While Intergeo provides attendees with a look at countless established products for the entire geospatial market, it's also a place where they can find brand new ones. The Zenmuse L2 from DJI is one of those new products at the show, as the company debuted their self-developed IMU system that features a 4/3 CMOS RGB camera.

Designed to be a high-precision aerial lidar system that enables drones to collect more accurate data, the L2 makes notable improvements on the capabilities of the L1. The L1 has been utilized on various types of products, but after having been introduced three years ago, users had expressed a desire to go beyond those capabilities.

"It was time for an upgrade," said Kyle Miller, Solutions Engineer at DJI Enterprise, who talked through those specifics with the standing room-only crowd.

The most significant changes are with the lidar system itself, as the L2 represents a brand new lidar module, which DJI built on their own. There have also been major improvements with vegetation, with a higher point cloud density in vegetation areas.

The Zenmuse L2 integrates lidar, a self-developed IMU system, 4/3 CMOS RGB camera, and three-axis gimbal. An enhanced user experience and point cloud post-processing have also been called out as notable features. Additionally, the L2 includes a free DJI Terra license to provide a simple solution for 3D data collection and high-accuracy post-processing.

"We wanted it to be as simple as possible," Miller told the crowd. "If you need a DTM, we wanted to make sure getting one would be as quick as it was easy."

What are some of the use cases and applications where the L2 has been tested so far? Power line digitalization was called out, where users only needed to fly one flight path to capture the data they needed. Earthwork measurement on a highway construction site was also mentioned, with significant differences with the L2 for cut volumes. The L2 was also utilized on a historical documentation project in Guatemala, where the long distance mission was able to capture critical information, which is in stark contrast to the last manned mission that was a complete loss.

Additional capabilities include:

  • point range of 240,000 point clouds
  • point cloud LiveView
  • repetitive and non-repetitive scanning
  • a high-accudacy IMU system
  • RGB mapping camera (4/3 CMOS, 20 MP)
  • one click processing on DJI Terra

The focus on capability and ease-of-use reflects how DJI has been taking user feedback into account, which bodes well for future upgrades and announcements. While the company continues to combat hurdles on the enterprise side that have little to do with technology, announcements like this demonstrate that their commitment to the technology and the people using it is as strong as ever. 

Pricing and availability for the L2 were not outlined, but those details can eventually be found on their site and with DJI Enterprise dealers.