State and Trends in Airborne LiDAR
Due to the tremendous progress in Airborne LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging), new sensors and carrier platforms have emerged in the recent years. Beyond the constant increase of scan rates and progress in full waveform analysis, the introduction of single photon sensitive receivers enabled higher areal coverage compared to conventional scanners at the price of a higher noise level and outlier rate. Sensor miniaturization opened the possibility to mount compact and lightweight laser scanners on UAV-platforms enabling unprecedented spatial resolution and new fields of application. Furthermore, modern airborne sensors comprise both laser scanners and cameras allowing simultaneous acquisition of scans and images. This opens the floor for a deep integration of LiDAR and dense image matching with benefits for semantic segmentation, true orthophoto production, 3D mesh generation, etc.