LiDAR

[BillRIoT]

Hello Everyone, 

I am pulling together some data relative to LiDAR - specifically I am interested in an experiences you may have had or know of where LiDAR imaging was utilized.  I appreciate any and all information.  Thanks

Bill

[nayon]

I came across this old post in Google search results. I am not sure what Bill was asking, nor the context, but if interested in experience working with LiDAR data (point cloud xyz data from LiDAR scanning) using SAS then I can relpy that SAS is surprisingly well suited for lidar data processing and complex spatial image analysis. I have a lot of experience with it. Let me know if others have similar interest/experience -- I always assumed I was the only one using SAS for LiDAR work.

[JJMajor]

Hey, Welcome to SAS communities.

I would love to know more about what you are using LIDAR data for.!

I was investigating it a while back: I can;t remember if I had a specific use case, but I could see s  lot of applications for it. I think its when I was looking at examples of image processing for overgrowth/foliage management for powerlines and train tracks etc. Adding that third dimension with LIDAR has so manypotential applications.

Cheers, Jen.

[nayon]

I'm not sure what you are interested in knowing but I can describe a
bit about lidar data in connection to using SAS.

There are many applications of lidar, certainly much more than I am
familiar with. The Wikipedia page gives a good overview.

Analysis of lidar point cloud data can be quite complex and
computationally intensive when trying to do things like automate the
identification of spatial features. There can also be data size issues
which some software simply cannot deal with. SAS is capable of
handling both those matters if you are creative.

Lidar data is essentially a set of xyz point coordinates along with
additional information for each point (each laser 'hit'). The LAS file
format defines various fixed length record formats. The SAS data step
can easily read a file outputting one record per lidar hit (one xyz
point). I found SAS to be very easy and convenient for programming
custom data manipulation and analysis. SAS executes reasonably fast --
slower than C code, but much faster than interpreted languages. I am
not aware of any SAS packages specifically designed to help perform
analysis of point cloud data, but SAS includes the tools to do
whatever is needed. The only real hangup with SAS for lidar data is
the lack of integer data types to take advantage of faster integer
math and other CPU operations flipping bits in fancy ways. My use of
SAS with lidar data was highly dependent on the data step hash table
functionality and the speed of PROC CORR for computing sums of squares
-- without those two things it would be cumbersome and/or slow to do
much analysis work with lidar data in SAS.

I hope this is somehow helpful to you. If you need something more
specific you can ask me.

[jbhattacharya]

Hi,

We, in the IoT department of SAS, are really interested to see your work with SAS on Lidar data. Will it be ok if we setup a meeting with you for this. You can share your email with me at joydeep.bhattacharya@sas.com so that we can find a way to arrange this call.

Thanks,

Joydeep

[JJMajor]

hiya,

thanks for getting back to me about your use of LIDAR data. I was really curious about what data you were analysing and for what purpose. But I can see that Joydeep from the SAS IoT division has reached out to you to find out more, so I will leave him to ask you about the details. My interest is because I have also done quite a bit of work around the use of IoT data here at SAS UK.

Cheers, Jen

[nayon]

Jen,
You might look into lidar use on vehicles to scan the road helping to
automate driving. (Lidar can be much more precise than radar.) The
scan data would need to be processed in real time as it streamed in
with analysis to extract features from the flood of xyz points to
convert the stream of data into a stream of useful information.

I don't know much about this except that there's current development
in that area and it sounds like fun and interesting work. You can
imagine that lidar and other sensory information would be used
together to make automated judgement calls about things like whether
you are about to drive into a concrete bridge abutment and what to do
about it.

[jbhattacharya]

Hi,

We, in the IoT department, have a bit of experience with LIDAR data in real-time use cases, not related to autonomous driving though. A couple of the use cases that we have seen are related to logistics and transportation and I have myself written a connector to bring in real-time LIDAR data from a Lidar sensor to SAS Event Stream Processing.

It will be really interesting to see your experience with LIDAR. 

I am not sure whether you already reached out to me as I thought I saw something but couldn't find it in my mailbox. If possible, please reach out to me again at joydeep.bhattacharya@sas.com so that we can share our experiences. 

Thanks,

Joydeep