On 8 April, 2020, his company was contracted to map or re-map 1,100 hectares of difficult terrain. Data acquisition took place in just 19 hours, spread over four days in the field.  The client’s immediate need was to map 277 hectares by the 15th of April, but with the YellowScan Vx-15, Arnaud found they had already accomplished that first challenge by the morning of the 13th of April, and by the 15th, the entire job was completed.

The competition had averaged only about 50 hectares of surveying per day, at which rate it would have taken them two weeks to survey 1,000 hectares, but MSDI covered 1,100 hectares in 4 days.  Flying in drizzling weather, Denisot completed the entire mission in seven morning flights, each day for four days. He found that with the Vx-15 they were able to cover as much as 400 to 500 hectares per day, relying on only seven battery packs and no access to electricity to recharge.

Denisot covered the first zone flying at an altitude of 90 meters, 5m/s, mirror 27hz, while the second zone, which contained more varied terrain, was covered from 80 meters agl, 6m/s, mirror 30hz. To respect the client’s need for point cloud density, the crew flew with a line spacing of 100 meters and the export of the cloud point was done with 110° of FOV. Equipment deployed included the YellowScan Vx-15, with a Matrice 600 Pro drone, 2 sets of TB47 S batteries, 5 sets TB48 S, no camera.

Results included point density averaging from 50 to 60point/m2 – excellent coverage under vegetation. Denisot, who holds both French and Indonesian drone pilot licenses, says that “the LiDAR and software all worked without a hitch.” He underscores the fact that the urgency of this first LiDAR mission was high.