US DoD receives LiDAR system for EOD teams

RedTail LiDAR Systems had delivered six LiDAR systems to the 707^th Ordinance Company stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

These systems will provide Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technicians with an opportunity to assess how LiDAR can be used to enhance their operations.

The RedTail LiDAR Systems RTL-450 was integrated onto the Teledyne FLIR SkyRaider UAS to address a broad range of the EOD community’s 3D mapping needs.

The RTL-450 can be used for terrain mapping, calculating crater volumes from IED blasts, performing route planning for UGVs, aiding mission planning and conducting surveillance.

The 3D maps created are referred to as point clouds and allow operating areas to be viewed from any perspective.

The underlying LiDAR technology used in the RTL-450 was licenced from the Army Research Laboratory.

The MEMS mirror-based design provides enhanced 3D imagery through laser pulses which are steered to the ground in a very well defined and controlled scan pattern.

The technology is ideal for AI and machine learning algorithms to be used for target detection and classification due to the high point density of the point clouds.

The system can operate in either a raster scan mode for surveillance or a side-to-side scan mode for area mapping while the UAS is flying.