Assessment of the location accuracy of points obtained with a low-cost Lidar scanning system and GNSS method

Abstract

In the geomatics discipline, the most important element in road works, infrastructure works, excavation and filling applications, forest inventory determination, geological studies, deformation detection, and even smart cities and digital twins with developing technology, transportation-based applications, infrastructure works and renovations is location information. 3D location information can be obtained in many different ways using ground surveying methods and satellite technologies. Although these methods have various advantages over each other, the main objective is to obtain precise location information quickly and accurately according to the projects. Speed and cost are considered to be the most important criteria for users when obtaining location information. Today, using ViDoc-Real Time Kinematic (RTK) antennas integrated with Iphone/Ipad Pro devices with IOS operating system, high accuracy laser scanning operations and 3D position acquisition are possible. The ViDoc RTK antenna is an RTK antenna that can be attached to the Apple IPad Pro tablet, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max and higher model phones equipped with Lidar sensors. In this study, 13 points with different heights homogeneously distributed in the study area were identified and their positions were obtained with the RTK-GNSS receiver using the CORS-TR. Subsequently, the positions of these points were also determined using the ViDoc RTK antenna. The positions of these points obtained with the help of RTK-GNSS were accepted as correct and the position accuracies obtained by both methods were compared. ViDoc resulted in an average accuracy of 4.9 cm horizontally and 5.6 cm vertically. These results show that ViDoc RTK antenna integrated with IPad/IPhone with IOS system equipped with Lidar sensors can be used in sensitive studies such as 3D documentation of historical and cultural buildings and feature data collection. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.