Dylan Gorman runs drone reality capture work and founded PilotByte. On 2DIAMR, Dylan Gorman talked about the U.S. DJI rules, AI-planned flights, drone LiDAR versus photogrammetry and how to win mapping clients.
Episode
1 h 39 minPodcast
DJI ban, AI drones and LiDAR mapping – Dylan Gorman on the future of drone reality capture
Dylan Gorman · PilotByte Labs
In Dylan’s words
“We're not a primary industry. We're a sub-industry of many primary industries, right? We're just a tool.”
“I flew the entire site in one hour with LiDAR. In that same one hour, the surveyor was only able to capture one stockpile.”
“The biggest use case is the reproduction of water surfaces and reflected glass. Those two right there break every single time in photogrammetry.”
Quoted in our tech guides
Will AI and robots replace 3D scanning operators and surveyors? What 9 practitioners say →
- “All I had to do was just babysit the drone to make sure it wasn't gonna crash into anything.”▶ 56:19
- “Drone docks are made for repetitive tasks, right? And that's where the automation is really gonna come into play. If something is not a repetitive task, you're still gonna have to have an operator go out.”▶ 61:17
- “We just slap AI onto everything, when in reality it's just a procedure that it's running through.”▶ 66:27
- “Is it gonna change? Sure. But not right now.”▶ 62:46
- “Maybe the skill level of a drone pilot is gonna have to go up in order to maintain your job.”▶ 59:30
Gaussian splatting vs photogrammetry: what 10 practitioners say →
- “The biggest use case is the reproduction of water surfaces and reflected glass. Those two right there break every single time in photogrammetry.”▶ 76:50
- “But if they're doing measurements, then yeah, photogrammetry all day long.”▶ 74:21
- “Now granted, the output of the model beats the Gaussian splat because I'm using almost 3,000 20 megapixel images.”▶ 72:47
- “Are you just trying to look at it like a pretty model? Cool. That's easy.”▶ 25:55
- “Now, is it a replacement? No, not at all.”▶ 76:39
How to sell 3D scanning and digital twins to clients: what 11 practitioners say →
- “What are you doing with that scan? What are you trying to extract? What value are you trying to get out of that scan?”▶ 25:49
- “It's not what we're selling. We're solving a very simple problem for them, and we don't have to overcomplicate.”▶ 44:49
- “Sometimes even just being as simple as possible for your end client is going to win you the job.”▶ 40:33
- “Found out that the contractor was lying about the material, the volume of dirt that was on site.”▶ 16:32
- “This industry is built on a lot of relationships or building strong relationships.”▶ 96:31
- “I never use the word survey grade.”▶ 30:52
Do you need a licensed surveyor for 3D scanning? What 8 practitioners say →
- “I can go to a handful of my surveying buddies, have them do the bid for me, and I'll be a subcontractor for them.”▶ 31:29
- “I never use the word survey grade. If a client's gonna come to me and say, 'Hey, I need to survey grade this,' I'm like, 'Look, I can't provide that. But I can provide you an accurate model for your reference only.' Right? Keywords, your reference only.”▶ 30:52
- “Now, would it be smarter for me to go and get my PLS, my professional license, or surveying license? Then maybe, but I don't want to go back through school for that, and I'd rather just leverage my relationships for that.”▶ 31:37
- “Maybe we were to blame because we're using all these new cool tools and, quote-unquote, 'cutting them out,' but we're not cutting them out.”▶ 35:21
Scan-to-BIM: from point cloud to Revit model – what 7 practitioners say →
- “Scan it, done. Send it to our BIM team, done. That's it.”▶ 44:56
SLAM vs terrestrial laser scanning: what 8 practitioners say →
- “If you're just scanning dirt, do you really need to have one centimeter accuracy on dirt? Absolutely not.”▶ 32:15
Questions Dylan answered
- Is it still legal to fly DJI drones in the United States?
- Per Dylan Gorman of PilotByte, yes: a DJI drone that has its FCC certification can still be legally bought and flown on projects, and that certification only covers the radio link between the controller and the drone. ▶ 3:25
- Can a drone plan its own flight path for a 3D scan with AI?
- Dylan Gorman says DJI’s Manifold 3 on the Matrice 4 Enterprise builds a real-time point cloud and then an automated flight path; a building that would take Dylan about six hours by hand took one hour and 20 minutes. ▶ 53:20
- Will AI and drone docks replace drone pilots?
- In Dylan Gorman’s view, there will still be jobs: regulations, birds and signal interference still need a human to intervene, docks suit repetitive tasks, and the skill level of drone pilots will have to go up. ▶ 58:07
- How has drone LiDAR improved compared with early drone LiDAR sensors?
- Per Dylan Gorman, early drone LiDAR had to fly low and slow and gave sparse point clouds, while a long-range sensor like DJI’s L3 can fly 900 meters up and still get about three centimeters of accuracy, at a fraction of the cost. ▶ 84:06
- Should I use a long-range aerial LiDAR or a SLAM scanner on a drone for large-area mapping?
- For large-scale mapping Dylan Gorman prefers a purpose-built long-range LiDAR over hybrid SLAM payloads, which can drift; with long-range LiDAR Dylan captured 700 acres in 57 minutes at two-centimeter accuracy. ▶ 86:58
Talks about
Related guests
- Rami Tamimi – Geomatics project manager and Ph.D. candidate, WSP
- Michael Schoelkopf – Director, Product Management Reality Capture, NavVis
- Zlata Karpushina – Go-To-Market Strategist, FJ Dynamics
- Mehdi Boroumand – SLAM scanning practitioner, Australia
- Ben Williams – COO, Exyn Technologies
- Olli Huttunen – 3D Gaussian Splatting creator