How Does LiDAR Remote Sensing Work? Light Detection and Ranging

This NEON Science video overviews what lidar or light detection and ranging is, how it works and what types of information it can provide. The video was produced by the National Ecological Observatory Network - a non profit project devoted to open science and open data.
Suggested citation for this video: National Ecological Observatory Network. November 6, 2014. How Does LiDAR Remote Sensing Work? Light Detection and Ranging [Video file]. Courtesy: Battelle. Retrieved from • How Does LiDAR Remote ... .

[@user-uh9vv4jc9g]

an excellent way to explain using humor, BRAVO

[@chainsawvsgod384]

Excellent video. Explained it really well. I'll use what I've learnt here for my upcoming exam.

[@NEONScience]

Glad it was useful!

[@sharicriddle8196]

Thank you! What a great introduction for fourth grade students!

[@imtiazhimel7339]

Extremely helpful. And very nice presentation.

[@viannyahimbisibwe2757]

yeah well done. Am looking forward to learning more with using remote sensing in ecosystem management

[@hmnaik]

Its a good video, sticking to basics and keeping it simple.

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@jessif.]

Thanks so much for this clear explanation!

[@torrieallen6137]

This is a great video. I have watched it many times over the last 8 months for college and each time I pick up some little detail I didn't remember from the last time I watched it. Very good Video. Thank you. Thank you also for going into the pulse return a little deeper in the comments section, I too was wondering about that as well. Thank you again.

[@NEONScience]

Torrie - I'm so glad the video was useful for you.

[@dl8cy]

thank you for using CC licenz for that great video!

[@getreadytotube]

awesome explanation. Thanks!

[@self.improved]

Very informative, thank you for taking the time to make this video!

[@NEONScience]

Thank you! Glad you found it useful.

[@1992danceboy]

Lolo! Very entertaining and informative video on LiDAR! Always wondered what the heck it was and this video did the job great and with jokes! May take a remote sensing class now :O

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@tymothylim6550]

Wow! Great video. Thank you!

[@woody000555]

Great presentation, thanks!

[@daddymcsnacks_561]

Well, I feel smarter now. This was very helpful and you made it fun.

[@NEONScience]

Thank you! Glad you found it useful.

[@maelyorn1840]

I seriously love the video. Amazing teaching. Thank you so much.

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@aronricardovideo]

Excelente, y gracias también por la traducción a español! Hacen un trabajo impresionante!

[@Indiana_drones0]

👆👆Happy New Year fan!! Thank you for your amazing comments, please make use of the name given above to send me a message in telegram. I have a New Year's gift for you

[@Indiana_drones0]

👆👆Happy New Year fan!! Thank you for your amazing comments, please make use of the name given above to send me a message in telegram. I have a New Year's gift for you

[@VHS_GIS]

I loved your EMU!!! GO GO EMU!

[@mikael5743]

awesome animation and presentation

[@advancedgeographicinformat8561]

This was a great educational video that our company will use to help educate our future employees for further growth and development, keep up the great work, you guys just got a subscriber!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@NEONScience]

Excellent! We're glad it is useful.

[@waterboy12342232]

These and other instructional/educational videos are crucial. We need more of this on the internet. I work in the GEOINT field and find this to be the most comprehensive instructional piece to explain LiDAR to my subordinates and leadership.

[@NEONScience]

Chuck -- thank you for the kind words. We agree -- videos like these are important to helping people understand these technologies and the wide variety of sciences that remote sensing and lidar underpin. Glad to hear that it is useful to you. We are regularly adding move videos to the NEONScience channel. Not all will be remote sensing/lidar focused but they may still be of interest to you.

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@peterburgess5974]

I am a layman, but LIDAR has helped define the route of a Roman road near my home. It is amazing technology and as a geographer it is brilliant in revealing morphology of the landscape which is virtually imperceptible to the human eye. Power to you!

[@BMJSpectre1962]

As a geoscientist working a lot with ALS I commend this video so much. Most of our highly demanding clients that have stolen our specs have no idea. And yes, I had a client asking why do we joke so much about Emu's. Yes, we are in Australia!

[@NEONScience]

Glad you found the video useful! Go Emus!!!

[@naveenpgeo]

Nicely explained the working method of LiDAR. Good for initial knowledge. Thanks.

[@NEONScience]

Glad you found it useful.

[@MaxWaster]

Helped me for my archaeology essay!

[@amanuelbeyin3063]

Very helpful.....Thanks NEON. The narrator was terrific.

[@NEONScience]

+Amanuel Beyin we are glad that you enjoyed the video! thank you for the positive feedback!

[@043mehdi]

no, she's sexy. Come on bro

[@richardryan7062]

Great presentation! 👍

[@Mishra11raj]

Beautifully created content, so satisfied to see such real good one. Good job. Loved it

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@mesfintesfaye7943]

Nicely presented !!

[@majharshaikh3483]

its too good 😍😍 after seeing this video i am so excited for this system. Good Job

[@mesfintesfaye7943]

It is really amazing i like it very much i have been looking for such technology that makes life easy and cost effective for my research work and my life as well.

[@andreadanniballe5013]

Great explanation!

[@grahamjoss4643]

Thanks for sharing!

[@shibinwang1879]

Thanks for uploading.

[@NEONScience]

of course! we are glad that you enjoyed it!

[@MarcosSpinelli]

Great Video! Thanks.

[@NEONScience]

+Marcos Spinelli glad you enjoyed it!

[@qcjefftqc]

This is great! I've been doing research in LiDAR for a while and i'll probably point people to this video when they want to know what the hell I do ahah!!

[@NEONScience]

I'm so glad you found this video useful! It is nice to have a short visual when explaining our research!

[@kelennaanyanwu5372]

Very well explained. Thanks a lot

[@NEONScience]

Thanks for the feedback. Glad it helped.

[@rudra9506]

awesome video!!! graphics and narration are good :)

[@NEONScience]

+uday sen pendiala Thank you - we are glad you enjoyed it!

[@lamfmhn95]

Very informative and beautiful vid :> Thanks!

[@NEONScience]

+Tùng Lâm Nguyễn Glad you enjoyed the video! thank you for the feedback!

[@moni2637]

Thanks just cleared the basic concept

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@jacobboomsma2341]

Great and helpful video. The emu joke was cringe, but actually extremely useful, as I will remember IMU for my exam tomorrow! Thanks :)

[@NEONScience]

Glad you found it useful. Hope you do great on the exam!

[@shadrackchirchir1484]

just stunning

[@tenlyrodrigues8138]

Really useful to understand the basics of LIDAR.- Thank you

[@sarahshipepe]

good video indeed

[@Tshozyn]

thank you soo much... very useful :)

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@stevecampbell5314]

Thanks!

[@asifadam93]

Great video Thanks

[@hanasoualahalila2333]

Exellent presentation, Bravo, we need more video to share to help students Thanks

[@NEONScience]

Feel free to share with other students! Glad you found it useful.

[@mgamga]

Good Video.

[@F3ND1MUS]

cool video!

[@GinoFoto]

Very useful and easy to understand basic of technology. LIKE

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@1nZaneR]

didn't know I had friends until I watched that video!

[@1nZaneR]

@mr.1n5an_e dang shame you are a Mr. ;-)

[@thinkandlearn7258]

great Video

[@maybeclaire4738]

Very interesting.

[@KulbirAhluwalia]

Awesome animations! Well explained! This video accomplishes the complex task of connecting with the masses. Lol

[@geomagazine_khalid]

PDF Book: Image Processing & GIS for Remote Sensing: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e5zamn2dZbeMeaM

[@geogeekthetechguys5091]

great and really helpful

[@NEONScience]

Thanks. Glad you found it useful.

[@alfredojavier59]

excellent video

[@NEONScience]

Thanks!

[@97Alfinsyah]

I wish i could reach my dreams school at Remote Sensing Chiba University Japan. Thanks for knowledge and sharing this video

[@NEONScience]

You 're welcome. Glad the information was useful.

[@shadowfox_117]

Great video very informative.

[@NEONScience]

Thank you for the feedback. Glad you found the information useful!

[@tiemomerkel6113]

great video :-)

[@Trending_Topics-us4mn]

Very helpful

[@kcoo4115]

Well done. Thanks. Now looking for the video that explains how LiDAR is used to map forests. My interest. Also interested in when free LiDAR will be available and where to find it.

[@cashphattichaddi]

Dope!

[@AnilKumar-xl2te]

Great explanation

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@amrgad3893]

Ty

[@melaniamonicacraciun9900]

It might read the landslides as well as earthquakes areas on jeopardy fans, think about it, what a great discovery. Being ready to prevent natural disasters we are never prepaired enough to save lives, a great thing indeed

[@hhzmaung]

Amazing

[@cherylcurrid6508]

Excellent

[@NEONScience]

Thank you.

[@hongbinbin24]

excellent

[@NEONScience]

Thank you! Glad you found it useful.

[@ekremvkilic]

"I am you", kinda romatic :)

[@jihnbrumfield4976]

That was fun devolpment

[@gm130s]

Thanks so much for such a well articulated video!! Kudos to (multiple) appearance of EMU. Made me giggle. One suggestion: Including GPU + IMU as a required Lidar system components might be confusing (GPU + IMU are useful when Lidar is used for getting posisions and poses of target objects) ?

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@MewiCanAnimate]

LiDAR is genius for a horror game

[@alternativadigital7765]

Goodness!!!

[@atharvadeshpande9782]

good video. keep it up

[@NEONScience]

+Atharva Deshpande thank you - we are glad you enjoyed the video

[@fidget2020]

Nice video, but I have one nit-picker and that is that the IMU does not measure or track the planes position (Part 3 of the system, around 1:52) it measures the orientation or attitude of the aircraft.

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@brianarmadan7333]

Very informative, however I noticed an issue with the visualization at ~1:34. The satellites should be in the center of the circles that intersect the airplane. Technically they should be spheres, but circles are sufficient for conceptual purposes.

[@NEONScience]

Thank you for adding the excellent point of clarification. We did simply the graphic to just show the points of intersection on a circle, not the sphere.

[@chrisapagouni3226]

Πολύ καλό

[@NEONScience]

Ευχαριστώ

[@NYNCoaching]

Hello, how interesting video it is! I really want to know how to estimate forest structure but i can't find it out in your videos. Have you been posted or not yet? Please...... I'm very interested in the next steps. Many thanks.

[@NEONScience]

Hi. There are many different ways to estimate the structure of a forest. Are you interested in heterogeneity of tree heights, the biomass of trees in a given area, layers of canopy, etc. We don't have a video specifically about these topics. However, we do offer some tutorials for calculating some of the parameters that go into these questions on our website: www.neonscience.org/resources/data-tutorials

[@adisuryanathanael6056]

Firstly thank you for this useful info. can LiDAR detect fire flame? need your advice. Thank you

[@NEONScience]

Interesting question! LiDAR can be used to detect fires but the detection is actually based on the smoke, not the flame (see reference here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1155/2014/597368). The laser needs an object to bounce back from.

[@ryanprasad2090]

I like the Emu! 😆

[@EddieAiello]

Such a great video! Thank you. Would you please recommend some extra reading or other sources where I could learn more about LIDAR and get more involved with it?

[@NEONScience]

Eddie Aiello Hi Eddie! we are glad you enjoyed the video! there are a lot of great resources out there to learn more. For instance, in the past year Penn State has put many of their course materials online! www.worldcampus.psu.edu/RS so you can read through their materials. they have an entire section on lidar as well in there and some other courses in imagery. i'd start there!:) another older tutorial was produced by NASA years ago. I found a copy of it here www.fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rst/Front/tofc.html ... the formatting visually is a bit dated by the information is solid and provides a good general foundation. i'm sure there are others as well but these two have a lot of content to go through that you might enjoy! Cheers!

[@EddieAiello]

Thank you so much for all the great info! I can't wait for some more great videos from you...

[@faustin289]

Since the height calculation involves the time the pulse leaves and returns at awfully high precision, I'd expect a good clock (preferably an atomic one) to be part of a LiDAR system.

[@Alex-pp4wj]

Good point! Also I have a question - how does it always return emitted laser pulse back to the plane? - How can we guarantee the needed angle? What if the surface just reflects it to another direction?

[@s1ight]

you're right each pulse has a carrier phase signature associated with it, no clock can measure such a fast return but it can record when the individual pulse leaves and then later calculate when that distinct pulse returned

[@FuglyFatt]

Information part of video = A+. Attempts at making jokes = cringy.

[@MrFang333333]

Awe I liked the bird

[@revenge6965]

I agree, pretty cringy

[@RimfireRat]

info was good presentation like for 2nd graders not so much

[@robertidonotsharemyfullnam496]

IMU! URMI ? NO IMMI. So URU ! Yes! But we are taking about IMU.

[@flexusanm]

I’m five yrs late to the party, however the equations were an equal match.

[@Alex-pp4wj]

I have a question - how does it always return emitted laser pulse back to the plane? - How can we guarantee the needed angle? What if the surface just reflects it to another direction?

[@ericphantri96734]

If the light is well calibrated then use the pixel per inch then calculate it's rate of light expansion is how we get correct high and color change or intensity change is revealing it's property of materials and instead of single sweeping laser we should use line scanning or ring line better

[@PraveenYadav-wo1ig]

Great Video, Could you please share tools you used to make video

[@NEONScience]

+Praveen Singh Hi Praveen - We use Adobe After effects mostly! Although we record using audition.

[@geographicaljourney]

That was amazing ..! May i get LiDAR data for vegetation cover in Himalayas? And can we broadly identify the type of forest from such data?

[@NEONScience]

Pranav Hirave hi there!! we are glad you enjoyed the video! good question. there are lidar data available for various parts of the world however you'd have to search in that region to figure out if data have been flown for the areas your interested in. It's can be pricey to collect so larger collections are a bit more rare in many parts of the world. Lidar has been used to identify conifer vs deciduous over larger areas. But it's more effective if you combine lidar with imagery to get into species mapping. lots of options however! thank you for your comment and good luck with your project!! :)

[@geographicaljourney]

Yeah thanks to you too..! I would definitely search for such data repository

[@drishtantsen3724]

Thanks for reminding me again and again that it's not a bird WITH A DIFFERENT SPELLING.

[@marcdeni8555]

THIS COULD BE THE START OF "DETECTNOLOGY"

[@silverhawk923]

What’s that?

[@alphaapple1375]

Lidar is nowadays a common noun that people do not bother capitalizing it, similar to Laser, Maser, Radar, and Sonar which were originally acronyms for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation", "Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation", "Radio Detection And Ranging" or "Radio Direction And Ranging", and "SOund Navigation And Ranging".

[@NEONScience]

Agreed. There has definitely been a shift over the last 5 or so years.

[@renatosabato]

Quick question: how come light reflects exactly in the direciont of where it came from? What if it does not?

[@mrnohax5436]

was that guitar riff from satisfaction - rolling stones

[@ywk7282]

Thanks for the video. I have one question. How do we assure that the light comes back? Isnt it possible for the light to reflect and not come back to the lidar!

[@Indiana_drones0]

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[@walterharoldbishop]

in short : lidar uses light and measures distance. very informative.

[@kimbott4963]

Honestly this had more information than any of the so-called lectures I've looked at. Those all took 15 minutes to be like "and radar uses radio" ok dude great. At least this mentioned the IMU, and some of the subtlety of difficulties in measuring, and talked about how the measurement is made (maybe you missed it judging from your "summary" there). This channel I think is for general audiences so it's actually pretty impressive they got through so much while some person meant to give an hour long lecture can't even get around to wavelength choice or location and movement considerations.

[@s1ight]

Some errors, no clock can measure the time it takes light to travel such a short distance. Each pulse has a unique 'signature' and the sensor tracks when it leaves and when it returns, then calculates the distance afterwards.

[@ericpham4011]

Or we could paint the sky by a laser color then read the oposite color of the background to read remote terrain . we can select certain spectrum depending on the object or type of vision we want to search and not reading entire spectrum then it may make more sense

[@randombits2620]

I've seen this in expeditions of mayans temple

[@monuanurag11]

Nice video. I have one doubt, if the laser light is sent to a flat ground from certain height at an angle say theta from normal to the ground how come the receivers receive the ray back? Shouldn't it travel with theta angle normal to the ground in other direction?

[@NEONScience]

Anurag Dixt - great question. And yes, if the ground was utterly, perfectly flat that is true. However, given that all objects are less than ideally smooth when the laser hits the ground the light scatters and some of it does bounce back at the receivers.

[@ericpham8205]

It need a painting color depending on condition before the scan on top

[@pierre-oliviergagnon3706]

Did you make the video about the forest structure?

[@NEONScience]

Hi. Unfortunately, I'm not sure which "forest structure" video you are referring to. All of our animated science videos can be found in this playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PLLWiknuNGd50GI8OZf3EBo6PMx04xcoFa