Lidar

Lidar (/ˈlaɪdɑːr/, also LIDAR, LiDAR or LADAR, an acronym of "light detection and ranging" or "laser imaging, detection, and ranging") is a method for determining ranges by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected light to return to the receiver. Lidar may operate in a fixed direction (e.g., vertical) or it may scan multiple directions, in which case it is known as lidar scanning or 3D laser scanning, a special combination of 3-D scanning and laser scanning. Lidar has terrestrial, airborne, and mobile applications.

For other uses, see Lidar (disambiguation).
An airplane collecting treetop data over a Brazilian rainforest
In this view, the viewer flies down to the rainforest canopy and flies through the virtual leaves.
This visualisation shows an airplane collecting a 50 km swathe of lidar data over the Brazilian rainforest. For ground-level features, colours range from deep brown to tan. Vegetation heights are depicted in shades of green, where dark greens are closest to the ground and light greens are the highest.

Lidar is commonly used to make high-resolution maps, with applications in surveying, geodesy, geomatics, archaeology, geography, geology, geomorphology, seismology, forestry, atmospheric physics, laser guidance, airborne laser swathe mapping (ALSM), and laser altimetry. It is used to make digital 3-D representations of areas on the Earth's surface and ocean bottom of the intertidal and near coastal zone by varying the wavelength of light. It has also been increasingly used in control and navigation for autonomous cars and for the helicopter Ingenuity on its record-setting flights over the terrain of Mars.

The evolution of quantum technology has given rise to the emergence of Quantum LiDAR, demonstrating higher efficiency and sensitivity when compared to conventional LiDAR systems.

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