#13 – Tristan Allouis

#13 – Tristan Allouis

September 16th, 2024

Announcer: Announcer: Announcer: Welcome to the LIDAR Magazine Podcast, bringing measurement, positioning and imaging technologies to light. This event was made possible thanks to the generous support of rapidlasso, producer of the LAStools software suite.

Stewart Walker: Welcome to LIDAR magazine and the LIDAR magazine podcasts. My name is Stewart Walker, and I’m the managing editor of LIDAR magazine. My guest today is Dr. Tristan Allouis, who is the CEO and co-founder of YellowScan. Tristan, we’re delighted to have you on board. It’s a great pleasure to be talking to you again. I can appreciate that you must be extremely busy. So I want to start by saying, thank you very much for finding time to talk to us.

Tristan Allouis: Thank you so much for having me Stewart. It’s a pleasure to be with you again.

Stewart Walker: Well, YellowScan is one of the leading integrators of UAV-lidar systems in the world. There is a summary of the history of your company on your website, which is interesting. But please tell us how the company was founded and about the founders. Why are you located near Montpellier?

Tristan Allouis: Yes, sure. So my origin background is engineering in computer science and electronics. And I’ve started my career with lidar in research domain. Start with the bathymetric lidar, but after a while I have completed my PhD with forest mapping. So processing data, analyzing data and so on. But that was missing a little bit my electronics background. After I graduated I had the opportunity to start working for a very small company in France that’s aiming at designing lidar paid out for drones. Back at that time there was no DJI in the world. And it was a very innovative product, that’s why I started the journey with some very new, small laser scanners for automotive or robotic industry. Well, yeah, the location is where the research was ongoing near Montpellier. That’s why we just stayed there. It’s a nice place to live.

Stewart Walker: It’s an absolutely beautiful place. I’ve been there of course attending your conference. I’m trying to think back, remember in 2012 then there weren’t all that many commercial UAVs in existence. And the regulations were probably more difficult than they are now. But there was still enough going on for you to recognize that UAV lidar was going to be a big market.

Tristan Allouis: Actually back in 2012 initially we didn’t really target to (inaudible) and sell a product. We were just aiming at using lidar for our own services. I was with a small company called L’avion Jaune, which means “yellow plane.” And it’s a service company. At that time they were pioneering the UAV business in France, taking photos from drones for mapping purpose. It was very new at that time. And people starting to ask them, well, do you do lidar too?

And the good timing when I was finishing my PhD, when new sensor became available on the market. Such as seek scanner, (sounds like: EBO) scanner, just a little bit before Velodyne. This is the right place at the right timing. We started to work together and this is how YellowScan started.

Stewart Walker: So you were the co-founder and then the chief technical officer, but now you’re the CEO. Are there other original founders who are still in the leadership of YellowScan?

Tristan Allouis: Yes, so my business partner Michele who was my former boss and former boss of L’avion Jaune is still – is the president of YellowScan, and we are still running the company together. But we have a very horizontal organization because we believe and we trust that every employee in the company can bring their own contributions. And so we like to share, you know, (inaudible) and share vision and listen to everyone for running a strong company with a strong team of people involved and committed.

Stewart Walker: Yes, and of course I’ve seen your team at work at many trade shows and at your own conference. So I can attest to that. So you became CEO in 2021, but have you still been able to keep a hand on the scientific side?

Tristan Allouis: Well, at the beginning I was more, like, into the technical part. I was the engineer. I was completing my PhD. So I have been always a technical guy. I was young at the beginning. So I had many things to learn, and I learned a lot over the years working with the different people. And naturally I transitioned my role to CEO. However, I’m still the technical guy too. I don’t write code anymore. I don’t design electronic board anymore. But I still oversee the research part and the partnership, like technology strategy basically, which I am still in charge of this, yes.

Stewart Walker: Okay, so let’s move on then to the products. You have a wide product range. So could you sort of give us a short tour through the product range so that we can understand how the various products are positioned and what markets they might be addressed towards?

Tristan Allouis: Sure. So the lidar business is constantly evolving. Lidar is widely used on many different applications in the world. So there is many sensors available. And our job as systems integrator, as our former job is to integrate different lidar systems. We’ve been able to design a full product range. So it starts with more entry level, which doesn’t mean that’s low performance. It’s still very good 3D sensor. With the mapper service, the mapper service today use Livox lidar technologies. It’s designed for smaller drones because they are very compact, and the price is more affordable whilst providing very good 3D mapping, multi-echo data.

And then if we move on to the product range to the Surveyor Ultra, that’s use a Hesai scanner. This one is 360 degree scanning system. It’s designed for drones, but it can also be taken on the car for mobile mapping. So it’s a more versatile product for different applications. And then we have the Vx range of products that use the RIEGL (sounds like: min-vox) scanner. This one is designed for people that are more demanding in the precision in the survey industry.

And then if we climb up through the product range we have Explorer. Explorer is a French made product. It’s a more capable system than the Vx with more points density and more range. And it has been developed in France by us. And then we have higher end of our portfolio is Voyager. Voyager is also a RIEGL-based product. It’s use VUX-120 from RIEGL. That’s an amazing product with amazing point density and precision, able to capture a lot of details including in the vegetation, the tree trunks, tree branch. This is really amazing data to see. And then as a bit separate to this topographic product range we have the Navigator, which is the bathymetric lidar system.

Stewart Walker: Okay, well wow, you have a lot of products to develop, market, maintain, update. That’s challenging for a company of your size I think.

Tristan Allouis: Yes, you’re right. It’s a bit challenging, but we don’t want to miss any application or space in the market. That’s why we have this kind of sensor for every customer needs.

Stewart Walker: Which I think answers my next question that you don’t then focus on particular verticals. You have a product range where you can really address any type of customer or application.

Tristan Allouis: Yeah, you are right. So our sensor can be used for many application. They are collecting data, and then for the vertical market we rely more on partnership with other software editors that are more focused on some specific application. So what we are trying to do is serving 80% of the overall application and then rely on some partners to develop the vertical markets.

Stewart Walker: So that clearly works well. And now for a word from our sponsor, LAStools.

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Stewart Walker: Tristan, when we spoke during Geo Week in Denver earlier this year, you explained that your Navigator top bathymetric system is an in house development. You don’t use a third party lidar sensor. You prefer one that you’ve designed and built yourself. And I can now see from what you said ten minutes ago a little bit of the background to this. You told me that the development took five years. Can you say more about this? Both about the technology and then about the decisions and challenges that you’ve faced along the way.

Tristan Allouis: The story starts actually 17 years ago when I started my career after I graduated as a young engineer. My first job was about single processing on bathymetric lidar data. This is how I first joined the lidar industry. Back at that time already I mean we are – we are missing – me and my supervisor, we were missing information from the manufacturer of this scanner. It was an optic system at that time. Because we wanted to design the best single processing algorithm for shallow water detection, and we were missing some information about this, gain and stuff like this.

All along my career it was always the ambition to one day design my own lidar system. So YellowScan started, and naturally we have always wanted to make a lidar system and especially bathymetric lidar system because it’s still very big sensors. And the drone business was missing such a compact sensor. So basically we started by hiring an optical engineer and starting to work on proof of concept, buying laser, buying optics and start to build brick by brick, thanks to some European funding that supported our research and development.

And we figured out that the proof of concept was actually working pretty well and decided to pursue the efforts and bring other engineer on board and continue to develop brick by brick. And finally we ended up while I was – last year was the prototype and we saw that the performance was actually really good. And we keep going and finalize the product, and now we have this bathymetric lidar system on our work portfolio that we are really proud of. And we are switching from the system integrator business to a proper manufacturer business, which is a big change also for the company. Because well, create new jobs, needs more and more skills and infrastructure to support the production and support of this new sensor. So it is very exciting for us.

Stewart Walker: It is exciting, and when you say it that way, it’s quite a switch isn’t it, from being an integrator to being a manufacturer. Although these two touch, they’re different. They’re not the same thing.

Tristan Allouis: Yes, absolutely. So because as an integrator we always push integration pretty far. So designing mechanical parts, electronic parts, mounting it, calibrating it. So somehow by designing our own optical system we just add another skill. But we still have these mechanical electronics, and now we have also the optics, which require of course maybe more precise and special tools to make it right rather than just buying the optical system off the shelf. So yes, it’s changing, but it’s going pretty well so far.

Stewart Walker: Excellent. So how do you see the market for Navigator? I mean, there’s far fewer top of bathymetric UAV lidar sensors than topographic. Are you expecting Navigator then to win a big share of that market?

Tristan Allouis: Yes of course we are expecting it because we realize that our performance, our price positioning on the market is leading today. So of course we expect at some point we have more and more competition as it happens for the topographic market. Because back at 2012 when we started there was only very, very few competition. We are aimed at leading the market, and so far we have a very competitive offer today. So we are pushing it as strong as we can to win the market share for sure.

Stewart Walker: Well, speaking more generally and going back to the topographic systems a little bit. As you’ve already explained you use a wide range of lidar sensors, and clearly your choices depend on the needs of particular market segments. Are you in really close communication with the manufacturers? Do you carry out sort of testing to decide what sensors to use?

Tristan Allouis: Yes, we have still a strong R&D team, and we hope to have close partnership with manufacturer. But of course the business is changing a little bit because now there is manufacturer on the markets that are designing special lidar for drones. But usually back few years ago those sensors was industrial sensors used for autonomous driving or robotics. And so UAV market was very small compared to this car industry market and stuff. So we didn’t have a lot of leverage on the specification of these sensors.

So basically the approach is more like – there is several sensors on the market. So let’s try this one. Let’s try that other one. Let’s see how it goes. Maybe we can do something about it. Maybe we can’t. So the effort is more like get the product testing and find out if we can make YellowScan product that will (sounds like: top it).

Stewart Walker: Some years back I visited Jeff Fagerman at LiDAR USA. And I think he said much the same thing about his approach.

Tristan Allouis: Yeah, of course LiDAR USA, actually I remember it well because when I started in 2012 Lidar USA already existed. And they were reselling some of the sensors we wanted to use, so yeah, they had pretty much the same approach yes, so far.

Stewart Walker: The next topic I was interested in, again, you’ve touched on this. I’ve noticed that most of the UAV lidar integrators whose principal business maybe is airborne applications, most of them make at least one product that can be mounted on either a UAV or a land vehicle to provide a mobile mapping system. Does YellowScan have an offering in that area? Do you think that’s a good way to approach the market?

Tristan Allouis: Yes for sure, and we have one offer with our YellowScan Surveyor Ultra. That’s the one that use the Hesai scanner. And we offer it as a package which we call Fly and Drive. And basically the tagline is, fly when you can. Drive when you must. So which means that sometimes you cannot fly everywhere, you know, because of regulation. And some people have to drive sometimes and collect data by car because they cannot fly in urban areas and stuff like this.

So yes, we are addressing this market, and we are keep going with the improvements on the R&D side to always provide the best quality data that we can in that.

Stewart Walker: Yes indeed. So obviously your systems also include cameras. So have you had any involvement in photogrammetry?

Tristan Allouis: Yes, (sounds like: RGB) camera are very important because now today – nowadays most of people also require to collect (RGB) data at same time as lidar because they are very complement, very data. And we have been working pretty extensively over the past few years, including hiring a PhD student that has been working on the data fusion. And we have published a patent about lidar and (RGB) camera calibration. And also we have released a few months ago our (sounds like: alto) photo module, which is basically using lidar 3D model to speed up the processing of an (sounds like: alto) photo. So we are obviously also into this photogrammetry business.

Stewart Walker: I’m pleased to hear it. Wonderful. Usually when people hear the name YellowScan, they think about hardware. But I know that you’ve got some software products too. So would you like to tell us about those please?

Tristan Allouis: Sure. So the software that we use, because our hardware collects raw data and then you have to turn this raw data into lidar (inaudible). And this is what our YellowScan cloud station is doing. So cloud stands for point cloud, not for cloud-based software. It’s a desktop software to generate and visualize and inspect the lidar data. And into this cloud station we offer different bundles with different functionality. Including strip adjustments, point classification, colorization, auto photo generation and so on. And we keep adding new features along the way because we have a team of developers that keeps going with developing and improving the software. So if you are under maintenance you use the (sounds like: yellie) licence, you will get your update every month on the cloud station to bring up new capabilities.

And we also offer another software which is called LiveStation. And this comes with a little piece of hardware which is a radio modem to data stream the on cloud down to the ground. So you can make sure you are collecting the right data at the right place while lidar is flying automatically streaming the data to the ground, and you can visualize it on site.

Stewart Walker: Clearly your software offerings generate high quality point clouds. But do you still think there’s a place for specialist software offerings from, for example, Terrasolid?

Tristan Allouis: Yes, absolutely and YellowScan is actually a Terrasolid distributor in France. This is a great software, and it has so many capabilities. And in order to address specific vertical market we need to rely on those kind of software, like include CAT capabilities and more advanced data processing. We don’t target cloud station to be the only single software, because – but we are targeting to provide the best point cloud you can get. And then you can put it in a vertical software basically according to your vertical market.

Stewart Walker: Okay, now I’ve talked over the years to a number of UAV-lidar integrators, and it’s clear that customer support is very important indeed. Have you found that also? And how do you approach the challenges of installation, training and support all over the world?

Tristan Allouis: Yes, absolutely, and this is our workhorse for years now. Customer support is very important, and we offer hardware, software and support. That’s the foundation of our offering is support. And we offer customer support around the world in different ways. Of course using our distribution network. We make sure our distributors are trained properly, and they can train our and their customers. And also directly also sometimes we do direct sales too in the country where we don’t have distributors. And we have a team of skilled engineers that travel around the world to train our customers because we think it’s very important to support them. We try to give our knowledge to our customers.

And also when they need support because sometimes technology sometimes doesn’t work. So there is those skilled engineers that are available almost 24 hours because we have different office around the world. They can support the customer on their feet when they are facing challenges, who could be advising. Or it could be fixing the data. It’s very important.

Stewart Walker: Now I think you touched on this at the very beginning. You as an individual were involved in mapping services. Does YellowScan still do any of that? Or do you manufacture, integrate and sell on support systems? I don’t know whether you do any services as well.

Tristan Allouis: We don’t do any services because our customer are service company, and we don’t want to compete with them. We are here to provide the best tools, make sure the system is working well. But – and this is the reason why we split the company in 2015. So I remind that we start in 2012 YellowScan projects, incorporated as a separate company in 2015. Because in between 2012 and 2015 we weren’t operating in a service company. But we thought the business model won’t work being a service company and reselling survey equipment to other service companies. Of course we needed the background and we needed to be a service company at the beginning to understand the needs of this survey market. But after a while when the product was ready, we decided to quit service and keep the service in a separate company. Which have now completely autonomous operation. So we are two separate companies.

Stewart Walker: Which I think makes sense. It keeps the business model straightforward, and it enables you to market in a more focused way.

Tristan Allouis: Exactly.

Stewart Walker: So moving on, I’ve heard a number of attendees speak favorably about your lidar for drone conference event. That’s a biennial user conference held not far from your headquarters. I attended the 2022 event. It was in a fabulous location among vineyards at the edge of Montpellier. I remember it very well. So tell us a little bit more about the idea behind this event, about the history, what happens, and how did the 2024 event go?

Tristan Allouis: In the history of the company we started very early to bring users and (sounds like: leads) customers together to showcase the capability of our system. But we also wanted that our own customer are presenting what they do. Is not about YellowScan presenting what we do. But our customers talking to other’s customers or prospects to show what they are doing. That’s the main idea behind this. And we also wanted to invite our technology partners so everyone can discuss together. Because this fosters new ideas, and this is the idea behind YellowScan lidar offerings.

And it was very successful in 2024, like it’s earlier this year. We missed you Stewart, and it was also another fabulous location, is different than last time. Because we wanted to be closer to the sea to showcase Navigator. And we find another fabulous location among vineyards, very close to the Mediterranean. And we flew a Navigator. We flew different systems including also Quantum Systems Trinity, which we have been two lidar systems. And it has been very successful so far. Amazing presentation by our customers, distributors. Many people around the world, very nice. We were, like, also to share French culture around good food, good wine, good discussion in pretty relaxed way. We really like to invite people to share this with everyone we can.

Stewart Walker: Yes indeed. Fond memories of the French location and culture. And that brings me to my next question is, whether you see your location in France as an advantage or a disadvantage. How has it affected your ability to address the US market? Now obviously your location gives you a big advantage in the European market over your North American and Asian competitors. You’re obviously Francophone. Does that help you in Canada? So I’m just interested in what you think about your location and language and so on.

Tristan Allouis: Well, our location is I would say what it is, because we live there. And so the people that work with us are from this location or sometimes they move to here because it’s also very nice and sunny location. But also it could be an advantage to have this very good weather because when you fly drones you don’t want too much rain or too much wind. And for this company is a very good location.

Of course it’s not the best accessibility using planes. But you have only one hour flight from Paris. So it’s pretty fine. But the competition and advantage to North American, we also have two subsidiary – not sure what, we have an office in Tokyo, in Japan and another in Salt Lake City in Utah in the US. And so our local presence is thanks to this local subsidiary, because of course it’s hard to address the US market from France. There’s too much time shift, time difference. So we have a US team that is very skilled, American people that can – the same culture are their customers. So yeah, we operate this way.

Stewart Walker: And it seems to be very successful.

Tristan Allouis: Yeah, so far so good.

Stewart Walker: So let’s look to the future. What are your plans? Is the company growing? And where do you think you will go in the next year, the next three years, the next five years?

Tristan Allouis: We talked a little bit about it before. So by switching from system integrator to lidar manufacturer, this is how we tackle our growth. And we want to pursue this, of course keep going with designing our own systems, leading bathymetric markets for UAVs. And at the same time keep pushing our software offer to bring more and more capability, maybe partnerships. So keep growing both on the hardware and software side. That’s our overall strategy for YellowScan in the next years.

Stewart Walker: Dr. Tristan Allouis, thank you very much indeed. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I’m very grateful that you’ve been able to participate in the LIDAR magazine podcast. We wish you well in your courageous venture, and I hope that we can feature YellowScan again in articles or podcasts or indeed articles about some of your users. I’m looking forward to visiting the YellowScan booth at INTERGEO in Stuttgart and catching up with you again.

Tristan Allouis: Thank you so much Stewart. It’s always a pleasure to discuss with you, and you’re more than welcome to join us at INTERGEO and hopefully in two years also in Lidar Conference where we hope to keep going and show you new things. Thank you again and I really enjoy LIDAR magazine for years now. So congratulations also for this.

Stewart Walker: Thank you. I’m sure listeners will similarly have enjoyed your company and comments today. I also want to underline our gratitude to our sponsor the popular LAStools lidar processing software. We hope that you will join us for forthcoming podcasts. We’re expecting some guests whom we believe you will want to hear.

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