Aerial 3D surveying using drones is in growing demand in the civil engineering, construction, and infrastructure industries as an efficient and low-cost approach. However, conventional 3D surveying with drones, which are not adopted by SLAM technology but only used by Lidar, cannot perform continuous mapping from the air to the ground in environments where drones cannot fly or GNSS/GPS cannot reach, and this has been an operational challenge.

This product uses Kudan’s SLAM technology and can be generalized as a mapping device that is usable not only mounted on a drone but also hand-held, enabling continuous mapping from the ground by transferring the sensor to a hand-held device, in addition to conventional mapping from the air. As a result, this enables efficient 3D surveying with the same system in forests, civil engineering sites, urban areas, and other environments where a drone alone could not create a comprehensive digital map to the ground.

These cutting-edge projects need software technology that could be flexibly integrated with the hardware configurations required by the customer, and Kudan’s technology, which provides commercial-grade SLAM algorithms for mobile mapping, has been selected. Demand for advanced SLAM technology for mobile mapping, including drones, is growing, and Kudan will continue to contribute to the spread and advancement of mobile mapping products in Japan and globally.

Customer information and product details will be disclosed in the future.

Schedule

About Kudan Inc.
Kudan is a deep tech research and development company specializing in algorithms for artificial perception (AP). As a complement to artificial intelligence (AI), AP functions allow machines to develop autonomy. Currently, Kudan is using its high-level technical innovation to explore business areas based on its own milestone models established for deep tech which provide wide-ranging impact on several major industrial fields.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.

■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425 (TSE Growth)
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko

■For more details, please contact us from here.

The post Japanese drone solution provider announces commercial launch of drone product powered by Kudan Lidar SLAM first appeared on Kudan global.

Dates Metron is a company headquartered in Delhi, India, that develops and provides mapping solutions. Kudan’s SLAM technology, KdLidar, has been adopted for the release of the Metron X, a revolutionary product for the civil construction and mining industries.

The Metron X is a mapping solution that efficiently generates so-called digital twins, which are digital conversions of civil construction industry and mining industry sites into 3D point clouds. With the Metron X, digitally designed work and process plans and actual work and process progress can be managed on the same digital platform. This will not only dramatically improve efficiency, including the remote planning and management of civil construction and mining sites, but also enhance work efficiency and safety.

KdLidar is the software responsible for 3D point cloud generation, a fundamental function of the Metron X. Through Kudan’s proprietary algorithms, KdLidar offers significant improvements in accuracy, processing speed, and robustness over conventional SLAM technology, thereby making the Metron X revolutionary products without sacrificing accuracy compared to conventional ones.

• Reduced scan and process times (-50%)
• Reduced hardware configuration costs (-80%)
• Reduced equipment size (-70%)
• No need for a separate PC for post-processing

In addition, KdLidar has contributed to significant reduction in development costs and development time (-80%) by providing modularized software architecture, supporting tools, and development kits to support product developers who become our customers.

Thus, the Metron X is expected to be utilized for digitization and DX implementation, for which demand is rapidly growing in the civil construction industry and the mining industry, as a solution that is significantly less expensive and more versatile than conventional approaches. For example, the technology roadmap released by the Ministry of Coal, Government of India in 2021 outlined a policy of significant digitization of coal mining operations, and in 2023 Coal India, the world’s largest state-owned coal company and a subsidiary of the Ministry, has launched a digitization project called “Digicoal”. In addition, the civil construction industry has also been backed by the Indian government’s national BIM digital twin strategy started in 2022, and this leads to dramatic acceleration of investment in digitalization in both industries.

In response to these market tailwinds, Kudan and Dates Metron will accelerate the industry’s digitalization and DX implementation by launching and promoting next-generation products to support productivity improvement and innovation.

“We are pleased to see the release of Metron X by Dates Metron to help civil construction and mining industries in India to digitalize their workflow.” said Daiu Ko, CEO of Kudan. “By collaboration with Dates Metron, leveraging their industrial expertise and market footprint, we look forward to contributing to development of innovative products with our SLAM technology and capture the tremendous market demands of digitalization in India.”

“This groundbreaking mapping product marks a significant milestone as our collaboration with Kudan, and will redefine the landscape of mobile mapping technology adoption in India.” said Sahil Dass, Managing Partner of Dates Metron. “We anticipate leveraging Kudan’s technology to better serve the market needs in India with comprehensive and advanced solutions, and continue to expand our product portfolio with Kudan.”

(Reference) Dates Metron LLP Website: https://metrontechlabs.com/

About Kudan Inc.
Kudan is a deep tech research and development company specializing in algorithms for artificial perception (AP). As a complement to artificial intelligence (AI), AP functions allow machines to develop autonomy. Currently, Kudan is using its high-level technical innovation to explore business areas based on its own milestone models established for deep tech which provide wide-ranging impact on several major industrial fields.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.

■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425 (TSE Growth)
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko

■For more details, please contact us from here.

The post Dates Metron, an Indian mapping solutions provider, decides to launch a handheld mapping product powered by Kudan Lidar SLAM first appeared on Kudan global.

Outside of the ship they scanned

Why do we need to scan a ship?

Some might wonder “I agree that the point cloud looks interesting but what is the point of scanning a ship?”. For this customer, their purpose was to decide the best positions to install cameras to detect passengers falling overboard. With the accurate 3D-model, they can avoid physically visiting the ship numerous times for trial-and-error by virtually simulating different positions on a computer. In general, accurate digital representation of these large assets helps companies in the following ways.

• Understand progress of construction or repairs. They can scan ones under construction periodically to track the progress and check if they achieve each milestone efficiently) → Avoid project/ budget overrun
• Plan installation of equipment more efficiently. They can simulate installation of large equipment such as cranes on a computer due to accurate 3D model → Reduce planning time and resource, inefficient re-work
• Reduce actual visits to the asset for maintenance work → Reduce cost and time

How was the result?

As you can see, the point cloud accurately captures details of the ship. The inside of the ship is a GNSS-denied environment but there’s no distortion in the point cloud. The customer tried to scan this ship with an iPad lidar but the distortion was too large and the result was not usable at all. Also notice all the small details, such as wires and small equipment, that were captured clearly and crisply within the point cloud. It’s typically difficult to capture them well due to the noise originating from lidar’s depth estimate error and SLAM error in the point cloud. This can be used for the activities mentioned above.

Images of the point cloud of the ship

Here is the demo video on Kudan YouTube channel.

Please reach out to us if you would like to check the point cloud in more detail. We are happy to share it and hear your feedback.

■For more details, please contact us from here.

The post Kudan Lidar SLAM (KdLidar) in Action: Scanning a multi-story ship first appeared on Kudan global.

UCS working with Kudan, has been developing the hand-held device utilizing Ouster lidars and Kudan 3D-Lidar SLAM since the beginning of this year. After a number of prototypes, and field testing, optimization, and pre-marketing of the product, has finally launched this month.

UCS has seen significant demand for a simple and affordable mapping device for multiple applications ranging from forestry, streets, and buildings, to the mapping and inspection of indoor facilities. The target customers require accurate point clouds but don’t need survey-grade accuracy and prefer affordability and simplicity. The feedback from pre-marketing activities was overwhelmingly positive and UCS has secured a number of purchase orders from their customers for applications such as railway infrastructure inspection, and university research. This device uses Ouster Lidar (the model is flexible) and its built-in IMU without any additional sensors such as an external IMU and GNSS, which enables this device to be price competitive in the market.

Jaden Kim, CEO of UCS, told us, “We’ve seen unmet market needs for a simple and affordable mapping solution for a while and Kudan 3D-Lidar SLAM has enabled us to launch with only a handful of months of development and testing. It is a robust and accurate system with Ouster Lidar and its built-in IMU for various applications of our customers.”

This demo video for an indoor office environment is actually one of the samples they took with this device.

We are expecting more and more products and solutions embedding our SLAM software to enable SLAM-based mapping solutions more accessible.

If you’re interested in knowing more about this device or our SLAM offering, please reach out to us.

About Kudan Inc.
Kudan is a deep tech research and development company specializing in algorithms for artificial perception (AP). As a complement to artificial intelligence (AI), AP functions allow machines to develop autonomy. Currently, Kudan is using its high-level technical innovation to explore business areas based on its own milestone models established for deep tech which provide wide-ranging impact on several major industrial fields.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.

■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425 (TSE Growth)
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko

■For more details, please contact us from here.

The post UCS, an Ouster distributor for Korea, launches a handheld mapping product using Kudan Lidar SLAM software first appeared on Kudan global.

Since the successful first webinar “Zero to SLAM in 30 minutes”, Ouster and Kudan have been working on multiple projects ranging from autonomous cleaning robots to factory automation and mobile mapping applications. Both companies continue to discuss ways to bring more opportunities to provide a hands-on experience to those who are interested in utilizing Lidar sensors and Lidar SLAM for their applications.

This webinar will enable participants to exploit more features from Ouster Lidar sensors and Kudan’s Lidar SLAM. This reduces motion blur and noises significantly, especially when it comes to applications where the Lidar sensor moves dynamically such as in the case of hand-held mapping.

A trial version of the Kudan 3D Lidar SLAM will be available for participants to access at the end of the webinar.

To see how it works, register for the webinar by visiting Ouster’s website:
http://go.ouster.com/Kudan-WebReg-2.html
Multiple joint activities are lined up for the next 2-3 months. Please stay tuned and join us to unlock the potential Ouster lidar and Kudan lidar SLAM have.

＜For reference＞
Ouster partners with Kudan to bring commercial Lidar SLAM to its customers
https://www.kudan.io/blog/kudan-partnered-with-outster-lidar-to-introduce-3d-lidar-slam-evaluation-program/

The first webinar “Zero to SLAM in 30 minutes”
https://www.kudan.io/blog/kudan-ouster-lidar-slam-workshop/

About Kudan Inc.
Kudan (Tokyo Stock Exchange securities code: 4425) is a deep tech research and development company specializing in algorithms for artificial perception (AP). As a complement to artificial intelligence (AI), AP functions allow machines to develop autonomy. Currently, Kudan is using its high-level technical innovation to explore business areas based on its own milestone models established for deep tech which provide wide-ranging impact on several major industrial fields.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.

■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko

■For more details, please contact us from here.

The post Kudan and Ouster to host the second workshop on 3D-Lidar SLAM first appeared on Kudan global.

Long narrow corridors in office buildings and industrial facilities are quite common environments for robotics and mapping applications. However, they are one of the more challenging environments for Lidar SLAM due to repetitive structural appearances and limited GNSS signals (You can learn how 3D Lidar SLAM works in this blog post). This time, we are showcasing Kudan Lidar SLAM (KdLidar) taking on this challenging environment with ease in this challenging environment using a very simple setup.

Kudan Lidar SLAM works robustly in these challenging but common environments without any external sensors

This scan was done only with an Ouster lidar (OS1-32) using its built-in IMU as a handheld scanner shown in the picture below.

Kudan Lidar SLAM in action: In long narrow corridors in an office building

(The data credit: UCS in Korea)

As you may know, Kudan Lidar SLAM will detect and perform loop closure to optimize the point cloud map, and it indeed detected some loops during this scan but the effects are barely noticeable due to the very limited drift generated during the scan. This is a good indicator that Kudan Lidar SLAM is managing this challenging environment with ease.

This type of environment is challenging yet quite common across various applications.

• Mapping and tracking for autonomous service robots operating within offices and commercial buildings
• Mapping of office buildings for inspection, maintenance, and facilities management
• Progress monitoring and documentation of construction worksites

Here are some of the details of the environment, and demo parameters.

• Size of the area: Each corridor runs 50m – 60m length
• Sensor: Ouster OS1-32 3D lidar: Only lidar, without further sensor fusion (however, we can utilize other sensors if needed)
• The SLAM video is generated in real-time for progress monitoring and the high-density point cloud map is generated during post-processing

Please feel free to reach out to us if you operate within these types of environments or have other challenging environments that you need a solution for. See the difference commercial-grade SLAM can make as part of your solution. We are happy to solve the problems together.

About Kudan Inc.
Kudan (Tokyo Stock Exchange securities code: 4425) is a deep tech research and development company specializing in algorithms for artificial perception (AP). As a complement to artificial intelligence (AI), AP functions allow machines to develop autonomy. Currently, Kudan is using its high-level technical innovation to explore business areas based on its own milestone models established for deep tech which provide wide-ranging impact on several major industrial fields.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.

■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko

■For more details, please contact us from here.

The post Kudan 3D-Lidar SLAM (KdLidar) in action：Long narrow corridors first appeared on Kudan global.

This data was collected by a handheld device with a 3D-lidar. As some of you already know, underground environments are one of the more challenging environments for conventional geospatial equipment due to the unavailability of GNSS and complex structure.

The video shows how KdLidar works in this environment to collect data, and create a beautiful point cloud.

Try to guess what sensor we used for this work while you are watching this video!

Here is the video:
Kudan Lidar SLAM: In an underground cave

Many existing solutions only allow you to see the output once you store the data and process it offline, and you cannot see how the scanning work is going during the capturing process or immediately after it. This can potentially lead to significant loss of productivity. As you can see, the user is able to have a good understanding of how the scanning is going in real-time (as the point cloud is being generated), and then create a denser and more crisp point cloud in post-processing.

One thing to note, is that this data was collected only using an Ouster OS0-32, without using its internal (or an external IMU, and obviously without GNSS). Lidar SLAM without IMU in a handheld configuration is another major challenge due to continuous natural human motions, which can cause ghosting, blurred points and trajectory drift.

Our partner, who collected this data, was quite satisfied with the final result for their mapping purpose. However, if you want consistently good-looking results, with higher accuracy, we can boost the performance with more tuning and sensor fusion of IMU.

Here are some of the details of the environment, and demo parameters.

• Size of the area: 100m x 70m (or 330 ft x 230 ft)
• Sensor: Ouster OS0-32 3D lidar: Only lidar, without further sensor fusion (however, we can utilize other sensors if needed)
• The map was generated after successful loop closure

We hope you are enjoying this “Kudan SLAM in action” series as you get to see Kudan SLAM’s robustness, accuracy, reliability and flexibility in real environments.

About Kudan Inc.
Kudan (Tokyo Stock Exchange securities code: 4425) is a deep tech research and development company specializing in algorithms for artificial perception (AP). As a complement to artificial intelligence (AI), AP functions allow machines to develop autonomy. Currently, Kudan is using its high-level technical innovation to explore business areas based on its own milestone models established for deep tech which provide wide-ranging impact on several major industrial fields.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.

■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko

■For more details, please contact us from here.

The post Kudan 3D-Lidar SLAM (KdLidar) in action: In a subterranean cave for geospatial applications first appeared on Kudan global.

For tracking and creating point clouds with Lidar SLAM, the following 2 factors create the biggest challenges
••• No external GNSS or IMU
••• Limited field of view (FOV) – not 360 degrees

We configured this demonstration with both conditions to see how well our Lidar SLAM performs in creating a crisp point cloud. As you can see from the video below, using only the Lidar and the internal IMU, the details are fantastic without any ghosting – even down to the individual powerlines.

Given that the Livox Avia is one of the most affordable 3D-Lidars, paired with Kudan’s Lidar SLAM, you won’t need to make the trade-off between cost, point cloud quality, and still have a very cost-effective and efficient mapping tool to produce the crisp and accurate high-quality point clouds your projects demand.

As with our previous demo, this demonstration highlights KdLidar’s fundamental performance without any external sensors, and we can further fuse GNSS and external IMU, INS and other external references to increase the performance and quality of point clouds created from Lidar based scanners.

Please see the demo here:

About Kudan Inc.
Kudan (Tokyo Stock Exchange securities code: 4425) is a deep tech research and development company specializing in algorithms for artificial perception (AP). As a complement to artificial intelligence (AI), AP functions allow machines to develop autonomy. Currently, Kudan is using its high-level technical innovation to explore business areas based on its own milestone models established for deep tech which provide wide-ranging impact on several major industrial fields.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.

■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko

■For more details, please contact us from here.

The post Kudan 3D-Lidar SLAM (KdLidar) new demo: Sharp point cloud with a Lidar without external GNSS nor IMU – Part 2 first appeared on Kudan global.

Ouster has announced its expansion in Japan and South Korea with newly appointed country manager in the region*. Ouster aims to capture the growing demand for Lidars in the region and expects Kudan to play an important role.
(*Please see the Ouster’s release for more information.)

Kudan and Ouster have been closely collaborating through multiple activities such as Kudan Lidar SLAM trial for Ouster customers, a joint webinar, and mutual customer introduction. We are planning to jointly conduct more initiatives, especially focusing on Japan. Since creating an accurate representation of the real world with a Lidar is a foundation of digital twin and metaverse, we expect further acceleration of Lidar expansion in Japan.

Michael Mozzhechkov, Country Manager in Japan, Ouster commented that “I’ve seen a strong and growing demand of the combination of Ouster Lidar and Kudan’s SLAM software both in and outside of Japan. There is large untapped potential for Lidar introduction in Japan. Offering reliable software together with our Lidar is especially critical in Japan since many customers want to have a package of hardware and software. I’m very excited about deepening the tie between Kudan and Ouster in Japan.”

We are planning to showcase joint demos in the coming exhibitions and support each other’s projects.

About Ouster
Ouster (NYSE: OUST) is a leading provider of high-resolution digital Lidar sensors for the industrial, smart infrastructure, robotics, and automotive industries. Ouster products offer an excellent combination of price and performance and are built to a set of requirements that are flexible enough to span hundreds of use cases and enable revolutionary autonomy across industries. Ouster has approximately 600 customers in over 50 countries with offices in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. For more information, visit www.ouster.com, or connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

About Kudan Inc.
Kudan (Tokyo Stock Exchange securities code: 4425) is a deep tech research and development company specializing in algorithms for artificial perception (AP). As a complement to artificial intelligence (AI), AP functions allow machines to develop autonomy. Currently, Kudan is using its high-level technical innovation to explore business areas based on its own milestone models established for deep tech which provide wide-ranging impact on several major industrial fields.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.

■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko

■For more details, please contact us from here.

The post Ouster, Kudan’s Lidar Partner, has announced to expand its presence in Japan with close collaboration with Kudan first appeared on Kudan global.