A special terrain-following system based on flash LIDAR

Tight control or compensation of terrain and flight height is an important search area in airborne gravimetry and gradiometry surveys. A special terrain-following system based on flash LIDAR is presented. In order to keep constant height flight, the front propagation and Binary approach algorithm based on range information are employed to discriminate vegetation, buildings and so on from the bare earth. Since the gravity gradient signal falls off rapidly (1/R³) as a function of distance from the source, the method can eliminate the survey errors induced by terrain and flight height to some degree.