Part of my job is to keep one eye on the horizon of the 3D market, while maintaining that all-important cash flow. When I look that far ahead, I see hardware continuing to outpace software and a lot of clients drowning in data.

Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m a “more is better” guy when it comes to data, but I slowly crawled to this position as measurement technologies increased their data collection rate.

Imagine jumping into the world of point clouds for the first time on the receiving end of a mobile unit collecting hundreds of gigabytes per day. It’s no wonder clients are willing to pay more for a slice of the data you collected than the whole point cloud.

While many of us see multiple categories of assets that are collected and wasted, from their point of view, things are a bit different.

Essentially, clients are buying a gold mine with two billing choices:
1) We hand them the deed, the mineral rights, and say, 'Start digging.'
Or...
2) We say, 'Here’s your gold.'

Unless you client is a “mining company” the choice seems pretty obvious.

The question then becomes, is now the time to make the switch from “evangelists” to “lifeguards”? After years of preaching the value of raw data to anyone who will listen, should I drop that for a business plan centered on saving my clients from drowning in the very data I love swimming around in?

I think we might be there. It’s not as if data has become less valuable. It's just that companies with zero experience in data mining can now own more data from a weekend-long scanning campaign than from what they used to create in a whole year.

That means the 3D service provider that can provide a company with just the portion of data they need to do their job that most seamlessly integrates into their current workflow will be the one that gets the client.

Perhaps my years of swimming in deep datasets was only preparing me to save others from drowning in it. You do what you are good at, and we’ll do what we’re good at. Is that not the point of an active marketplace?
 

With SPAR 2013 behind us (and consuming the past week of my life) all that’s left is to wrap up the takeaways.

1. Google should have its employees stress the whole “Don’t Be Evil” thing a bit more. At any conference you will eventually find yourself in a conversational lull with someone you don’t know very well. Every time this happened to me the other person’s fallback topic was the keynote by Google CTA Michael Jones. Obviously, what he said was sticking with people but whether the topic was how Google creates the service I use or how they might take over the service I provide the overwhelming sentiment was, “God that’s kind of scary!”. I don’t know if stressing Google’s philosophical motto (Don’t Be Evil) would have helped but it couldn’t have hurt. 
2. Only 4% of Autodesk’s users routinely use point clouds. First of all, hearing this fact put into focus just how many users Autodesk has. When you look at how much money they have spent on point cloud technology and development over the past 3 years this also points to what Autodesk must believe the eventual growth curve to be. It’s also an indicator of just how much education is left to be done if we are to get all of those users turned on to point clouds. 
3. One of the biggest issues of merging ILMF and SPAR may be managing expectations. We exhibited at both ILMF and SPAR this year. While I agree that the cross over applications exist and are growing, the expectation of the participant in each conference are quite diverse. Aside from the differing costs to attend and exhibit at each show, the value placed upon items seems to be quite different. At ILMF I had quite a few people mention that they were surprised at how accurate and inexpensive the Viametris iMMS is. At SPAR the same technical specifications and list price got a couple of “That’s pricey considering it’s not sub-centimeter accurate”. I don’t envy Diversified Communications’ task of trying to keep all of us happy in the coming years. 
4. The new goal is, “under $10k”. Not counting the Dot Product hand scanner or the Kinect (both of which exhibited at SPAR),  I had about five guys approach me to look at scanning/imaging systems that they had in development. Every one of them stressed that they thought they could bring it to market with a retail price under $10,000 USD. 
5. BIM is booming. The Broadmoor was quite beautiful and it was nice to have so much room for all of us to spread out. However, that didn’t change the fact that coming in less than 10 minutes early for a session on the BIM track meant that you were standing as every seat was already taken. I’m not sure what the ratio was between service providers looking for work and asset owners looking for answers but the BIM track was the hot ticket all week. While this seemed to be the best attended track I have to say that attendance was strong throughout. I presented results from a mobile scanning demo during the last speaking slot on the last day to a room that was more than 80% full! That "final day drop-off," the usual drying up of attendee traffic on the last day - typical for most conferences and trade shows, didn’t seem to happen this year.

 

With a booth, a product announcement and a presentation spot, I feel as though SPAR International 2013 has already started for me! Attendance is up over last year and I’ve already started seeing posts on the Laser Scanning Forum about where we can meet once onsite. That being said, here are the top 5 things I’m most excited about seeing at SPAR this year ...

1. Who exactly is it that Autodesk is taking on? For those who missed the recent release of Autodesk ReCap and/or the webinar Tuesday, April 9, it would appear that Autodesk is finally getting serious about 3D imaging. They have released the new RCS format which is based on the Alice Labs work of Elmer Bol. As of now, they are simply porting point clouds into all existing platforms for 2014 (3D Studio Max by Q3) and allowing users to prep and clean the data in the ReCap Desktop application. However, they are promising to show the integration of software and hardware from their acquisition of Allpoint Systems at the conference. It’s not a stretch to see them as a future Cyclone and LFM competitor with a much larger user base from which to spread costs. Either way, most of my clients use AutoCAD, so they've gotten my attention.
2. The “Completely Out of the Blue” stuff. It seems as though every year I find some new system or application that I’ve never heard of before. Some years it’s software, others a new photogrammetric camera system, you just never know! However, it is rarely something from a major manufacturer that catches me by surprise. Instead, it tends to be a startup or newly minted PhD. I look forward to seeing who or what that is this year.
3. Finding out Who is Where! As I mentioned in a previous post, there is always a lot of turnover in tech industries. Considering how many LinkedIn posts hit my inbox every day, I am sure that I missed more than a couple of those “Look who got a new job” posts. It’s always interesting to see how many new business cards I get from old friends.
4. Finding Where the New Folks Are From. Between the SPAR conference moving from Houston to Colorado this year, and the increase in registrations, there will definitely be new attendees this year. I’m very curious to see if there is a pattern. More West Coast than Gulf Coast? More out of the mining industry given our location? Maybe it will be more out of the entertainment industry, or something completely unexpected. I don’t know, but it seems unlikely to me that we will see the exact same demographics as last year. 
5. Colorado Springs! I was in Denver for the ILMF conference in February, and leaving the hotel required a heavy coat and a brisk pace. Then again, given the fact that Denver’s airport is closed for snow today, it may not be too different! However, I’ve heard some great things about Colorado Springs and the Broadmoor in particular, so I have high hopes (and no, that’s not a reference to Colorado’s recent cannabis laws ... some of us still have to work in secure areas!).

During a training session I was conducting last week on modeling in Leica’s Cyclone, one of the participants suddenly exclaimed, “So, this is as much an art as it is science?!”

The answer, of course, is ‘yes.’ After the course, there were several side conversations and one eventually turned to the “art versus science” reality of point cloud modeling. The final question became, “How honest should we be about this to clients?”

As some of you may know I started my professional life as a musician. While in college I spent a lot of time talking about music business issues with various faculty members. The business of being a faculty member is keeping kids wanting to go to college from becoming musicians. Which, if you think about it, is a little odd. A degree in music guarantees you absolutely nothing. Add an education component to your curriculum and you get the closest thing to a guarantee - as you are now qualified to be a band director or choral director.

For those of you not in the know, there’s not a lot of money in teaching these days. So, what were the faculty making? There are way more kids majoring in music every year than there are job openings at schools, in orchestras, or for rock stars. The best answer I ever received was that their job was to produce high quality consumers of music. Nothing makes you appreciate the skill of a truly skilled musician than spending hours trying to perform on your own. Knowledgeable consumers patronize and reward the best musicians, more kids want to be the next “it” musician, and the whole cycle repeats itself.

It was this conversation that popped into my mind as I listened to the “how much do we tell the client” conversation. I think the more clients know, the more they will appreciate what we do. The more we simplify our actions, the more we devalue our skill set.

The rub here is that many of us stress the accuracy of the hardware.  For those that do, the idea of stressing the art - the subjective nature of modeling - to clients means risking losing the perceived upper hand in accuracy. The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth if you have a good modeler. Algorithms are getting better every day, but the reason there is still an art to modeling is because it cannot yet be fully automated. Why would we hide this from a client?

Handmade clothes are more valuable than machine-made. Hand-built automobiles are much more valuable than their assembly line cousins. We’re making Ferraris here people! I don’t see how convincing our clients that we’re making Suzukis is in anyone’s best interest.

It would seem from press releases over the past week that indoor mobile mapping is about to have its moment in the limelight.

While many of us have been mapping interior environments for years, we are all keenly aware that there is a lower accuracy/lower cost market that has not yet been realized by most lidar acquisition companies.

I’ve often found myself at meetings with architects, security personnel, or gaming companies thinking, “What these guys need is a go-kart and I sell Ferraris." So, who is going to address this market, and who are the end users to be?

An APL engineer uses EMAPS aboard a ship to generate the map

Google seems to think that the end user should be anyone that currently uses maps or navigation functions on a mobile phone or tablet. They have already started performing StreetView type surveys in malls and commercial structures. At last count they had over 10,000 structures in 13 countries.

Let’s not forget about Apple. Last week they announced the purchase of WiFiSLAM, a Silicon Valley startup that was focusing on using multiple WiFi signals as a sort of indoor GPS. The reported purchase price was $20 million. Lest the big two take over the In-Location Alliance was formed late last year by several companies including Samsung, Sony and Nokia. If all of these guys are planning indoor navigation services, one thing is for sure, they are going to need base maps.

I mentioned Viametris and their iMMS hardware last month. I’m working on a full review of the hardware and software, so I’ll save the details for a later post. Basically, this is one of a new breed of mapping systems whose origins are robotics as opposed to surveying.

The Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory debuted its Enhanced Mapping and Positioning System (EMAPS) last week. This unit was produced for a military group known as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), whose ultimate mission is combating weapons of mass destruction.

I have requested more technical information from the university than initially provided and will give an update with any relevant information. However, from the images they supplied, it appears to be using two Hokuyo lidar sensors with an option of adding on multiple sensors for imaging, radiation detection, etc. They mention using GPS but describe using EMAPS without GPS. I am uncertain if it is using an IMU or SLAM processing of Hokuyo data. The best bit is that EMAPS is a backpack unit - a 6 in (15 cm) cube that weighs less than 4 lbs. (1.8 kg)!

I don’t doubt that we will see more indoor mapping solutions this year, and given the mass adoption of navigation tools on mobile platforms, it would seem that this market is ready to take off. I’m just not sure I’m ready to share the airport or mall concourses with a heard of people staring at their iPhone as the try to navigate to the nearest Cinnabon. 

EMAPS Hardware from The John Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory

If you said, “Yes, I do want to be like Tony Stark,” I just might have the computer interface part solved for you. As for the Audi R8, the ever present supermodels and the whole Iron Man thing … you’re on your own. Many of us have watched with interest as the Microsoft Kinect was used as a motion controller for applications outside of the Xbox. However, if you have tried this you know that while it may be fun, it’s not as productive as a traditional mouse or anywhere close to a 3D mouse. The issue seems to be a combination of a lack of point density and low accuracy returns. While there have been Kinect knock-offs that have improved on this, the new Leap Motion Controller is in a class by itself.

According to the forum boards on LEAP’s website, the technical specifications are as follows: 

• 0.01mm precision in detecting position in Field of View
• Field of View (range) 0.2 cubic meters  

LEAP Motion is the new name for OcuSpec, a startup that raised more than $14.5 million from 2011 to 2012. So, funding doesn’t seem to be a problem. While they have announced that they will have an App Store (or whatever they will call it so that Apple doesn’t sue them out of existence) for LEAP specific apps, the design of the motion controller is stated to be fully cross platform and OS agnostic.  In fact, they have been sending out units to developers since May 2012 in order to front-load the app store with third party apps.  That should open up a wide user base. 

LEAP tweeted last month that Autodesk was making plugins for the motion controller and said it would begin shipping pre-orders the week of May 13. Best Buy has announced that they will have units for sale the week of May 18. Best of all, units are listed as retailing for $79.99.

Now, about that Audi R8 …

As we approach the beginning of Spring many of us see a dramatic uptick in field work as the weather improves and construction picks up. We also have a lot of product announcements being sent our way. There was a time when conventions and product releases seemed to be seasonal as well but I feel like I get a, “Now Hear This!” email everyday with some new product, service or update. Keeping up with this type of stuff is my job so I listen, I research, and where applicable, I recommend. However, I’m not sure that repeating, “Now Hear This” to my clients is in anyone’s best interest.

When I get a call from a client they typically need an answer for now, not for some period “projected to be in the last quarter of the year.” So why am I wasting their time talking about how much better it would be if they put the work off for a year or so? We all know how this works. We have employees and equipment that we have to keep busy on billable projects in order to stay in business. I owe it to both my partners and my clients to address this need first and foremost.

But let’s be honest, they are going to want to hear about new tech. We all want to know what’s coming, and in an industry as small as ours a little gossip goes a long way! But while this might be an interesting conversation, it's not getting any of us closer to what we really want—billable work. Maybe we would all be better off if we started our project conversations with, “When do you anticipate starting fieldwork?” The reality is, the technical solution I recommend might be different six months from now than if you want us onsite next week. After we get the real work taken care of, I am more than happy to talk about upcoming tech as long as you want.

Now that I think about it, I’m not just getting those “Now Hear This!” announcements every day; between LinkedIn, email and Twitter they are coming in multiple times a day! On days when I have to process data or prep for a presentation I have started turning off phone alerts for social media and restricting myself to web browser use during specific hours. I firmly believe you could keep chasing new tech to the point that you never actually get anything done.

So, what are we supposed to do about it? Keeping up has been hyped to such a degree that it is a job unto itself. But it’s a job that isn’t billable! While I agree that it is necessary, we have to move the focus—especially when it comes to customer support. Despite the hype “Now Hear This!” is less important than “Now. Here. This.” If we don’t feel that way our clients will feel less important as well because they are the “This” that is “Here” right “Now.” And if we don’t realize it and treat them accordingly, they won’t be “Here” for long.

Many of us in the laser scanning industry were in the GPS industry or some industry using GPS when we first discovered laser scanning. Perhaps this is why you hear laser scanning compared so often to GPS when we discuss the future directions that scanning hardware and software might take. I will be the first to admit that I viewed laser scanning this way when I first saw it. To me, scanning was the first thing that I had found (since GPS) that could fundamentally change the way that geographic information was collected. To add to that sense of “this is what's next,” once I started meeting many of the others involved in this industry I realized that many of them were coming from positions at companies that were leaders in GPS hardware and software.

I had the privilege of dining with one such person (Dr. Erwin Frei) a few weeks back and he mentioned the similarities to explain his interest in joining P3D Systems last year. I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially his point was that GPS moved from slow to fast then from static to mobile and finally it was integrated into everyday objects. He sees LiDAR taking the same path, so he has thrown his hat in the ring with P3D Systems as they develop a terrestrial mobile scanning solution. It’s hard to disagree with him. The parallels are certainly there; so is the need.

However, there are some definite differences. I was pretty early to the GPS game as well and I only remember getting a good 10-12 years in before “GPS only” service providers were no more. The service was integrated into total stations and backpack units were everywhere. Outfitting a GPS field crew went from >$100,000 to <$30,000 in under a decade! Now my cellphone can get better standalone results than my first GPS unit. However, while the price of scanners has certainly come down from the early Cyrax days, they have remained more stable than anything not made by Apple over the past 10 years or so. Faro certainly put a dent in that and many of the major hardware manufacturers decided to find something to offer at the $50,000 price point, but the “top of the line” price has remained above six figures.

Another difference is the pace of solutions being introduced to the market. In GPS, I left conferences every year or two with a totally new field methodology. Static for hours at a time (for a single point!) was the norm. Suddenly, we could use fast-static and get data that was just as good in 15 minutes or so. Then we set up our own base station and we didn’t have to recover monuments anymore. Next thing I knew there were CORS (Continually Operating Reference Station) datasets from points all over the country freely available online (getting the internet was a pretty interesting advance as well…). 

We are not seeing this level of advancement in scanning. Some of the problems that I hear new customers mention today are the same ones that I called Lonnie Price about back in 2005. Why is this?

Although we harp on the parallels, the fact is that GPS and lidar are very different technologies. So are the support structures upon which they are based. Most of the advancements I mentioned in the preceding paragraph were possible because the US Government was constantly launching new GPS satellites (that they insisted upon calling “Service Vehicles” for some reason). These additional data streams gave me more options with the equipment I already had. The government was also responsible for the CORS network. Then they turned off the “Selective Availability,” essentially unscrambling the GPS signal which greatly aided everyone in using GPS. Without the government picking up quite a bit of the tab for developing, enlarging, and maintaining the infrastructure upon which we are working, the pace of development was bound to be slower than it was with GPS.

So, after 657 words on the subject where does that lead us? I’m going to call it a glass half full. I think we all learned some important lessons with GPS. I doubt that any of us not retiring in the next year or so believes that we will be working with these same tools for the remainder of our career(s). We all expect change and I think most of us are actively on the lookout for it on a daily basis. But, if a slower pace of change means that I’ve got more time to collect an ROI for the hardware/software/training that I currently have, I am fine with that.

I spent most of last week at the International LiDAR Mapping Conference (ILMF 2013) in Denver, Colo. I found it to be an interesting event both for what it was and what it was not. If you haven’t ever been or if you have any interest in mobile scanning, GIS, or photogrammetry, ILMF is certainly worth a trip. So, here are my top 5 takeaways from ILMF 2013:

1. This was not SPAR International. That is not necessarily good or bad, but I was quite surprised at how few people I knew at ILMF. I was aware that there is a huge split in lidar mapping between static and mobile collection methods (especially on the software side), but it was never more apparent to me than at this show. We (SmartGeoMetrics) had a booth and as it turns out we had the only non-mobile/<1cm accuracy laser scanner in the exhibit hall! There were a few companies that exhibit at SPAR (GeoDigital, Hexagon, MDL, Velodyne, Z+F, etc.), but the focus was much more on GIS level mapping as opposed to the engineering grade mapping that is so heavily favored at SPAR.
2. Those GIS guys are all convinced that UAVs are the future. It was the one, “I can’t wait until…” topic that I kept hearing from people at all levels of the lidar mapping industry. The most interesting part to me was the movement away from something big enough to carry a large payload of sensors to a swarm of interconnected micro-UAVs that each had a single sensor. It certainly seems like a good way to get around some of the more persistent problems that have kept the UAV industry from going mainstream.
3. GIS software has not changed much when it comes to point cloud data. One of my first projects using a laser scanner required a deliverable in ArcView. It was a nightmare, but I was assured by everyone involved that it was just a matter of time until ESRI products would have full point cloud support. Everything was going 3D and it would, too! Ehhh, not so much. It is better. But every example I saw used data derived from point clouds but not the actual clouds. The amount of middleware that was offered to bridge that gap was astounding to me. I’ve thought a lot about why development in GIS apps is so different than with CADD and all I can come up with is that it is a response to the very different user base. ESRI sells a lot of licenses to groups that don’t collect the data and to groups that only use the 2D aspect of GIS (tax collection, medical studies, political science, etc.). I guess there is a lot less of a push from their users to integrate such a raw format as point clouds.
4. This may be the last year that ILMF and SPAR are so separate. With more of us moving into mobile mapping with scanners, we will be looking for software solutions that don’t rely on point normals and most of that was already at ILMF. I don’t know if more of these vendors will start coming to SPAR or vice versa but in the end all of our data is getting more and more similar so I suspect our needs will as well.
5. I might be in the wrong business. While we were there, US Bank had a conference for its lower level (non-executive) employees. The bank wasn’t covering all of the expenses for the 1,600 people they had sent to the Hyatt, but considering the number of them I had to fight through to buy my $12 glasses of bourbon, I have a feeling they covered most everything else. As smart and as technically proficient as we all are I couldn’t think of many of us whose companies had 1,600 employees, much less the ability to send them all somewhere for “team building.”

Finally, if you're wondering what the conference facilities looked like, I did happen to scan the building with my new Viametris iMMS indoor mobile scanner. Take a look:

I am a sucker for documentaries and all things tech so I couldn’t resist watching the PBS Series American Experience when I saw that the episode was on the creation of Silicon Valley. I already knew most of the story but I had underestimated the effect that these developments had on the type of careers we all have today. Obviously, the integrated circuit and microprocessors are necessary for everything that we do but I am speaking about the culture of the workplace(s) in which we find ourselves.

Every year I am on the receiving end of 150-200 business cards. However, I’d wager that fully a third of them are from people I already know who are providing their new contact information as they are now working with a new firm or in many cases striking out on their own. As a business owner I had always taken a negative view of this. What I saw was a lot of wasted time and energy spent looking, interviewing, hiring, and training new employees. This documentary reminded me what it was like back in the “good ole days.” Back when you started working for a company with the expectation that you would be there for the next 30 years or until you decided to retire. The level of entrenchment and hierarchal structures enforced a class system that discouraged risk taking and innovation. Trying to find a new job mid-career left potential employers with the impression that something had gone wrong in your past or you would still be with your former employer. All of that changed when a group of eight engineers left Shockley Semiconductors to form their own company, Fairchild Semiconductors.

Over the next 20 years these men developed a new type of business culture. Their culture was a direct response to the East Coast type of business culture that then dominated technology companies up until this period. Due to events at Shockley Semiconductor they had come to the conclusion that smart, well trained employees have just as much potential for good ideas and innovation as those in upper management. In effect, a culture that promoted “openness over hierarchy, risk over stability, and innovation over the tried and true.” Over time, this became what we think of as the Silicon Valley way of operating. Profit sharing, stock options as employee pay and the practice of a competitive meritocracy all came out of Fairchild Semiconductor; as did more than 100 new companies that were spun off by former Fairchild employees. These included companies like AMD and Intel.

Check this out:

So, here we are today reaping both the rewards and headaches of this culture. No one expects to put in 30 years or retire from their first employer anymore. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think many of us expect to be able to retire at all anymore! However, I have always had the feeling that if I worked hard and kept my eyes open to new ideas, opportunities would be there for me. I think I owe these men a debt of gratitude for that above everything else. I still hate the amount of waste from people that jump ship every six months for a $100 a week raise in pay. And if recent news reports about “No Poaching” agreements between Apple/Google/Palm/Pixar/etc. are any indication, I’m not alone. However, it has not stopped people from going out to form their own start-ups; and certainly hasn’t slowed down the pace of innovation. My Dad used to tell me that you had a choice in how you wanted to live. You could choose the “Merry-go-round” or the “Roller Coaster.” The merry-go-round is nice but the view never changes. The roller coaster is exciting but you have to be prepared for a lot of ups and downs. 

So far I’m really enjoying the ride.