Visiting the CHINTERGEO exhibition, laser scanners have become the biggest highlight

From February 14th to 16th, 2023, the long-awaited CHINTERGEO China Surveying and Mapping Geographic Information Technology Equipment Exhibition was held in Nanchang, China. After three years of dormancy, this year's CHINTERGEO exhibition attracted more than 300 brands to showcase their products. In addition to the regular product updates, various new products that integrate multiple technologies have emerged, such as the Image RTK that combines RTK with close-range photogrammetry technology, and unmanned aerial vehicles/ships that integrate multiple sensors, which have become the main products of various manufacturers. Moreover, another highlight of this year's exhibition is that many manufacturers brought their own LiDAR products. This marks a comprehensive outbreak of domestic LiDAR products after the civilian laser measurement market was ignited by L1, paving the way for the full-scale development of domestic LiDAR technology.

This year's exhibition featured a wide range of LiDAR products from various manufacturers, with an abundance of different types of products. In addition to traditional major manufacturers launching their own domestic LiDAR products, professional LiDAR manufacturers also made appearances in large numbers, setting a record for the most exhibitors ever and making it difficult to grasp all the products on display. Overall, domestic LiDAR products can be summarized in the following three directions:

01 Many types of innovative products

Through this year's exhibition, we can see that mainstream manufacturers have all launched domestic ground-based 3D laser scanners. For example, domestic terrestrial 3D scanners such as those produced by Southern Surveying, Kolida, and Logytech have been introduced, which are characterized by small size and long range.

New cutting-edge companies such as Eleph-Print Tech have introduced multiple 3D laser scanners for terrestrial and airborne use with SLAM technology, which feature multi-line scanning heads and are portable and lightweight.

In addition, more lightweight solutions based on unmanned aerial vehicles have emerged, such as those from Hi-Target，GVI, and GeoSun.

Therefore, with the continuous development and popularization of lightweight 3D LiDAR technology in the future, it is believed that convenient and lightweight 3D LiDAR products will better meet the actual needs of different industry customers in different scenarios. The future market capacity is promising.

02 SLAM is becoming a new hot topic

SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) technology is becoming one of the favored new technologies in the field of surveying and mapping equipment. With the continuous development of this technology, SLAM products have been widely used in various industries and directions. As a result, many manufacturers have entered into this field and introduced more innovative products. In recent years, the accuracy and efficiency of SLAM technology have been continuously improved while also becoming more lightweight, making it applicable to even more scenarios and industries. At this exhibition, SLAM products were seen everywhere with over ten manufacturers showcasing their own SLAM products. For example, Feima's SLAM100 uses built-in battery technology to improve the product's portability.

FJ Dynamics' products can achieve real-time visualization of 3D point clouds.

Innovative SLAM products from XGRIDS can achieve real-time 3D reconstruction and obtain relative and absolute accuracy of 3-5cm. They also have a continuous operating time of more than 90 minutes.

Southern Surveying has launched a fully domestic wearable SLAM device to meet the needs of more factory and indoor industry applications.

Eleph-Print Tech has introduced 3D SLAM technology that supports real-time point cloud browsing and can obtain centimeter-level accuracy data.

There are more manufacturers with their unique product characteristics, which are not mentioned here one by one.

03 Future market development directions

With the appearance of many domestic laser manufacturers, it is believed that in the future market of surveying and mapping equipment, 3D laser radar products will gradually move towards the center stage, allowing more customers to enjoy the efficiency and convenience brought by laser radar equipment. In the future, with the support of national macro policies, point cloud data will become important basic data. Leveraging the advantages of laser radar itself, such as high accuracy, all-weather, all-time effectiveness, non-contact, and comprehensive acquisition of spatial three-dimensional data information of the measured target, etc., can greatly improve the customer's operational efficiency. Many brands will heat up the overall market, and from the competition rules of domestic instruments in the past, it can be imagined that the market for domestic laser radar will be extremely fierce in the future. The industry is facing a new round of reshuffle, product performance will be further improved, and prices will be further explored, ultimately benefiting a large number of customers.

Looking back at this exhibition, although various domestic laser radars were showcased and the market surface was very hot, various types of products have led to a significant problem - there is no universal comprehensive data format, which makes data unable to be shared and cannot be seamlessly connected with industry application software. At the same time, the comprehensive solutions provided by the exhibitors were relatively lacking, indicating that there were no professional laser radar data processing software companies participating in the exhibition. This also shows that there is still a critical last step for laser radar to truly enter into industry applications. I urge research institutes and relevant companies to develop industry application software that can truly solve the closed-loop solution, so that laser radar products can truly enter into industry applications and solve the customer's real pain points.

Of course, laser radar products still belong to the category of professional industry products. Looking back at the development process of new surveying and mapping equipment in the past decade, from unmanned aerial vehicles to aerial survey cameras, professional industry companies have always taken the lead. Therefore, it is believed that in the process of domestic laser radar development, the professional laser radar companies showcased in this exhibition are worth looking forward to.

Overall, this year's CHINTERGEO exhibition was a grand event full of innovation, opportunities, and passion, showcasing the heat of 3D laser technology. It is believed that 3D laser will become a core surveying and mapping equipment in the market and will be popularized among millions of users.