Autonomous car expertise offers non-intrusive exploration on western Pacific island

Griffith College researchers are utilizing the identical expertise that helps management automated automobiles and is utilized in pace cameras to seek out historical websites within the Mariana Islands.

Revealed within the Journal of Pc Utility in Archaeology, the paper explores the usage of lidar on the western Pacific island of Guåhan (Guam) to map websites which beforehand could not have been found.

Lidar (Gentle detection and ranging) is a non-invasive distant sensing method that works by sending out laser pulses and calculating the return time from floor reflections.

Dr. Andrea Jalandoni, a digital archaeologist from Griffith College’s Middle for Social and Cultural Analysis, stated the analysis was getting used to showcase what identified archaeological websites seem like on lidar in order that extra archaeological websites may be discovered.

“A number of of the websites are from the Latte, Spanish and Trendy durations and we see that lidar is a really efficient option to see and map the websites which can be obscured and is probably not seen on account of vegetation,” Dr. Jalandoni stated.

Victor H. Torres, an Indigenous archaeologist and mapping specialist, stated the work is an attention-grabbing take a look at how a contemporary expertise like lidar can contribute to the invention and understanding of the previous.

“In our mission, we confirmed one utility of lidar knowledge for Guåhan however there are lots of different makes use of, like sea degree rise modeling or building monitoring,” stated Maria Kottermair, a mapping specialist.

“Now we have solely scratched the floor and there’s a lot extra that may be performed with this expertise.”