Have you ever watched one of those documentary television programs where researchers have a cool laser gizmo that spins on a tripod and maps the inside of a prehistoric cave or the outside of an ancient building like the Coliseum of Rome to the tiniest detail? Well, now the Memphis District has one of those gizmos too. But, our engineers and technicians are putting it to different uses. Called the SX-10 Scanning Total Station, the device uses LiDAR to create a “point cloud” of a scanned object. LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging. That’s a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure distances and locations. The Memphis District is already using LiDAR for mapping and imaging on our unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The SX-10, however, uses terrestrial LiDAR.