UAV LiDAR
An airborne laser sensor instead of a camera. It can obtain ground returns through openings in vegetation, which is what makes separating ground from vegetation — and building a bare-earth terrain surface — possible where imagery alone cannot resolve the ground.
- What it costs
- Quoted by site
- Also called
- drone lidar · aerial lidar · point cloud from the air · terrain model
Where it earns its keep
Use it for these.
If your problem is “trees or terrain are defeating photography,” this is the answer.
- Sites where vegetation obscures the ground
- Terrain and grade where you need the ground, not the canopy
- Corridors and long linear sites
- Conditions where image texture or lighting defeats photogrammetry
Don’t use it for this
Fine interior detail — that’s a job for terrestrial scanning.
We put this on every service page because the fastest way to waste your money is to buy the impressive tool instead of the correct one. If the row above describes your job, say so on the call and we’ll point you at the right one — including when it’s cheaper than this.
Find the right one by problem →What you receive
And what it opens in.
- Processed LiDAR point cloud in an agreed format, with classification scoped to the intended use
- A statement of which classes were scoped and produced
- Capture date, flown extents, delivery units and coordinate basis
- Known exclusions and areas of limited ground return
Included every time
Formats
LAS · LAZ · E57
Format is agreed against what you do with the data next — these are the ones this service commonly delivers in, not a promise of every format on every project. Delivered to a shared project folder anyone on the job can open: no accounts, no per-seat charge, and if you leave, the record leaves with you.
The boundary
Where this scope ends.
Options on this scope
- Bare-earth terrain surface — the natural derived product where terrain beneath vegetation is the objective
- DSM, the top captured surface, which is a different product from bare-earth terrain
- Contours, identified against the surface they were generated from
- Cross sections and profiles
- RGB orthomosaic where paired imagery is captured
- Colorized point cloud where supported
- CAD and GIS-compatible surfaces
- Hosted viewer access
- Recurring capture on a cadence
A separate Kinetic service
- Earthwork & Quantity ReportingKinetic calculating and reporting quantities or surface change against this terrain data.
- Aerial Mapping & PhotogrammetryPhotogrammetry over the same ground, where the surface is visible and RGB context matters. A hybrid scope runs both.
- 3D Laser ScanningFine detail of a structure rather than terrain — tripod, not aircraft.
Not something Kinetic does
- Professional land surveying
- Boundary determination, legal descriptions, plats and monumentation
- Construction staking and layout
- Licensed topographic surveying
- Engineering design
- Certified grade compliance
- Certified quantities
- Surveying or engineering certification of any kind
- Utility locating and ground-penetrating radar
Where a project needs one of these, we say so and point you at someone licensed to do it.
Before it can be scheduled
Separate questions, separate answers.
Permission to capture
Do you own or lawfully occupy this site, or have authority from whoever does?
Texas treats capture of an image by unmanned aircraft as its own question, separate from the airspace — and the definition of an image covers thermal and infrared as well as visible light. Kinetic documents the customer's authority over the project site before flying, defines the authorised area of interest with you, and plans missions around it. It is asked and answered separately from airspace, because neither one settles the other.
Whether the flight works
Where is the site, and what is the airspace around it?
Whether the flight can be conducted legally and safely, what authorisation it needs and how much lead time that takes. A corridor crossing several jurisdictions or approach paths can change the schedule substantially — and none of that is affected by who owns the property. Kinetic does not confirm a capture date until this review is done.
Before we can price it
What we’d ask you.
Kinetic confirms the scope with you before anything is scheduled. None of it is a form to fill in — it is what the conversation covers.
- What are you trying to understand or receive?
- How heavy is the vegetation, and how much of the area does it cover?
- Is this an area or a corridor, and how large?
- Does this data need to line up with your project's civil or design files, or an existing local site grid?
What changes the size of the job
- Acreage or corridor length
- Terrain relief
- Vegetation density
- Required classification
- Capture method
- Control requirements
- Deliverables
- RGB imagery requirement
- Airspace
- Site access and security
- Turnaround
Useful to have, none of it required to start
- Project location
- Approximate acreage or corridor length
- What the terrain data will be used for
- Which outputs you actually need
- Vegetation type and density, and ground cover conditions
- Your authorisation for aerial image capture: that you own or lawfully occupy the property, or have authority from the owner or lawful occupant
- Project coordinate system, where the data has to line up with civil or design files
- Project control supplied by the project's surveyor, where a local site grid applies
- Required classification, where a project specifies one
- Whether paired RGB imagery is wanted
- Target software and any file-format requirements
- Site access and security restrictions
Where we run it
Markets this shows up on most.
Aviation & transportation
Long programs, staged handovers and heavy reporting obligations. Airspace here is genuinely complex and it is planned for, not discovered on the day.
Aviation & transportation projectsOil & gas
Tank farms, pipe racks, flare stacks and terminals — drone visual passes instead of scaffold and rope access, scan-based existing conditions for brownfield tie-ins, and turnaround documentation while everything is open.
Oil & gas facility capture
What this runs with.
All services →3D Laser Scanning
For fine interior detail this is the instrument — tripod, not aircraft.
Quoted per scopeAerial Mapping & Photogrammetry
Photogrammetry over the same ground, where the surface is visible from the air.
View pricing and build your projectEarthwork & Quantity Reporting
The terrain surface this returns is what quantity reporting is run against.
Added to a mapping capture
Tell us the job. We’ll tell you if this is the right tool for it.
Send the project — an address, a schedule, or just what you’re trying to document. A person reads it and comes back with an approach and a price.
Scope your project