a user decodes it in a CAPTCHA.

(I'm mostly joking, but the answer does seem to involve big databases of what the signs and roads are expected to be. I'm not convinced that most of the current "self-driving" solutions can cope with roadworks, traffic cones, diversions etc)

alejohausner• 8 years ago

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1897/

leesec• 8 years ago

You can use a combination of sensors. Many use a camera + LiDAR + radar, some use just camera + radar. So... object detection + computer vision. I personally don't think the LiDAR is necessary or feasible.

RosanaAnaDana5• 8 years ago

I believe this talk will specifically and completely answer your questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSX3qdy0dFg

Short answer: Self driving vehicles do use deep learning, but they avoid some types not because it is unreliable, but it is processing power intense. Traffic lights, road signs, pedestrians etc.. That's a whole ball of wax to unravel. Check the lecture, its fantastic imo.

al2o3cr• 8 years ago

Based on this paper, I'd say "poorly".

https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.08945

TLDR: the authors demonstrate that it's possible to apply minor perturbations to signs (for instance, rectangular stickers) that don't significantly change the appearance to humans but cause a classifier to confuse a stop sign with a speed-limit sign.

alannala3• 8 years ago

Has anyone seen any nice examples of work done with the open LiDAR data?

edent2• 8 years ago

A friend of mine made https://github.com/catenoid/Shadow-Map

Uses UK LIDAR data to show shadow maps. This can be used to show urban areas which are permanently in shadow. Or just as a cool way to map the country.

maxerickson4• 8 years ago

There's been some work to use it to add metadata to OpenStreetMap:

http://chris-osm.blogspot.com/2015/09/extracting-building-he...

notahacker5• 8 years ago

3D printed model of London. http://www.aeracode.org/2016/5/16/hello-london-rising/

gadders3• 8 years ago

That is very cool. I could see lots of people would want one of those on their wall.

monkeydust2• 8 years ago

Pretty cool. Is there a way a non coder like me could stick in a postcode and get out a 3d file to take for printing?

jadavies• 8 years ago

That's very nice!

I started doing something similar when the Welsh LiDAR data was released ( details in https://theretiredengineer.wordpress.com/category/lidar/ ). I had written some code to manipulate PLY files when I was trying to create 3D models of standing stones using photogrammetry. It was then fairly easy to modify that code to create PLY models using the LiDAR data. However I found two problems for the area that I was interested in ( parts of south west Wales )

  1. The LiDAR data coverage was a bit patchy
  2. There were gaps in the data files which resulted in holes in the model

There was nothing I could do about #1 but it should be fairly easy to fix #2. The other option would be to use a GIS of some sort to process the data.

RosanaAnaDana5• 8 years ago

Anything in particular you want to see?

alannala3• 8 years ago

Wasn't really after anything specific, just some a few interesting things thrown together. Checked back today and there are some good posts above!

mschuetz• 8 years ago

Was very helpful in creating a point cloud viewer. Not uk but US open lidar data:

- http://potree.org/potree/examples/ca13.html

- http://potree.org/potree/examples/showcase/lake_tahoe.html

hanoz• 8 years ago

I downloaded all the 1m dsm composite data from the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales and used C#, System.Drawing.Graphics and hefty server from AWS EC2 to render 2 million png files, which I then moved onto a Scaleway C1 bare-metal ARM server, to produce this slippy lidar map of England and Wales: https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map

robk• 8 years ago

This is awesome thanks for sharing

clort• 8 years ago

Incredible and you can even see ripples on the sea. I was wondering (as I live by the coast) what the deal was with the sea but I see that because they did multiple passes over the area, the tide is at different heights.

jonnydubowsky• 8 years ago

Wow! A heartfelt thank you for this massive effort. Amazing work mate. Cheers!

alannala3• 8 years ago

This is super cool, nice one!

oasisbob5• 8 years ago

If you're looking for just general examples and inspiration for things that can be done with LIDAR data, the LAStools blog [1] has a lot of em. Their mailing list is interesting as well.

I've been using LIDAR data for doing canopy height modeling, and screening remote areas for possible exceptional/champion trees prior to checking it out in person.

Haven't put anything online yet because I'm very new to GIS and this sort of thing, and am still getting over the horror of what it takes to build a functioning workspace and data pipeline.

("Just take this TIFF and convert it to a CSV" is a phrase I never thought would make sense, but here it does.)

[1] https://rapidlasso.com/blog/

llccbb2• 8 years ago

What software are you using? I have found PDAL[0] to be very simple to run with docker, though building from source is a bit consuming, especially as you reach out for more plugins you didn't realize you wanted initially.

PDAL is my current software crush.

[0]http://pdal.io

MaBu• 8 years ago

Mapbox has a tutorial https://blog.mapbox.com/add-lidar-to-mapbox-43f7e3912424 it uses OSS tools and you can host results locally, own server or on Mapbox.

mentos• 8 years ago

Anyone know where I could license/purchase hi-res LIDAR scans for use in game development?

masklinn• 8 years ago

The national mapping agency of the country you're interested in I would expect.

For the UK, it's the Ordnance Survey (https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk)

swebs• 8 years ago

The UK scans are public domain.

https://environment.data.gov.uk/ds/survey/index.jsp

edent2• 8 years ago

Just to clarify - they're not Public Domain. They are released under the Open Government Licence - which is compatible with Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 and Open Data Commons Attribution License.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licen...

RosanaAnaDana5• 8 years ago

Depends what you're talking about. Scans of objects? Terrains? Buildings? Different LiDAR data sets for very different tasks. Here is free LiDAR for the state of Oregon: https://gis.dogami.oregon.gov/lidarviewer/

Dangeranger• 8 years ago

Google Maps is making their data available for gaming now as well[0].

[0] https://developers.google.com/maps/gaming/

hughes• 8 years ago

While exciting, the barrier seems pretty high to even get access to some of this data. You have to contact their sales department, which probably means it has Enterprise-level pricing.

oasisbob5• 8 years ago

The data from the Puget Sound LIDAR Consortium [1] is freely available, you just need to ask for an account. (Not 100% sure on licensing terms, though.)

Seattle / King County just finished a rescan in 2016/2017 and the data is stunningly good. [2] Really good consistency and density. The DLM/classification/cleanup seems excellent.

[1] http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/

[2] (private, need an account) http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/lidardata/restrict...

RosanaAnaDana5• 8 years ago

Heh. Good to see people like the products.

fenwick67• 8 years ago

opentopography.org has free data throughout the US (point clouds and rasters), but the resolution varies.

I personally [1] have imported it into Unity for a terrain heightmap.

[1] https://github.com/fenwick67/unityterrainfromtiff

vondur• 8 years ago

Oops, Vespasian wasn't Emperor in 43AD, that would have been Claudius. Vespasian was most likely present for the Roman invasion of Britain. He would become Emperor in AD 69.

boomboomsubban• 8 years ago

Cerialis was appointed by Vespasian and fought the Brigantes, so it's more likely the year 43 was wrong and should have been ~71. Vespasian invaded Britannia in 43, probably confused the two.

dsfyu404ed2• 8 years ago

"the power to deploy these technologies at scale will only be deployed to fight serious crime"

[proceeds to use dragnet to crack down on people dumping stuff in the woods]

maxerickson4• 8 years ago

What's the downside to pervasively prosecuting illegal dumping?

dsfyu404ed2• 8 years ago

The same as the downsides to using dragnets to prevent any other petty crime.

John_KZ3• 8 years ago

It opens the doors for going after even smaller crimes. Imagine if all CCTVs in London where online and they used them to purge all the homeless out of the city or jail them. Does that sound like a great idea to you? The law is often flawed and "micromanaging" people can be destructive for society.

Mediterraneo10• 8 years ago

Dumping stuff in the woods can be a serious crime. Sometimes you are cycling through an idyllic remote area and you find someone has dumped a lot of asbestos there right there on the trail.

Even if it’s not a seriously dangerous substance, making the landscape ugly like that is still a really shitty thing to do to your fellow citizens. I think it would be great if more dumping violations could be prosecuted.

notahacker5• 8 years ago

This tech isn't going to be able to catch people dumping stuff in the woods unless they're doing it on an industrial scale in their own woods to avoid a few million quid in landfill tax.

hanbura• 8 years ago

There is no surveillance of actual people, the government just found a cheap way to find out that their own land had an unexpected change. Finding suspects seems to be old fashioned police work. I find it very hard to find any arguments against this use of the data

saosebastiao• 8 years ago

I really wish this technology could find its way into the hands of Ruth Shady in Peru. She was the discoverer of the Norte Chico civilization, the earliest known civilization in south america, and one of a select few civilizations worldwide that could be called a cradle of civilization (a civilization that emerged without outside influence).

And despite the significance of the discovery, there is almost no funding for continued research, and making basic discoveries of where artifacts might be located is still a major bottleneck.

notahacker5• 8 years ago

There have certainly been LIDAR surveys of archaeologically important regions in Peru, but there's a lot more of Peru to scan than the UK.

chx• 8 years ago

There is so much land to scan. The vast majority of the Pontic-Caspian steppe for example. There is a lot of history to be found in burial grounds but it's a real lot of sparsely populated land and so noone has the slightest idea where to start.

peter303• 8 years ago

Self driving cars have lowered some LIDAR costs a factor of 20, with a promise of far more. I wonder if this can translate over into archeology and geology. Imsaw one project at SIGGRAPH using a cheap LIDAR.

notahacker5• 8 years ago

If you're surveying on a national scale, then the costs of chartering flights (or driving around with drones) is going to keep costs high in the near future even if the surveying equipment itself plummets in cost

John_KZ3• 8 years ago

Eventually we'll get drones to do this job. But first LIDAR needs to get small and cheap enough and large drones must be developed to be reliable enough to fly over populated areas.

oasisbob5• 8 years ago

A lot of the cost of doing LIDAR surveys isn't just the LIDAR sensor itself.

eg, a typical high-quality survey will involve:

- Something like a Leica ALS80 [1]

- A Cessna + good Pilot, the plane needs to be really well instrumented.

- A team of surveyors on the ground to establish ground controls, and occupy points for GPS RTK calculations

- A bunch of post-processing to normalize the data, remove birdies and pits, do ground classifications, etc. (The raw data from the sensor before the processed point cloud is built is really really raw.)

A much cheaper approach which seems to be catching on is UAV photogrammetry. It's processing intensive, but no special sensors are required, and in the end you still get a pointcloud. Sensefly is a company that makes these types of UAVs.

[1] https://leica-geosystems.com/en-us/products/airborne-systems...

kozikow• 8 years ago

Is there any repository of lidar data for US? Especially coastal states like Florida, Texas and California?

MonkeyDan• 8 years ago

Yes! Check out the USGS National Map[1].

A lot of the country isn't covered, and what is there is pretty dated, but there's a recent capture of the entire west coast available.

[1] https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/basic

llccbb2• 8 years ago

US lidar still remains fragmented across many different portals.

USGS's 3DEEP data for the National Map covers lots of federal and private land. Open Topography holds lots of research data funded by various federal organizations (NSF, NOAA, others) amongst other stuff. State-level Departments of Natural Resources very commonly host survey data.

Lind5• 8 years ago

Mapping is important application for LiDAR technology. There's going to be a lot of growth in that space https://semiengineering.com/lidar-goes-back-to-the-future/

source992• 8 years ago

Anyone know about LIDAR hardware i can purchase that is great for high resolution at low range. I'm looking for 1-3mm accuracy at a range from 0.1m up to 2m. 2D or 3D. IP67 rated.

John_KZ3• 8 years ago

LIDARs are awfully expensive for personal use. Look for other 3D scanning methods, and if you still think it's required, rent one.

source992• 8 years ago

This isn’t for personal use.

LiDAR scans are finding hidden Roman roads and cutting crime

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