This year, the Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon (PLSO) and Oregon State University collaborated at the daVinci Days festival in Corvallis, Oregon to educate the public regarding geomatics.  Graduate students John Raugust, Hamid Mahmoudabadi, and Mahyar Sharifi-Mood joined PLSO at the booth to explain and demonstrate LiDAR concepts to festival attendees.  A wide variety of folks visited our LiDAR presentation.

While most people were fascinated with the visualization of their own 3D scanned images, some professionals had more specific questions regarding different methods of alignment, filtering, and merging of LiDAR point clouds. The most typical questions posed were related to prevalent LiDAR applications, associated costs (hardware, software, and maintenance), accuracy levels attainable, integration of total station and GPS data, and the wavelength of the scanner.  The OSU students and PLSO volunteers answered these questions while real-time scanning and navigating through the point clouds for the crowd to see. 

                Onlookers were generally pleased to see themselves scanned in 3D, especially when the color was accurately mapped to them.  Showing subjects their respective point clouds shaded by reflectance was the most well received due to the visualization speed and the ability to see facial expressions, funny poses, and such.  The point cloud gathering alone was remarked on by many to be very fast.  However, the extra time required for digital pictures and associated color mapping deterred many from staying to visualize a color-rendered point cloud.  The students explained that the final point cloud coordinates include accurately georeferenced X, Y, and Z locations as well as providing red, green, and blue values and intensity for the modest 120,000 points per second gathered! 

Davinci Days Background

DaVinci Days is an annual festival held in Corvallis, Oregon.  This festival showcases art, science, technology, government, business, education, local businesses, sustainability, and the Pacific Northwest.  This event is a melding of technical expertise, music and art expression, alternative energy and transportation, and local food.  Events include a keynote science lecture, astronomy explorations, home-built solar power vehicle races, and home-built bike-wagon races.  It is held during the middle of July, a time where new students, and their families, visiting the Oregon State University (OSU) campus can participate in the festivities.

PLSO Background

The main goals for PLSO include uniting land surveying professionals in Oregon, holding forums to tackle tough new issues, upholding the integrity of the land surveying profession in Oregon, maintaining methods of ethical conduct, and promoting educational programs and legislation related to land surveying. 

                OSU was proud to represent the LiDAR community and looks forward to continued collaboration with organizations in the future to bring awareness to the potentials of LiDAR to the general community.

Thank you daVinci Days!