News Center
The Development History of UAV-Borne Lidar
Release time:
2025-11-03
The development of UAV-borne lidar originated from the cross-domain downscaling of space technology. In the 1970s, NASA in the United States applied lidar to the topographic mapping of the Moon during the Apollo 15 mission. It achieved meter-level precision mapping through mechanical scanning. Although it demonstrated breakthrough detection capabilities, the equipment weighed dozens of kilograms, cost over one million US dollars, and relied on large carriers, making it difficult to enter the civil field. At the beginning of the 21st century, the breakthrough in the miniaturization of Time-of-Flight (TOF) technology reduced the weight of lidar to the kilogram level. The combination of lidar with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) completely broke the limitations of traditional planar imaging, realized three-dimensional detection, and opened a new era of low-altitude applications.
The year 2008 marked a crucial turning point. A research team from Peking University developed an air-ground integrated platform that integrated lidar with hyperspectral sensors. This platform solved the problems of under-canopy positioning loss and data collection in complex forest conditions. It not only broke the reliance on imported equipment but also boosted the efficiency of forest resource surveys by more than tenfold.
In 2010, the team further developed an AI-based individual tree segmentation algorithm, which enabled the automatic extraction of parameters such as tree height and biomass. This achievement completed a technological closed loop from data collection to intelligent analysis.
In 2016, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) realized autonomous obstacle-avoidance cruise for UAVs through a lidar navigation module. This breakthrough made it possible for equipment to operate independently in complex terrain, and promoted the application of lidar technology from laboratories to practical scenarios such as logistics inspection and patrol.
Subsequently, the wave of localization rose strongly. In 2021, the FT1500 lidar developed by Mao Qingzhou's team reduced the price to 30% of that of imported products. The core POS (Position and Orientation System) algorithm developed by Sun Hongxing's team further cut the data processing cost by 90%, and the equipment was sold to Southeast Asia for power inspection.
In 2024, an FMCW (Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave) chip integrated with a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) switch was launched. With 16,384 pixels integrated on a 1 cm² chip, the device size was reduced to 1% of that of traditional products. In the same year, the single-photon lidar developed by the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) achieved imaging with a resolution of 6 cm at a distance of 1.5 kilometers, laying a foundation for long-distance mapping.
In 2025, the Guangxi GQ-23 bathymetric lidar was launched. This 3.2-kilogram device can detect water depths of up to 20 meters, breaking the monopoly of European and American countries on deep-water detection equipment. Today, this technology has become a cross-sectoral tool: it helped discover a 120-hectare ancient Silk Road city in the mountains of Uzbekistan, increased the survey efficiency of the Nanyang heritage site by ten times, and further supported the cross-scale inventory of national forest resources. From a "high-precision and cutting-edge" tool for space exploration to an "infrastructure" for the low-altitude economy, the evolution history of UAV-borne lidar is a vivid illustration of the civilianization of science and technology.
Related News
Customer Service Hotline
E-mail:swzn@surertech.cn
Official website:http://www.surertech.cn
Address: 13-14 floors, Building 1, Software Valley Headquarters Economic Park, Yuhuatai District, Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province
Sweep the two-dimensional code
