Drone LiDAR scanning
High-density point clouds from the air — accurate through vegetation, precise along structures, and processed into the formats your engineering team needs. LiDAR is the technique of choice where photogrammetry alone can't reach the ground.
Why use drone LiDAR
Photogrammetry reconstructs surfaces from images — but cameras can't see through a tree canopy. LiDAR pulses penetrate gaps in vegetation, reflecting off the terrain below and off every branch above. The result is a full-return point cloud: ground surface, intermediate vegetation, and canopy — all in a single pass.
For infrastructure inspection, LiDAR captures the precise geometry of pylons, bridges and pipelines without the need for close proximity or scaffolding. Combined with the RGB camera on the DJI Zenmuse L2, you get a colourised point cloud with both spatial and visual context.
Through-canopy terrain
Ground-return filtering in post-processing extracts a bare-earth DTM through dense woodland — essential for flood modelling, archaeology and forestry.
Infrastructure as-built
Precise geometry of pylons, towers, bridges and pipelines — without the access risk of a manned survey or scaffolded inspection.
Corridor mapping
Rail, road, pipeline and powerline corridors surveyed end-to-end — clearance verification, vegetation encroachment and change detection.
Volume and stockpile
Dense point cloud for accurate cut-and-fill calculations and stockpile volumetrics — unaffected by shadows that degrade photogrammetric models.
DJI Zenmuse L2
The L2 integrates a LiDAR module, a 4/3 CMOS RGB camera, and an IMU into a single payload for the DJI M350 RTK and M300 RTK. It captures up to 240,000 points per second with five returns per pulse, and outputs SBET-fused point clouds with real-time accuracy of 4 cm horizontal and 2 cm vertical at 50 m AGL.
That accuracy is achievable without GCPs — built-in RTK positioning and IMU fusion give survey-grade results directly from the flight log. Where even higher accuracy is required, PPK processing with a base station brings the figure down further.
Plan your LiDAR survey
Tell us the area, the vegetation density and the accuracy spec — we'll recommend the right flight parameters and point density for your deliverable.