Diamond Airborne Sensing and RIEGL enter a new era

08 March 2010, 2:25pm

The most economical survey aircraft on the market, the Diamond DA42 MPP NG, combined with RIEGL’s latest Airborne Laser Scanner LMS-Q680i, opens up new opportunities for airborne terrain surveying.

The Diamond DA42 "Multi Purpose Platform New Generation" is an innovative composite, twin-engine aircraft with a standard installed new Austro Engine (a Diamond’s subsidiary) diesel engine (AE 300) running on Jet A1. The plane is designed for carrying multi-functional aerial sensor equipment, like large format digital aerial cameras (e.g. Vexcel UltraCamXP), EO/IR gimbals for surveillance and reconnaissance missions or RIEGL airborne laser scanners.

After years of successful cooperation, the two leading manufacturers Diamond and RIEGL decided to equip the new DA42 MPP NG with RIEGL’s latest generation of airborne laser scanners, the new RIEGL LMS-Q680i. It is providing an unmatched laser pulse repetition rate of 400 kHz resulting in an effective measurement rate of up to 266.000 coordinates per second. A high scan rate of up to 200 lines per second at a constant 60 degrees field of view provides an evenly distributed point pattern of highest resolution.

Christian Dries, CEO Diamond Aircraft Industries, is delighted about the further cooperation: "We are proud to enter a new era of airborne laser scanning together with RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems. The DA42 MPP NG is the perfect platform to realise this revolutionary project."

"We look forward to a continued successful cooperation between RIEGL and Diamond, which has already resulted in the first fully integrated survey aircraft three years ago," said Dr. Johannes Riegl, CEO RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems, about the "restart".

The LMS-Q680i offers the industry-leading echo digitization for in-depth full waveform analysis, now smoothly combined with multiple-time-around signal processing. This combination allows the user to benefit from the high pulse rate also from high flight altitudes and thus to achieve high measurement densities on the ground, ideal for various applications like city modeling, power line monitoring, and large area and flood plain mapping.

Equipped with the Noise-Reduction-Kit, the Diamond DA42 MPP NG is the first survey aircraft that is verifiably operating under a noise threshold of 60dB at 500ft AGL. The fact that the MPP is operating below an average city noise level increases fields of operations tremendously.

Diamond Airborne Sensing’s and RIEGL’s new survey aircraft will reach market maturity by this year. Customers can expect a state-of-the-art turnkey aircraft system suitable for a variety of applications, which enables 3D data acquisition of high point density through low- and high-level-flights from day one.

For further information please visit the sites below.

Diamond Airborne Sensing

RIEGL

Geo: International