Mike Pinkerton is a land surveyor in New Zealand. He provides an industry veteran’s perspective in his informative article entitled, Terrestrial Laser Scanning for Mainstream Land Surveying that is worth a read.
Mike points out that there are a lot similarities between the adoption/resistance of GPS RTK and 3D laser scanning. Looks like the same is going to be said for machine control.
Mike provides detailed comparisons of laser scanning versus traditional survey methods, and what he sees as the benefits and limitations. His examples are perhaps not what the average land surveyor would consider mainstream, but it does get one thinking.
Excellent article outling the various ways to apply laser scanning in a survey environment. I especially apprciate M.Pinkerton noting the drawbacks as well as the benfits. I agree with his observation that laser scanning in the survey community is approached in much the smae way as GPS applications were 20 years ago. While I believe it will gain acceptance as end users ask for data in to be collected using this methodolgy, I think the lack of cadastral applications will slow adoption of it by the survey community.