A laser has been developed in France to assess the health of buildings

It's a promising technology that we're hearing more and more about. Lidar (for light detection and ranging) is a type of laser beam scanning used specifically to measure distance, shape and volume. It opens up many prospects, especially in the field of piloting autonomous vehicles. French startup Outsight also positioned itself in this niche before choosing to focus on the software part of Lidar. The pure material element was taken over by a spin-off company called Iridesense, which was also French.

"In addition to being manufactured in France, what makes this 3D lidar unique is its ability to display multispectral data," explained Nadine Buard, CEO and co-founder of Iridesense. For the average person, this means that color images with varying shades of light can be generated, which can provide information about the properties of a material or its hydration or humidity. Most importantly, the machine has a great range, as it can analyze the environment up to 300 meters away with very high resolution. Advantages added to all LiDAR specific qualities: They guarantee the same image and analysis quality, day and night, regardless of the quality of light, even in heavy rain.

Tens of thousands of euros

During Vivatech (June 14-17 in Paris), Iridesense will organize demonstrations showcasing its products. The very young company, which was founded in March and currently has 10 employees, intends to release its first machine in a few months. What price? "Tens of thousands of euros," says Nadine Buard, who is satisfied because she knows the transition from prototype to small collection is difficult to quantify. Even in terms of applications and markets for such products, the answer is not obvious.

Still, real estate may have a place there. "We can easily imagine Google-type vehicles as they carry our devices and scan the streets of cities," explains Nadine Buard. In particular, these images can locate cracks in buildings and their depths. Most importantly, if the same sector is assessed on a regular basis, it will be possible to determine whether the building is getting wetter, whether the cracks are widening or whether the building is beginning to tilt away from its "origin" position. Services that may be of interest to local authorities, private managers of large real estate assets and insurance companies.

Prevent collapse

Iridesense already has a partnership with ADP. Paris airports already use "simple" lidar on runways to keep roads clear, but are interested in Iridesense's technology, which can easily identify fuel stains on those runways where other distractions are present, for example. Markers of interest also exist in the mining industry (to characterize various visible minerals) as well as in precision agriculture or forest management (due to humidity measurements). Why not manage large real estate parks? The Marseille collapse disaster is a reminder that there is much work to be done in prevention and that this technology could lead to a more systematic approach.

Source: Laser Network