okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Monday, May 19, 2008
Peering into the future?
I spent some time this weekend reading about lidar. People are developing computer programs that do much more than just create contours. They've got programs that analyze the raw data and characterize it. In other words, the software looks at the data and decides if it is a road or a building or a forest. I don't know how well these programs work. I suspect they are so-so. You wouldn't completely trust the characterizations.
As I was running in the forest on Sunday, I started wondering if someone could write a program to make an educated guess about the runnability of forested areas. In this part of the country, it is very difficult to consistently map the different shades of green. Having a computer program taking a first crack at it would be useful.