PrecisionHawk brings drone LiDAR solution to market

PrecisionHawk, a provider of advanced commercial drone technologies, is making strategic moves to provide its customers with a drone LiDAR solution that matches or exceeds standard manned aircraft data outputs.

The company's first move was to hire LiDAR expert Jamie Young as Director of LiDAR Services. An industry pioneer, Young has over 20 years of experience with leading geospatial firms and has worked across all aspects of LiDAR including sensor development, applications development, data acquisition and data processing. Young is the author of 'LiDAR for Dummies' and serves as a technical advisor and contributing author for LiDAR Magazine.

PrecisionHawk also integrated and added the mini-vux LiDAR by Riegl to its service offering. The LiDAR device has a positional system that doubles the efficiency, by collecting data at a higher altitude, and improves data accuracy, by nearly five times, of any competitive solution on the market. This allows PrecisionHawk to go beyond the capability of any other drone service provider to deliver survey-grade data to its engineering clients.

"As I assessed the drone space, it became obvious that PrecisionHawk was doing leading work to meet the expectations of the broader geospatial industry," said Jamie Young. "I am excited to use my experience building LiDAR systems, providing data solutions and solving problems as we build out a even more advanced offering at PrecisionHawk."

Young's team will work to create LiDAR deliverables with metadata and formats that parallel what PrecisionHawk's traditional geospatial and government clients expect. These standardized deliveries will also have high accuracy, which will help PrecisionHawk integrate LiDAR datasets into existing client programs and other highly specialized commercial applications.

Young's passion for technology and problem-solving manifests itself through his involvement in ASPRS (American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing) and CO-MAPPS (the Colorado state chapter of the Management Association of Professional Photogrammetric Surveyors), as well as serving as a technical advisor and contributing author for LiDAR Magazine. Young is also the creator of the Wilder LiDAR blog, which covers all things LiDAR. PrecisionHawk is excited to support these interests as they perfectly align with its goals to grow knowledge about drone data and educate users on its possibilities.

About PrecisionHawk Inc.

PrecisionHawk is a leading provider of advanced commercial drone technologies. The company, founded in 2010, is privately held and located in Raleigh, NC and Toronto, Canada. PrecisionHawk's client list of Fortune 500 companies and market-leading innovators spans 150 countries and the company has existing operations across six continents. PrecisionHawk is funded by leading venture capital firms and global technology investors including Intel Capital, Millennium Technology Value Partners, Verizon Ventures, a subsidiary of USAA, NTT Docomo Ventures, Yamaha Motor, DuPont and Indiana University.