Situation and prospect of light and miniature UAV-borne LiDAR

Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) can perform high-density scanning on the surface and quickly collect massive point cloud data with information such as three-dimensional (3D) coordinates and echo intensity. It is an important means of geospatial data acquisition and plays a very important role in various fields such as power inspection, forestry investigation, digital city, culture heritage protection, altitude hold and collision avoidance of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), etc. Driven by the development of sensor technology and practical demand, airborne LiDAR has made great progress in hardware performance as well as industrial applications. This paper reviews the current status of the light and miniature UAV-borne LiDAR in China and other contries, then typical applications in related fields are listed. Finally, some future perspectives are presented.