Leica’s Chiroptera 4X and HawkEye 4X bathymetric LiDAR sensors.

Leica announces upgrade package for Chiroptera 4X and Leica HawkEye 4X scanners, offering four times the point cloud density.

Owners of Chiroptera II and Hawkeye III bathymetric LiDAR sensors rejoice, because your surveys may be about to become a whole lot easier. Leica Geosystems has revealed the availability of an upgrade to both models that drastically increases the point cloud density available from scans — yes, by a factor of four.

Leica claims that 2-4 points per square metre is now easily achievable in a single flight with Chiroptera or HawkEye shallow channel, rather than two passes that would be required for this resolution with the previous generation of Leica scanners.

Leica also claims that depth penetration is increased up to ten percent as a result of the upgrade, and that the HawkEye deep channel’s 40,000 points per second collection is a market leading capability.

Anders Ekelund, Hexagon’s Geospatial Content Solutions vice-president of Airborne Bathymetric LiDAR, said the new capabilities would contribute to better knowledge of coastal and inland waterways and habitats.

“Optimising a bathymetric LiDAR system has always been a trade-off between sensitivity (depth penetration) and resolution. Our new 4X high-resolution technology allows us to improve both those parameters without any tradeoffs,” he said.

Leica’s new 4X tech will also be available in all new the firm’s new bathymetric LiDAR systems.

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