Guest on 2D Is Against My Religion
Fan Yang
Chief Operating Officer and Director of International Business, Manifold Tech
LinkedIn ↗Dr. Fan Yang is COO and Director of International Business at Manifold Tech, a Hong Kong SLAM company founded in 2022 that comes from robotics research. On 2DIAMR, recorded live at INTERGEO 2026, Fan Yang explained the visual SLAM enhanced by LiDAR inside the Rovi i.1 and why splats don't need high-resolution images.
Episode
30 minExpo & conference podcast
Scanner users want answers, not point clouds – Manifold Tech & FARO INSIGHT
John Chwalibog, Fan Yang, Tobias Böhret · Manifold Tech
In Fan’s words
“It's a visual SLAM enhanced by LiDAR. So that's our secret sauce.”
Quoted in our tech guides
Gaussian splatting vs photogrammetry: what 14 practitioners say →
- “So the base model itself is good for Gaussian already.”▶ 23:10
SLAM vs terrestrial laser scanning: what 13 practitioners say →
- “Even if your LiDAR is completely out of order. For example, in the long, straight tunnels without a lot of features, it's still working.”▶ 25:20
Questions Fan answered
- Do you need a high-resolution camera for Gaussian splatting?
- Not from a technical standpoint, says Fan Yang of Manifold Tech: the Rovi i.1’s base global shutter cameras are already good for splats, and the higher-resolution panoramic camera can improve quality. ▶ 23:29
- How does the Rovi i.1 keep tracking in featureless tunnels?
- Per Fan Yang, its SLAM is a visual SLAM enhanced by LiDAR, so tracking keeps working even if the LiDAR alone fails, for example in long, straight tunnels without features. ▶ 25:07
Talks about
Related guests
- John Chwalibog – Director of Strategic Partnerships, Manifold Tech
- Tobias Böhret – Product marketing, FARO INSIGHT
- 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