iPhone 13 Pro LiDAR vs. Survey Total Station Accuracy

[@michaelkaliski7651]

For ball park measurements calculating building materials required, this is accurate enough. For scanning between known fixed points, it is also good enough to generate a profile. Given that the maximum range is only 5 metres, you are pushing against the accuracy limits anyway. Pretty impressive performance from the iPhone given it is not mounted on a tripod with a fixed remote reference point.

[@0xmedia]

💯

[@chrislutes2882]

We tried it and we're off by 8.6 inches over a paltry 61 feet. Worst part was that if we hadn't checked our work with a laser scanner, we wouldn't have known that we were that far off. If that's "in the ballpark", that's an awfully big ballpark.

[@MrTuts4life]

@@chrislutes2882 as was said, it’s accuracy is 5m, not 61ft 😂 This is ideal for indoor mapping more than anything, scanning small rooms etc, not for large scale work, that’s not what it’s designed for.

[@tjf2939]

This is exactly what I searched! A comparison between a professional and the new iPhone LiDAR sensor.

[@RamiTamimi]

Awesome, hope you liked it and learned from it~!

[@dbackscott]

Pretty impressive accuracy for a tiny sensor in consumer hardware. I’m a Geotech engineer. I can think of a few cases where that could be handy.

[@RamiTamimi]

There is always a great application for every tool. Glad to see more engineers are finding value in this one!

[@piwiee]

I believe lidar is being considered by nasa for mars exploration

[@OSkarSS20]

@@RamiTamimi I drive lorries and I sometimes double check the height of a lorry before going under bridge or trough narrow gate and so far have not been dissapointed using measuring tool built in iphone 12 pro max

[@Dovachin]

I’ve been making some crazy architectural diagrams with the LiDAR feature. Had it first on my iPad a year or 2 ago and blew some of my tutors minds back on my degree.

[@stefanf6495]

Me, too. Wish I had this thing 20 years ago when we were measuring a route for a new sewage pipe - 10km long, 2m wide, doing it with just a total station and no GPS. That LiDAR thing accuracy would have been way enough and time spent on measuring a fracture of what we took.

[@christopherpardell4418]

I once had to set a bunch of stakes on a property line for my girlfriend…. It was a pretty complicated property line, with odd arcs and angles and set on a steep hillside. I took a plat map of the property and used my iPhone for bearings and a laser ruler to measure starting from a boundary marker. I used a construction app to correct for elevation based upon measured angles to each stake as it went up the hill and calculating the base off the hypotenuse. And double checked with the GPS receiver on the phone for elevation changes. For arcs I set a stake at the center of radius and just measured off the stake to mark out the curves. The neighbor decided to hire a surveyor to check the property line and the surveyor found every one of my stakes to be within an inch of the true property line. He asked me how I did it and was astonished that I could figure it out with nothing but an iPhone and a laser ruler. iPhones are essentially tricorders.

[@peanutbutterpadre1519]

please make a video

[@christopherpardell4418]

@@peanutbutterpadre1519 That was 7 years ago. And I’m not with her anymore…. But even 7 years ago, you could use an iPhone to ascertain bearings and read GPS elevations. I used an app called Theodolite. If you have one known point in the form of a boundary marker, you just measure distances and bearings as listed on the map. The only hard part is correcting for elevation as the plat map is a flat projection. But the property map had topographic lines and numerous bench marks noted for verifying elevation. By averaging the GPS elevation measure with the nearest benchmarked elevation, I could derive a hypotenuse length based upon the plat map distance and measure up the hill that distance ( when you’re doing it on your own, you need a bright surface to target the laser ruler on and you need a laser ruler that can handle the 200 plus feet you’ll need to measure. So you plant a target at a known point and walk the bearing until you get the distance you’re looking for. ) You can double check your elevation estimate by measuring the angle to the prior known target with the iPhone’s inclinometer and deriving how much higher than the target you are with the same Pythagorean calculation. Then you go back down and fetch your target and relocate it to the new known point. My target was literally a length of galvanized electrical conduit with a piece of stiff white board on it with an X at exactly my eye height above a hole with a bolt thru it drilled perpendicular thru the pipe about 18” up the conduit and I would drive the thing into the ground with a short length of larger water pipe slid over the conduit until the bolt I was banging against was at grade- using the iPhone to make sure it was plumb. This way I am measuring from my eye height thru the iPhone to a target that is my eye height above grade. I literally used an improvised plumb bob to transfer the position of the iPhone to the ground. ( holding the upper end of the string in my left hand just below the lens of the iPhone ) As you compile points, If something is significantly off, you run a do over. Over plotting a whole bunch of points, you can tell if you’re on track by the cumulative error. It took a lot of traipsing up and down the hill, resetting stakes and target to correct for cumulative error… but overall errors over and under true measure tended to average out. For example, I would stake maybe 6 points along what the map showed as a straight line… and then sight back along them and correct to the mean line of sight that was on the correct bearing. I knew I was on track when my plotting placed me within a few inches of a corner marker hidden under a bush that I didn’t even know was there. All in all, it gave me profound respect for the guys who had surveyed the first ‘accurate’ height of Everest, by starting at sea level in India and working their way across hundreds of miles using nothing but a theodolite and slide rule. I would not use this technique to survey unknown ground, But with the backup of a plat and topographical map with known points you can cross reference, you can plot a property line reasonably well.

[@calebwallace9589]

This guy is great. A true nerd, but I think we can all relate.

[@peanutbutterpadre1519]

@@calebwallace9589 right?! I just appreciate videos to see their method in action to see if I can find good ideas to apply to my projects.

[@andrewgregor3692]

@@christopherpardell4418 thanks for taking the time to detail and share this, well done mate!

[@dronecapuk]

For a hands free mapping those are huge results, really good data.

[@RamiTamimi]

Yes, the results are fascinating for something like this!

[@kennyrobertson4673]

I greatly appreciate your videos, very informative and delivered in a way a layman can understand! I’ve been in the heavy equipment grading side of construction for over twenty years. The company I work for recently invested into gps technology, I’m the sole operator, I hope to train more, of the gps grader, rover, and I make our maps via Trimble business center. My previous experience with grading was laser with a grade rod. You have helped me tremendously with filling gaps of knowledge I was missing. It’s hard sometimes to ask a question when you don’t even know how ask it, much less even know your missing key knowledge lol. I look at brochures and promotional videos of the equipment we have to grow questions to look up. There’s not much info on KZbin for this line of work. I really hope your channel gets traction and gains in popularity, I know it’s a big time suck to make these informative videos but please keep up the great work!

[@RamiTamimi]

Thanks Kenny. I love making these videos, and having this be my full time job would be a pleasure!

[@skaramicke]

Surely you need three alignment points for a 3D dataset, or your elevations will be off for all but the two alignment points and anything directly between them.

[@PWN_Nation]

As a new real-estate agent in AZ, where so-called "mustang subdivisions" are scattered all over the place, having a strong understanding of surveying only helps our potential buyers to identify risks and possibilities BEFORE they sign a contract... Also, would love to see same comparison, but using the Matterport Pro2 camera system.

[@IzziedeD]

Rami, this is the first video I’ve seen of yours and i found it to be fantastic. I’m not a surveyor, nor even in the construction industry. However, I do watch a lot of home building, construction, excavation, and concrete videos, so thats probably why your video came into my feed. This was so well explained I was able to follow and understand the whole process despite never having used either the survey tools nor an iPhone 13. Here are some thoughts I had. 1.) The Total Station obviously has a lot of advantages afforded to it, for example, it’s fixed position. The biggest advantage, however, I think would be the prism. 2.) While there will be movement induced inaccuracies from the LiDAR sensor and accelerometers in the iPhone, I think there may be resolution and backscatter inaccuracies in the point cloud. 3.) A set of inexpensive markers could be made with a bubble level and some object the LiDAR could accurately key off of (a small orange ping-pong ball, steel ball bearing, 6-sided die? obv. testing needed). 4.) With an effective marker in place, the survey points in the point cloud would jump out and we can subtract the marker’s height from the measured elevation. In theory, i think this would reduce the prism’s advantages, and some other’s suggestions like using a gimbal or a weighted steady-cam could help reduce motion induced error. Thanks for the great video! definitely sub’d. 👍🏻

[@Andertheil]

Diddo.

[@samuelenblom]

Great content, as other surveyors already pointed out you should transform with minimum 3 points, preferably with a helmert transformation / smallest square method. Thanks for taking the time making this comparison and thanks for using mm. Regards, a Swedish Surveyor

[@Spaisi_coyc]

Hello, I am a surveyor from Russia. Can you tell us how a typical surveyor's day goes in Sweden?

[@slhurtt]

Perfect intro for a layman. Good analysis between accuracy and precision. Impressed that the IPhone software was able to stitch the cloud together. Fine for estimations; not suitable for a design survey. Additional control might aid in accuracy. Keep the land surveyor over the IPhone. But I'm biased.

[@farn1991]

Wonder how would the error fare on large area. IMU sensor [which phone use to detect its movement] has inherit errors which would accumulate under prolong use.

[@Lakesideforge]

Great work! I would love to see the efficacy of this on a larger scale. As a landscape architect this could be extremely useful

[@christiangrigorov5749]

As a surveyor myself I really liked how you did the comparison. This is the exact method i would use too. Great work buddy! As for the idea of the video - to be honest I am really impressed with the accuracy of the phone. I expected a significant difference in both elevation and positioning!

[@RamiTamimi]

Yea it is quite incredible what a cell phone sensor can do. With the proper adjustments, we can really make use of these sensors for certain surveying projects.

[@LiDAR3D]

Another great one Rami! Thanks for sharing your hard work and for adding mm in there 😃🙏 We have some videos about how we use Apple lidar to map interiors for construction, interior design and more on our channel if anyone's interested in that.

[@RamiTamimi]

Thank you for the support. Yes everyone go check out LiDAR3D's channel they have some amazing LiDAR content!

[@LiDAR3D]

@@RamiTamimi Thank you very much!

[@slednecksxbox]

I've been surveying since 2005 and have looked various times for a KZbin channel to show my friends what I do. They are usually so dry tho and it bores everyone lol. Not thus channel tho. Can't wait to share this with my friends and family! Great video and I will watch some more of yours now. Thank you sir,

[@jasont721]

Thanks for the video. I'm a surveyor from Australia and was intrigued by the LIDAR on these phones. I'd be curious to see the results if you did scale the point cloud to the surveyed points. The errors look a similar order of magnitude the further from the base point. The error on the elevation though is a bit strange. Thanks for the metric much appreciated. If you want the table to look neater you can use whole numbers for mm. Only use decimals for super high accuracy surveys.

[@westcoastaerialimagery4690]

Jason I’ve found hard stand to be within 50mm and up to 200mm on “grassed” areas, there’s a bit more testing to do and a better methodology to follow but it’s getting there. I’m a surveyor in WA if you want to ask some questions or look at the point cloud

[@adriandrozdowski293]

The elevation error could be caused by the AutoCAD align command. When 2 points are used for the ALIGN, the command asks for the scale option. You can also align using 3 points. With 2 points, the point cloud can be slightly skewed from its original horizontal plane, and it is aligned to a line rather than to the plane. A better way would be to average X,Y,Z coordinates for the control points, then do the same for the total station points. This would establish a center of gravity for both datasets. Then you could place them on top of each other using this centre of gravity. Similarly you could calculate average angles for the pairs of points to obtain an average azimuth for both data sets and rotate the point cloud accordingly. Then you could mitigate some of the total station error by taking measurements of all points from various foresight points. This would create an overconstrained network of points, which would allow you to average the errors using Truncated Taylor Series (long story how this is done, but it works magic). This way you would see each control point as 3-dimensional probability ellipsoid with a range of errors, as well as the center of this ellipsoid. Then you would be able to mathematically prove the accuracy of your control point and the point cloud error. Sorry for the long-winded and academic explanation of this problem. It would make a great project for an advances surveying class. Great video, very informative and the methods shown were sufficiently accurate! Thanks!

[@my_key]

I’m a real estate lawyer and actually had an appointed expert-surveyor in a case take a LiDAR scan with his iPad Pro, to scribble notes on and take rudimentary measurements from. And all the (many) parties asked about the app and how he did it. It was so funny.

[@MorsDengse]

Impressive work : ) I will not nitpick, but the correct way to position the point cloud, is not to align two points. The correct way would be to align for lowest overall distance to reference points. Because of that, the result was actually a bit better than what you ended up with, and sorry if you mentioned this, but I missed it.

[@mazzonijacopo]

Use the metric system and convert to imperial if you want accuracy, not the other way around.

[@blakel4595]

As a surveyor and civil engineer I'm pretty impressed with the results. I think a place it would shine is in determining how much material was dug out or filled in, I remember a water tower site perhaps 75ft diameter taking hundreds of shots trying to get the detailed shape of excavating to bedrock which varied wildly. Also I never had that sensor for the top of my prism! That's cheating 🤣

[@stephen83546]

Excellent demonstration. You really did put a lot into this video and it shows and for someone like me that hasn't Really seen a lot of this, it was a very good video and it taught me a lot thank you

[@RamiTamimi]

Thank you, that means a lot!!!!

[@charlessoh]

I'm a newb to this topic, so very appreciative of the time and effort put into this video. 💥💥💥

[@Khnvlogs]

You are a genius, literally did not get any knowledge but watched the whole video.

[@RobinsonDuenas]

Man! Incredibly good!! Thanks for doing this video with such a great quality on edition and all the effort you put on this is awesome. Congratulations and thanks for sharing, I'm civil engineer from Colombia and videos like this help people around the whole world to understand better how this new technology is going into the game! Keep up the great job!

[@steelboss337]

For the uninitiated, 0.01’ is about 1/8”, so I gather that the iPhone has about a 1”-2” accuracy for this scan. Probably good enough for estimating take-offs for materials and construction boundaries, but we will probably have to wait for the iPhone 16 before we’re aligning machinery with it. 🤓

[@StuartBreland]

I helped my dad do Survey work for our family's construction company back in the late 90s. How I wish we had a little robotic adjustment like that between the rod and station.

[@jab1982]

I have no idea why KZbin recommended this channel and video but I really liked the content. In the end, I watched the whole video and I have nothing to do with this field. Congrats! :D

[@smoke2275]

Who would have thought that even 15 years ago we would be comparing a $20000-$60000 precision instrument to a phone and have the results that close! I switched from android to a 13 pro max several months ago and do not regret it one bit! It’s amazing what such a small, relatively cheap device is capable of!

[@AFTERSHOCK-bh7hh]

Right. It's more than a phone now, it's a tool. A flashlight, a speaker, a camera... etc etc

[@Nostalgicinquisitor]

Why did you bring Android in this conversation? 😳💀

[@conanrockwell4254]

The iPhone and other cellular phone positioning systems are pseudo-GNSS systems that receive signals from cellular phone antennas, so they can only be used in urban areas with relatively large numbers of antennas installed. Since cellular phones cannot be used in areas far from urban areas, they cannot be used to build vacation homes or mountain huts, of course.

[@superqaxclub]

I see a lot of these outside but don't know how they work, thanks for the video, and learning about iPhone LiDAR as well

[@barnmaddo]

I think adding some more 3d features would help improve the height accuracy. Like by leaving some concrete blocks in a grid every 2m. The software likely struggles to tell if mostly flat ground is flat or slightly curving otherwise (when it's stitching together the various 5m sized frames from the video feed to model an area much larger than 5m).

[@sandwichtan]

I won't build a bridge with it... but definitely impressive for a phone!! I think it has a lot of applications; excellent video. Thank you so much!

[@ALFAOURI-92]

Best video, i adore your content. Keep feeding us with ( technology, new equipments of Surveying and process of work for whole your 10 years experience ) much thanks bro

[@alessandromazzoni5275]

Great Job Prof. Rami. I am doing some tests with my Iphone13 Pro and 3D scanner app. Only one question: how can I export the point clouds from the app in .rcs format? I can't find this function in the app. Thanks in advance

[@glencoad737]

Did you find the answer to this?

[@geol3d142]

It's a very good video! Congrat's Rami! We listent a lot of think about the lidar of the iphone and your comparaison is exactly what and landsurveyor search! Thanks a lot and keep going, you do a very good job!

[@Unknown_Ooh]

I don't own any iphones but as someone who always sees surveyors working it's cool to see some insight into what exactly they are doing. Great video.

[@psyfusion]

My first video and very impressive breakdown. LiDAR feature moved me from the TOF galaxy to iPhone

[@walterdale3308]

Thanks for keeping it simple Rami! All of the comments about feet, inches and metric show the ignorance of the commentors about surveying in the United States. Unit conversion is a daily process. Could have went GLO and showed chains and links to really get the "huh" Factor😊. Nice video

[@oldmaninthemirror]

Good stuff as a recently retired land surveyor I just enjoyed watching. I was impressed with the iPhone point cloud accuracy really. I am not a point cloud guru but I wonder is a few more register points could "tilt" the vertical and perhaps improve the elevation difference? I recognize that this is a small sample area so perhaps this doesn't matter.

[@SkyGizmmo]

Very interested in world of drone survey. I did not know after months of also having an iPhone 13 pro max, still use my familiar Android. Thanx for the content...Good job!

[@joecox9958]

do you have a video just measure a four points property line, and compare GIS, total station and LiDAR?

[@MohammadMohammadiAref]

Great work and really impressive that you addressed many technical issues and gave many clues about how to make a good measurement. I understand that you compared iPhone against the ground thruth. However, what you are comparing here is not LiDAR error but LiDAR + mapping error.

[@RamiTamimi]

yea the objective here is to see the accuracy of the points in relation to themselves. Other people may test the resolution accuracy to the object they are scanning.

[@joeglennaz]

I have an iPhone 12 pro. I would love to just know how to use my LiDAR scanner when I can do with it for every day uses. I tried watching this and I understood what you were doing with the 3-D app on the iPhone but other than that I didn’t understand anything. Especially when you get into the software I had no idea what you were doing. Maybe you can make a separate video and every day uses of the LiDAR scanner. Thank you I found you by your drone videos I am very interested in serving the drones. And my part 1 07.

[@arturofernandez6592]

The most precise and technologically advanced device to measure distances that is set to measure in... feet.

[@kcgunesq]

it is decimalized, so no more or less accurate than smoots, rods, chains, hectares, or meters.

[@kane2103]

Just found out my phone has a LIDAR sensor, albeit not as advanced as the iPhone. Samsung Galaxy s20+. Wouldn't have known without your video!

[@alexandersepp9131]

Perfect for a hyper detailed field note. Not for every situation but wow.

[@williamhegman9779]

Nicely done. Really helpful to see the lidar accuracy. Thanks.

[@markshepherd9702]

Rami, this is an excellent video, I'm glad I've found your channel.

[@nicoletiana]

I have the iPhone 13 pro max in white 128gb and did an unboxing video on my channel! Absolutely love this phone. I also did a Spigen clear glitter case unboxing and try on, this is a great case if anyone is wanting a clear but slimming case for the 13 pro max. Love this phone.

[@AmazingPhilippines1]

Interesting project and discussion. Watching from the Philippines.

[@ricardocruz-geosupport1809]

Congrats. That's a very good presentation you made here. Keep up the good work. Thank you

[@paleogeology9554]

Im a Geologist, in short I prospect for new valuable mineral deposites, find then, file the claim, if its really good ground I keep the claim and everything else I sell. I was just reading that Geologists are starting to use LiDar to find mineral deposites. Have you heard anything about this? Im wondering if there is a particular type of camera I'd need to do this? Sorry for the questions, I just wanna make sure to get the right onee from the start. Ive been using drones to find mineral deposites for several years really before i seen anyone doing this so if possible i'd like to setup on of our drones with the Lidar

[@lushis1]

I definitely think that Primoz Brglez's suggestion on using a gimbal could increase the accuracy, but i wonder if you change the range from 5m down to 1m (or lower) with a gimbal and scanned the area whether it would be even more accurate again. I think it collecting points from 5m away could be whats creating some of this error? i dont have an iphone to test and know for sure, but just thought it might be something to test as well? Look forward to future videos!

[@francois190sponsor]

Would like to know the undirect comparaison. Like what distance do you shoot between point 7 and 8 with the total station, and what do you have with the iphone. What delta you would have between point 4 and 5 with total station, and what delta you have for those points only with iphone. I'm curious to compare both geometry separatly. Thanks for the video its very interesting !

[@matrix862]

Great informative video, love the comparison and much appreciate the effort to do the work from a fellow Surveyor, thanks Rami!!

[@RamiTamimi]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@WirableCrown1]

I have a feeling the LIDAR sensor is being used alongside the camera sensors with some crazy cool software to give such good results. Either way very impressive.

[@wylde007]

"PK" is a trademark name. Parker-Kalon. Videos like this are why people think surveying can be done by "just anybody" and that "my GPS told me..." I would suggest that using an iPhone to SUPPLEMENT a true ground-based survey might be satisfactory, because you need a baseline to correct your data. But as a standalone, this information should only be relied on for general reference, at best. Signed - a Virginia registered Land Surveyor.

[@V3mund]

I used ti work with Trimble and they don’t need the attachment on the prism . And all in all it’s better with Trimble

[@ihabyamen2129]

تجربه حلوة يا رامي التميمي .. تحياتي

[@cf453]

Solid analysis. I've surveyed many miles of city streets, and this is nowhere near ready, when 0.02' vert can make or break a design. Even if there was a good way to least-squares fit the point cloud to regular conventional check shots, it still wouldn't be enough or worth the additional effort. For reference, I typically survey BSW to BSW with a max of 30' linear interval, with an average of about 1 point per LF of street, and can do about 1000 LF a day. Not to mention working around parked cars and such, where there's no way to get a visually contiguous scan.

[@jean-claudegoy3463]

Thank you for this video, Jean-Claude, a french surveyor

[@blkhmt1455]

Rami excellent work! Just a few quick questions. 1. When Aligning the point cloud to the total station points if you use 2 points (1 plane, X) is that introducing error in the Y plane with 3 points (2 planes) could you balance both X and Y? The Z axis between points looks way closer that the Delta Averages by your chart just wondering if there might be drift between Gyro Level in Phone and total station level. 2. If you scanned say a 1"X1"X1" cube in the LiDAR data would it help with the scaling issues importing to CAD?

[@beepboop8184]

>>0.01-0.02 ft How much is that in football fields? Idk, I would never use 'Murican units, but if I would, I would use inches in this particular case. Nah, forget it, metric only.

[@dekada7044]

helpful tutorial videos for surveyors.. keep it up.

[@s.sergio]

Amazing! thanks for you video!

[@manualdoprojetistadeplanej4434]

Hello. Work with measurement of indoor environments for woodworking. In your opinion, would the iphone have the necessary precision to measure a kitchen or a room?

[@tristin5723]

Your error could be from skew of the scan. This should be done with picking all the points in the scan coordinate system and labeling them. Then do a best fit analysis with the known points. This could be done in something like Autodesk Recap.

[@lamersolutions9840]

Nice video, explained in a pretty good way so that everyone can understand!! Sure, there will be a level difference, as scanning with a constant height is not possible!

[@topografiit]

Congrats for this video

[@CrazyBoiStraceteli]

Add standard deviation to the excel chart. Then deduct approximate Lidar accuracy from it, should get average accuracy across all points.

[@antoineboudreau2983]

Not to be a stickler, but seems like the deltas are somewhat correlated with the direction and distance. Deltas between iphone and TS on local north grid are fairly tight while west and south, deltas are building up. In you check, we can't see in the video if a HChech and VCheck was performed ... Transit and Face to CP. We should not see a correlation between these deltas correct?

[@polystyrene_gangster]

Incredibly valuable information! thanks

[@tysondeal4369]

Cool video! Thanks for sharing! I can’t unsee the crooked globe on the light above the dining room table. :)

[@Jack-ne8vm]

What errors if you transformed Lidar to 3 survey points? Short rod tough on the knees.. Needs an extension to standing height with the bubble at eyeball level, leaving the reflector low.

[@nothingelsematters8217]

I'm saving your channel .in my folder. Beautiful minds ☝

[@mistersir8342]

Thank you Rami, you are an educator.

[@HearWisdomNow]

Now do the same thing with a stabilizer and take multiple scans, then take the average of the numbers for maximum possible accuracy with the iPhone and see if you can tighten those numbers up. That would be an interesting video

[@johnthompson3305]

What about augmenting a Rod and GPS SENSOR IN COMBO with the IPhone LiDAR?

[@dustinclark8484]

Thank you for posting this content!

[@shaegrover9516]

I was going to say human error is to blame for some inconsistencies. Which is still possible in the x and y axis. You could’ve chosen a point slightly off from what you selected the first time and the iPhones resolution was set to 6mm. Therefore 0.02 ft of error is possible on any point. But I’m wrong because the elevation is mostly infallible. Mostly because certain surfaces had slope. For context if the concrete was as sloped as your roof and his selected data point was off by a massive 1” the elevation would be off between 0.027 ft to 0.0625 ft. So after doing the math. The elevation can have an excusable human error of 0.0625ft or 3/4 of an inch (19.05mm) AT MOST. As you can see in the video the iPhone has some elevation points off by 0.2ft. Over 3x what human error could justify. ((Ignoring point 210 being off by 0.28 do to such a far travel distance)) I am still impressed with the iPhone but I was hoping I could rely on it more for work. Amazing work.

[@AuthenTech]

so entertaining and educational!

[@RamiTamimi]

Awesome, glad to see you again Ben! 😄

[@jbirdx002]

I’d be curious how this looks if lowered into a storm manhole

[@plumbbobx]

The comment I was looking for. I'm tired of fudging inverts with this dumb level rod

[@jallohmomoduupm7768]

Please, can you compare the iPhone LiDAR with the Terrestrial LiDAR Scanner, to determine if the iPhone will be appropriate for taken 3D structure or point of a plant. Thanks

[@calebwallace9589]

This is a wonderful video. Very thorough. Tom marks dear sir.

[@stevemckerroll4865]

Rami... the lidar on the iphone and ipad pro is good for when good enough is OK. ie you want to scan a scene and import it into blender so you can make a virtual world...ie looks good but may not be 100% dimensionally accurate As an architect I wanted to see how accurate the ipad pro lidar was to take accurate scans of existing buildings. I experimented by taking 3 scans of my complex shaped living room and compared the dimension accuracy of the scans to DISTO laser measurements. None of the lidar sans matched the real measured dimensions ... worst case was the 3 scans did not match each other, with a difference of 75mm between them on some measurements... that's 3"... none where close enough to do accurate cad dwgs for a renovation. I have to still survey existing buildings the old way... take laser distance measurements with the DISTO and sketch the plan out on paper showing the measured distance, then draw it in cad program. Its really important that I can trust the measurements taken from the site as being accurate... and plus or minus 1/2" is useless I want/need plus or minus 1mm. To prove to your self how bad it really is to use the iphone lidar. take 3 separate scans of the same area and compare the 3 scans to each other .. in my experience they will not match. and for reference take laser measurements to see how far off each lidar scan is from the actual dimension. I'm experimenting with different photogrammetry software which is looking promising (way better than the apple lidar) especially when I take some actual DISTO measured control points and adjust/scale the photogrammetry mesh so the control points in the mesh are dimensionally accurate (ie set to the actual measured dimension). Ie I measure the over all length of the building and scale the mesh to match.. then the dimensions in the mesh for every thing between the control points get more accurate.

[@rubensleite5838]

Really good video, congratulations.

[@davidwatkins622]

Accuracy vs precision... Battle of the Millennium... Team Accuracy for the win.

[@M0JHN]

Brilliant. A better idea than points for location would be surface intersection taking the averages of the surfaces or using checkerboard or even better high accuracy sphere targets in the LiDAR scans.

[@Chriss2370]

Yes, yes very well done indeed. Very emotional!.

[@allansteinkuhl8242]

I just received my iPhone 14 Pro. Accuracy question. What would happen if one ran the circuit multiple times and averaged the results?

[@basic_r]

So basically, great for horizontal but not survey grade for elevations. The vertical relativity is close so it could be used for dirt/material piles for sure. Pretty awesome for an add-on tool on a phone. Good video.

[@abdelhakmansouri5925]

Thank tamimi your name is like the great geodisien tamimi 🙏

[@jonobroughton1913]

this is a good comparison to check the accuracy of the iphone, but they aren't the same application of the technology. A fairer comparison would be to something like a leica rtc 360 or similar. I haven't played with an iPhone's scan data, but I've done a lot with scan data from both leica's and faro terrestrial scanners. being able to increase the point cloud density on the iphone would be a massive advantage if it can be done. but then again, an even better comparison would be vs a handheld lidar like an artec leo.

[@jonobroughton1913]

i won't lie, i did skip sections of the video the first time, but i just went back and watched the process of the iphone scanning. in my experience even top end hand scanners suffer from drift, as the loose reference to their origin fairly quickly without some pretty well defined geometry for them to reference. for example, we scanned a ute (small truck for those not in Aus) at work, and even just scanning across the front of the vehicle it suffered from some pretty serious drift. scanning in smaller section, creating multiple clouds that you then "stitch" together with overlapping section yielded better results.

[@joopterwijn]

That is the most accurate measured sidewalk n the USA!

[@RamiTamimi]

Haha, just wait until I finish the CAD for it.

[@cfrankfly]

Amazing and can site exclamation an example thank you!

[@jakovjakus2071]

Nice! I'm Doing my capstone project on the accuracies of the Lidar sensor and how they compare with other methods (TLS/photo/conventional), looking forward to the results!

[@RamiTamimi]

Awesome work! That sounds like a great project. Best of luck to yoU!

[@cyberflow3391]

Thanx for this !

[@198000669]

Hello and congratulations on the channel, I wanted to ask you if I should recommend a device between iPhone and iPad 11 pro which one would you recommend me to make a survey through a cloud of points with lidar technology? Obviously I am not interested in having a millimeter precision, I know that in this field we need a professional instrumentation. Thank you

[@03cnutty]

What do you recommend for a PC to start learning CAD and TBC?

[@leomessi1]

Thank you sir for your efforts..