LIDAR Magazine Podcast

Hosted by LIDAR Magazine

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Sep 2026

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About the show

The LIDAR Magazine podcast, hosted by Dr. Stewart Walker, brings measurement, positioning and imaging technologies to light for today's geospatial professional. Since 2012, we've addressed all aspects of lidar: including airborne topographic and bathymetric; terrestrial; mobile; close range; underwater and others. Join us as we map the lidar revolution! Generously sponsored by LAStools LiDAR Processing.

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32 recent

September 30, 2026Episode 3251 min

#32 - Mike Roddewig

In this episode, we dive deep into the world of photonics with Dr. Mike Roddewig, Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and CTO of 532 Engineering. Dr. Roddewig's fascinating work spans from the ocean floor to the upper atmosphere. We explore how drone-borne profiling ocean lidar is tracking salmon populations and plankton density, and break down the science behind Rayleigh, sodium resonance, and iron resonance lidars used in atmospheric research. Plus, Dr. Roddewig explains why he finds coherent lidar systems more compelling than incoherent ones, and shares the incredible story of how he discovered submerged hydrothermal features at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake!

August 31, 2026Episode 3141 min

#31 - Chris Robertson

Chris Robertson, director of the Colorado State University (CSU) Drone Center, brings more than a decade of UAV experience to a career that also includes an extensive background in law enforcement. In this episode, Chris introduces us to the Center's four primary areas of focus and to Christman Airfield, one of Colorado's oldest continuously operating airports. With its distinctive infrastructure and in-house team of subject matter experts, the CSU Drone Center supports a diverse range of research and educational initiatives—from a specialized GPR test bed to an intensive, hands-on short course exploring the principles and practical application of lidar and photogrammetry.

June 29, 2026Episode 3047 min

#30 - Jeff Fagerman

Jeff Fagerman is CEO of LiDAR USA, the well-known UAV-lidar integrator, based near Huntsville, Alabama. He explains, in an entertaining way, how he first became involved in the geospatial world and how he was motivated to set up his own company 16 years ago. He espouses the beauties of a family business and is not reticent about the challenges of equipping UAVs with GNSS/IMU, camera and lidar components, well supported by extensive, user-friendly software, whilst managing a successful livestock farm. The technology is center-stage, of course, but the effects on his business of the regulatory environment and, in particular, the arrival of NDAA-compliance are fascinating too. Mobile mapping systems on vehicles are a significant part of the business and many of the UAV systems are "dual-use", i.e. they can also be used on land vehicles. Among several projects currently in progress at LiDAR USA is the manufacture of UAVs.

March 16, 2026Episode 2944 min

#29 - Kevin Andrews

Kevin Andrews is Director, Land Systems at Trimble Applanix in Toronto. He's been with the company for 26 years. In this episode, Kevin explains how the challenges for GNSS/IMU systems installed on land vehicles differ from those on airborne vehicles. He talks about the use of Trimble Applanix solutions on mobile mapping systems, rail vehicles, and construction equipment, covering the well-known POS LV, the lighter, smaller APX product line and the specialist POS TG and RT200. He describes three application areas in particular – precision agriculture, pipeline management and autonomous vehicles. The transition of Trimble Applanix products to a subscription basis and the continuing roll-out of the LVX+ solution bring the podcast to a close.

January 28, 2026Episode 2846 min

#28 - Grayson Omans

Phoenix LiDAR Systems was founded in 2013 and Grayson Omans is co-founder and CEO. In 2020, the company relocated from the Palms area of Los Angeles to Austin, Texas. In this episode, Grayson gives his reasons for making the move and assesses how successful it has proved, before describing the company's portfolio of hardware and software products. The evolving regulatory environment for UAVs has of course been a big influence on the company's direction over the years. It's interesting, however, that the company's products for crewed helicopters and aircraft, especially for wing-strut mounting, have led to considerable expansion in that market. Vehicle-mounted systems for mobile mapping have also been an area of considerable growth. The range of components that the company has successfully integrated is very broad, including not only different lidar sensors, but also RGB, hyper spectral and thermal infrared cameras, and the company has always tried to respond to customers' needs.

January 7, 2026Episode 2747 min

#27 - Alex Brihac

Alex Brihac is Vice President, Head of Strategy and M&A at Hexagon Geosystems. He explains how his interest in engineering was imbued by his Romanian parents, resulting in his choices of undergraduate and graduate studies. His work for Turner Construction and McKinsey led to expertise in improving firms' performance as well as a deep interest in digital twins and how they should be created and used. He provides insights into the strategy development process at Hexagon and the way the company manages the acquisition process. He stresses technology – Hexagon spends more than 15% of annual revenue on R&D – and the tremendous importance of talking to customers. Finally, he briefly covers the Octave spin-off and some of the directions Hexagon will take in 2026 and beyond.

December 24, 2025Episode 2638 min

#26 - Raul Bravo

In this episode, Austin catches up with Raul Bravo, a prolific inventor holding more than 70 international patent families. As president and founder of Outsight, Raul explains how his firm's technologies transform streams of lidar data into real-time 3D spatial intelligence. The conversation delves into the analytical capabilities of dynamic 3D databases and explores the technical challenges of orchestrating thousands of laser scanners into a cohesive sensing system.

December 9, 2025Episode 2539 min

#25 - Alex Baikovitz

In this episode, Mach9's co-founder and CEO, Alex Baikovitz, talks enthusiastically about the company's mission to improve geospatial workflows for generating information from point clouds, making heavy but considered use of AI, plus innovations from the world of robotics. His flagship product, Digital Surveyor, outputs the derived features to familiar CAD and GIS software suites and can be deployed from a web browser. Alex claims speed improvements of 5x compared to more traditional software approaches – and much more dramatic numbers in certain circumstances. The company emerged from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, but is now located in downtown San Francisco, where the availability of a top-quality workforce and closeness to other well-known geospatial firms have proved beneficial.

October 13, 2025Episode 2443 min

#24 - Florent Poux

Dr. Florent Poux is an award-winning researcher and adjunct professor in 3D Data Science at the University of Liège. Based in Toulouse, France, Florent operates the 3D Geodata Academy, a training resource dedicated to building innovations with 3D technology. In this episode, Austin gathers Dr. Poux's thoughts on how to employ novel data processing pipelines to extract value from 3D data. They also discuss his recently published book, 3D Data Science with Python , which seeks to help readers understand modern algorithms and spatial AI models, with a focus on hands-on learning and automation.

August 15, 2025Episode 2346 min

#23 - Helen Fricker

Dr. Helen Fricker is a Professor of Geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, one of the world's most important centers for global earth science research and education . Prior to her current role, Dr. Fricker was a science team member for NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat); she is currently the science team lead for ICESat-2, and Principle Investigator (PI) for NASA's Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer (EDGE) mission. In this episode, we pick Helen's brain about spaceborne lidar altimetry missions, some of the amazing science and research projects they support, and what's over the horizon from a development perspective.