For the technology industry overall, it seems very likely that 2024 will be remembered in the context of artificial intelligence. Whether it’s part of an “AI era,” or remembered as the year that generative AI really made it into mainstream work and lifestyle products, or both, AI has defined this year in technology. That’s true in many ways for the geospatial industry as well. For generative AI, those solutions do exist but they’re in their extremely nascent stages – even relative to more mainstream generative AI tools. But in terms of other forms of machine learning and artificial intelligence, the geospatial industry has long utilized this technology and has benefited from improvements around compute power and others relating to this broader boom.
If we look just at the geospatial industry and try to figure out what 2024 will be remembered for, it becomes a little more difficult. It doesn’t seem as though AI will fit that bill; the industry has used AI within its work for years, and there hasn’t been any geospatial-specific breakthrough this year that should define the year. Instead, if forced to choose one option, mobile mapping – and specifically handheld mobile mapping – could be the answer.
Of course, just like with artificial intelligence, mobile mapping is not a new concept and has been used in some form within the industry for years. However, there have been marked improvements around related technologies that have brought this market to the forefront in a way that it never had before. Thanks to periphery improvements around both hardware and software, collecting and working with data collected with these systems is more accessible than we’ve ever seen, and it’s a trend that should only build off the progress we’ve seen this year.
On the hardware side, the improvements largely come down to improvements around lidar sensors. As Exyn Technologies COO Ben Williams recently noted to Geo Week News, these improvements have largely been driven by the automotive industry, a somewhat ironic fact given that at least a portion of that sector has started to move away from lidar as a technology. Nevertheless, their usage has helped to unlock some innovations to allow for powerful sensors to come in smaller packages, making it more feasible to create a robust scanning system that is lightweight enough to be carried through a project site.
Arguably even more important than the hardware strides are the advancements that have been made in terms of processing on the software side. In some ways, this ties back to the artificial intelligence topic noted above. One of the big challenges with mobile mapping data can be that there is simply so much of it, and tying it all together is extremely tedious work to do manually. Now, software allows this to happen seamlessly – and sometimes in something close to real-time. This not only makes it easier to process the data but gives users an option to quickly see what they’ve scanned and ensure they’ve captured an entire area before leaving the site.
Along those same lines, the industry has also seen massive improvements over the last couple of years with SLAM algorithms. SLAM, or simultaneous localization and mapping, is the technology that allows a system to build a map and localize itself within that map at the same time, a crucial aspect of mobile mapping. Without robust SLAM algorithms, these tools would frankly not exist.
All of this has coalesced to make 2024 a year in which many leading manufacturers have released new mobile scanners, most of which are smaller in scale and able to be carried around a job site by a single person. Early in the year, for example, the aforementioned Exyn released their Nexys system. We’ve also seen NavVis release their first handheld system, the NavVis MLX, as well as GeoCue’s handheld TrueView GO. That doesn’t even include improvements made to systems that were already around prior to this year, like the Leica BLK2GO and Emesent’s modular Hovermap.
Of course, there have been innovations around the larger mobile mapping sector as well, and we released a report earlier this year focused on larger-scale systems made for vehicles and trains that can be downloaded for free here. Those small systems, though, are benefiting from a confluence of innovation in recent years. They were one of the main takeaways from this year’s Intergeo, and they figure to continue transforming the way data collection is done on job sites for years to come. As the space continues to evolve, we’ll remember 2024 as the year when the space really accelerated its development.
