iPhone 12 Pro LiDAR vs. Survey Total Station Accuracy

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TL;DR: He was able to retrieve some "relatively accurate" measurements and it was "beyond his expectations".

Edit: Reddit platinum? Wow thanks!

👍︎︎ 225 👤︎︎ u/MaximusMCCCXXXVII 📅︎︎ Sep 23 2021 🗫︎ replies

UK surveyor here. Use total stations and laser scanners (point clouds like he picks the iPhone points of).

Actually very impressed at the accuracy. Never seen the iPhone LiDAR in use but very quick and great it has photogrammetry seemingly baked in, even if no intensity is fantastic. Using a very expensive Leica P40 it takes so long for photos we typically don't bother and just use intensity/elevation combined with mobile pictures for reference.

Wouldn't trust it for anything high accuracy based on those results but for soft detail it looks like a fantastic quick alternative.

Could easily envision using this in a complex area alongside a "proper" scanner with a couple targets to minimise occlusion. Again, where accuracy is not strict.

👍︎︎ 51 👤︎︎ u/TheCookieButter 📅︎︎ Sep 23 2021 🗫︎ replies

Hey look, that's me. Glad to see I'm Reddit famous now! But I hope everyone enjoyed the video and learned a thing or two!

👍︎︎ 66 👤︎︎ u/RamiTamimi 📅︎︎ Sep 23 2021 🗫︎ replies
👍︎︎ 12 👤︎︎ u/PeaceBull 📅︎︎ Sep 23 2021 🗫︎ replies

Watching this man surveying in feet hurt my brain.

👍︎︎ 61 👤︎︎ u/miniature-rugby-ball 📅︎︎ Sep 23 2021 🗫︎ replies

The limiting factor is the effective range of Apples LiDAR -less than 4 metres.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/I-figured-it-out 📅︎︎ Sep 24 2021 🗫︎ replies

He should have made this video 52 weeks ago.

He should do a review of the iPhone 13 Pro to see if it's more accurate than "relatively".

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/dok_DOM 📅︎︎ Sep 23 2021 🗫︎ replies

We use Matterport cameras for work (fire investigation) and I did some tests to see if we could use the iPad/iPhone lidar to get a similar result for smaller jobs. In a well-lit room in my house - so not even a dark fire loss site - I found the measurements to be off by 20% on average. Certainly not something we would be able to present to a client.

Not to mention the quality of lidar scanning apps, or even the Matterport app, were both subpar. It’s an interesting technological addition to the phone, but the it’s not really at the point of use for business purposes where accuracy is paramount.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/RunnyBabbit23 📅︎︎ Sep 24 2021 🗫︎ replies
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Hi, I'm Rami Tamimi. Behind me here is a surveying  total station. And this is an iPhone 12 Pro. This   is the iPhone 12 Pro's Lidar Sensor. And the  surveying community has been obsessed over   this sensor, as they wonder if its accuracy  is even measurable. Lots of people are saying   that this sensor can only be used for AR video  games and modeling work and that using it for   measurements is very dangerous. And to an extent,  that's true. This is a one thousand dollar phone,   so the sensor on here cannot compare to a sensor  that's on a 50,000 dollar LiDAR system, let alone   a system that's 200,000 dollars. The question  still remains is how accurate is the LiDAR sensor   on the iPhone 12 Pro? Now this is a total station,  and as surveyors we trust its accuracy. Out of all   the equipment that we use this is definitely one  of the more accurate and precise tools because   it takes relative measurements in comparison  to absolute measurements, like GPS units. The   measurements that we take from the total station  will be our baseline measurements, and the   scan data that we get from the LiDAR sensor will  then be compared to the data we get from the total   station. Any differences we see between the two  data sets will indicate that the LiDAR sensor   might be less accurate by a certain degree. If you  enjoy this type of content and you want to learn   more about Surveying and LiDAR systems, be sure  to like this video. Also subscribe to the YouTube   channel and turn on the bell notification. We also  just launched a Surveyor's Facebook page, it's   called "I am a Surveyor" be sure to check that  out. The link is in the description. Be a part of   the community and share your surveying experience  with Surveyors around the world. All right so   this is the strip of curb that we're going to  be studying. We're going to start by taking a   back a curb shot over here. Then, we're going to  take a gutter shot right in front of it. Next,   where the concrete breaks I want to take another  shot right here. And then, a shot in the back   to see this distance. Also, we're going to take  another shot down here for the gutter. Next we'll   take another back of curb shot right before the  elevation changes. And then, we'll take another   back of curve shot at the bottom here as well as a  gutter shot and that'll be all the points that we   collect with the total station. These are typical  measurements that we would take, back a curb,   gutter, whenever we're doing a topographic  survey. So the best way to test this sensor is   on data collection that we would actually do in  the industry. All right, so I've gone ahead and   set up this total station. Now if you don't know  how to do that, I did make a video a while back.   Go ahead and watch that real quick and then come  back to this video so that you can figure out the   procedure, but make sure you understand how this  total station is set up. Once I've set the total   station up I am going to need to take the height  of this instrument because we are going to be   taking vertical elevations so it's important  to know how high up our total station is.   All right, and it looks like we are at 5.24;  looks like 5.24. All right, cool. All right,   now I've set a backsight all the way on the  other side of the street and this is going   to just set up my control network. It's a  very simple control network I've got the   height of the rod and I'm going to now take  a direct measurement using the total station. Measure. Okay cool, we've got a measurement  to the backside. Now, I'm going to go over   the setup parameters for our total station.  All right, so I'm at the setup menu here   we are occupying point number one, our instrument  height is 5.24 feet we're sighting point number   two that's where the back side is, and the  backside height is 5.22 feet. I'm gonna go   and hit backsight. Okay and I'm gonna check the  distance in comparison to what we have on record. Boom. Our delta is zero in the horizontal,  and zero in the vertical. So we are   right on with our coordinates. I'll hit the set  angle button which will set our angle to zero, and   I'll hit check and there we go our instrument is  here siting the backsight. And if we look at the   total station we can see that the horizontal angle  is at zero degrees so we should be good to go. Now   what I'm going to do is take measurements along  this little strip of curve and we're going to be   measuring with the total station and then later  on scanning it with our iPhone's LiDAR sensor.   All right, let's get started. All right. I'm going  to start by sighting the first point. Okay, good. Good. Three more shots. All right, good. All right, one more. All right, looking good.  Okay, great, we're done collecting data. Now   the only thing i want to do is just rotate the  total station and check zero to make sure that   nothing happened no misalignments  or any orientation issues happened.   All right, and let's take a look and our  horizontal angle is at one second so we are   all good. All right now I've got the iPhone 12  Pro Max and right here is the LiDAR sensor. Now   we're going to be testing this LiDAR sensor's  accuracy in comparison to the total station   measurements that we just took. The goal here  is to use the results of the LiDAR sensor and   compare them to the baseline measurements of  the total station. All right, so I've got the   LiDAR sensor on and we're going to go ahead  and scan this little bit of curb. And start   recording data. There we go. Go nice and slow  here, okay. I'm going to come over on this side   and continue to scan. And I think that should be  good. It's going to go ahead and generate our TIN.   Get in here, and look at that, very nice. Come  over on this side, you can look at the vertices   here, and yeah you can see it's a pretty tight  TIN. Look over here, yeah. I'm going to go ahead   and share this. What kind of export do I want  here? We'll select point cloud. We're going to   select LAS, okay I've set myself the LiDAR.  And there you go, now we've got the scan and   we're gonna head back into the office and compare  this data to what we got with the total station. Hello, and welcome to the office. All right, so  I've gone ahead and loaded up AutoCAD Civil 3D   and imported the LAS file into Recap, which is  Autodesk's version of point cloud processing. And   then, I brought in the point cloud from recap  and this is the final result. As you can see,   we have the curb, not too bad actually, it looks  pretty good. So it's gonna be a little tricky to   maneuver through this but we're gonna do our best  to pick out all the points that we need for this   project. So as I zoom into this point cloud  I'm actually gonna increase the size of the   points briefly here. So where you see the color  change here between the asphalt and the curb   is not necessarily where the elevation changes. So  how do we find the exact change of the elevation?   Well, when we click on the point cloud we  come up here where it says scan colors,   I'm going to drop down this menu and go down to  elevation and you can see now the point cloud has   changed and now I'm going to decrease the size  of the points. So it's a little easier to see   the features. Okay, so you can see now majority  of this point cloud is turned green and that's   because it's taking all the values of the point  cloud. We're really only concerned with the curve   and so what I'm going to do is come over to the  color mapping. Okay, and what we're going to do   now is we're going to deselect the "apply to  extents of point cloud" option. This is now   utilizing every point on the point cloud and again  we only need the points that are around the curve,   so we're going to deselect it. And now it's going  to ask us a few questions. It's going to ask us   what we want our minimum elevation to be. During  the first control point I assumed an elevation   of 100. So I'm just gonna say the minimum  elevation is 100 and a maximum elevation: now   these curbs, they're usually within half a foot  to a foot in height. So I'm going to just say the   maximum should be 101 feet and then the interval  height it's giving me a default of one-tenth   but I want to be a little more precise than that.  I would like five hundredths of a foot. So, I'm just   going to type in 0.05 okay. All right cool, now it's  saying we're going to have 20 different colors   around our spectrum. Okay, all this looks good to  me so I'm going to go ahead and hit ok. And as you   can see, the points that are north of an elevation  of 101 remain at their RGB values, and elevations   of points that are below 100 also retain their  RGB color values. But everything in the middle   between 100 and 101 we now have a color for it.  Okay so what I'm going to start by doing now is   just increasing the size of these points so that  it's easier to see it's really hard to do this   kind of work when the points are so tiny. So we've  increased the size of the points. Okay. All right,   I'm gonna go ahead and start with the curb. All  right, this looks like a decent angle looks like  going up. This is roughly the point so I'm going to  use the "3DPOLY" command which is going to create a   3D polyline. And I have the "3DOSNAP" command on  which is that little blue circle with an x on it.   It's kind of hard to see I'm trying to bring it  here to the white points yeah you see it there.   So I'm going to use that to help me select my  point and I think I'm going to pick this point   right here. Okay, we're going to come over to this  side of the curb and as you remember the curb breaks so when you want to select the point where  it breaks. And I can see the break is right here   so I want to select right where the color changes  right there, perfect. Then we're going to come down   before the color changes again to the light blue  so right there, perfect. Then we can see here's the   curb before it depreciates down. Okay, right there  and now I want to come down to where the wall is,   I want to get that back corner I think it's going  to be the lowest point which is like this yellow   right here and select it and end the line, great!  And if I go ahead and just freeze the point cloud   you can see I've now traced the curb of the point  cloud and now let's go ahead and do the gutter.   So I'm going to thaw out the point cloud again and  we're going to select points. All right, I'm going   to go ahead and change my layer to LiDAR Gutter and I'm going to orient myself here. This   might be a good spot right here. Again you can see  when the elevation decides to start going up, it's   like right at the start of the orange so that'll  be when I start to click. So, 3DPOLY, selecting   right here and I'm going to come over to rotate a  little bit so we can see where that break is it's   happening right here so I want to try to get a  shot of the gutter in this location right here.   Okay and I want to select it right here and one  more point. Okay, cool. Now we've got both the curb   and the gutter in, I am going to just go ahead  and freeze our point cloud. If we take a look here   you can see the profile now that, that looks like  a curb and gutter. Look at that! All right so what   I'm going to do now is I'm going to open up  the point creation toolbar and I'm going to   create some points along these polylines. Just  go to point creation tool, miscellaneous manual, we'll come here we'll select this one. Okay now,  I'm going to change this layer to LiDAR gutter.   Okay, point creation. We're going to come back over  here and we're going to select these points. Here   and right here. If I come into points, I select  edit points, now I've got a group of points here   with Northings, Eastings and Elevations. Now  I'm just going to right click, select export,   it's going to ask me where I want to export  these points to and I've selected the destination   of where I want to export. And I'm just going to  call this LiDAR points and I want to save it as a   CSV and okay. And there we go now we've saved the  points. Let's go ahead and open up that CSV and   then open up our points from our total station  and begin comparing the coordinates. Here, we have   the coordinates of the total station and here we  have the coordinates of the iPhone's LiDAR system.   Now, I know a lot of people are thinking. Rami, how  in the world did you get this point cloud to be   on the same local system as your total station.  And to that, I have to come clean and tell you   the exact procedure that I used when I imported  the point cloud. I referenced two points from the   total station these two points allowed me to align  my point cloud to the local system that we have.   It was the only way I was able to tie these  two data sets together. So that means, two of   these points are going to have zero difference  points 102 and 107 are going to be exactly the   same okay I just want everyone to be very clear  about that. The differences from those two points   have nothing to do with the accuracy because I  did an alignment. What we are going to look at   are all the other points because this will show  the relative distance between the points whether   or not the LiDAR sensor on the iPhone 12 Pro can  genuinely measure differences in distance and in   elevation. So what we're going to do is create a  simple equation of "=" and I'm going to select   the northing of point 101 and subtract it from the  northing of 101 on the LiDAR data set. Okay. I'm   going to click on this and copy the formula all  the way down and copy it over and I'm going to   highlight these cells and block them because  just like I explained these points were used   for alignment. If you have more questions please  leave me a comment I will do my best to answer   what I did in my procedure. Okay, now let's look  at some of these differences I'm literally blown   away. Point number 101 has literally a difference  in Northing about 0.04', 0.08' in the Easting, and 0.05' in elevation.  That's crazy, that is really, really close. Point   number 103 has a difference of about 0.30' in the Northing, 0.09' in   the Easting and man the elevation is right on 0.03' again so close, I did not expect that.   Point number 104, Northing 0.25', Easting looks about 0.10' difference   again elevation 0.01' that... I'm more blown  away about the elevation differences because it   almost seems like elevation is so hard to achieve,  but here we are coming in at about a hundredth of   a foot. 105 we've got 0.15' again that's  following the trend here. The easting is about   0.05' and elevation this time is about  0.14'. Still super tight super good I   really like that. Point number 106, we've got about  0.20' in the northing 0.60' in the easting,   now this is the biggest difference that we have.  Again, elevation 0.02. And the last point, we've got   a difference in northing 0.07' easting  0.06' and elevation is 0.09'  so again I'm really blown away by how  within a tenth I would say comfortably a tenth,   definitely some spots like right here where it  was you know 0.20', 0.60', but elevation   wise we were good and this could really be just  me picking the wrong spot, you know. You saw   how difficult it was, it wasn't the easiest task  in the world. There's better software out there   unfortunately the iPhone's LiDAR doesn't give you  an intensity output as well which would be amazing   to have so all I had to rely on was the elevation  changes. Nonetheless for the amount of work that I   did I was able to extract some relatively accurate  data and I think now as us surveyors continue   to discuss the accuracy of this LiDAR sensor,  I've done an actual test and I have to say   it was beyond my expectations. I did not see this  coming. I was really expecting half a foot to a   foot of difference but for it to be about you  know one-tenth in difference you know I would   say that's pretty astonishing and very impressive.  I hope you guys like my video today, if you've got   questions or suggestions, I highly encourage  you to leave a comment down below I would love   to interact with you I want to see what you guys  think you know was this scientific enough, should   we do more testing, tell me what your thoughts are  what should we do to further this. If you like   this kind of content and you want to see more  be sure to like this video. Also subscribe to my   YouTube channel and turn on the bell notifications  so you don't miss out on any of my latest content.   Also if you'd like to take this conversation over  to Facebook we've got a private Facebook page   go ahead and click on the link in the description  and be a part of our community and interact with   surveyors all around the world. Thanks guys  for watching, and I'll see you guys next time.
Info
Channel: Rami Tamimi
Views: 523,914
Rating: 4.8513179 out of 5
Keywords: Surveying, Land Surveying, Civil, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Total Station, GPS, GNSS, Boundary, Topographic, Boundary Survey, Boundary Surveying, Topographic Survey, Topographic Surveying, Stake out, Staking, Construction, Construction Layout, Layout, Surveying Engineering, Survey Leveling, Leveling, EDM, Transit
Id: _AQs_5Mjc4o
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 17min 24sec (1044 seconds)
Published: Sat Aug 07 2021
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