#28 – Grayson Omans

#28 – Grayson Omans

January 28th, 2026

{Music}

Announcer (00:01.998)
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.

Announcer (00:02)
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 (00:26)
Welcome to LIDAR Magazine and the LIDAR Magazine podcast series. My name’s Stewart Walker. I’m the managing editor of LIDAR Magazine. My guest today is Grayson Omans. He’s the CEO of Phoenix LiDAR Systems. Grayson, we’re delighted to have you on board and it’s a great pleasure to be talking to you. LIDAR Magazine’s really pleased you found the time for this. It’s great.

Grayson Omans (00:49)
Thanks for inviting me Stewart. It’s always great to catch up. I know we run into each other in the most random of places, but I’m delighted to be here and delighted to give you an update of where we are. It seems like we always have these three or four year periodic updates, but I’m thrilled to chat about Phoenix where we are today.

Stewart Walker (01:11)
Super, thank you. since we, as you say, bumped into each other on many occasions, I’ll set the scene quite quickly. Your company is one of the best known integrators of systems for UAV, lidar in the U.S. You have an enormous success integrating all manner of GNSS, IMU, camera, lidar, other components onto a wide range of UAVs. So you set up your company in 2013, and for many years, you were based in the Palms area of Los Angeles and then in 2020 you made what I consider to be a big brave move to Austin, Texas.

So that’s the background and I don’t want to use too much of your time going over old ground. We’ve reported on the early days of Phoenix LiDAR Systems in the magazine a couple of times. So please just summarize your own career, how you get into UAVs and lidar and then, in a few minutes, we can talk about the company. I know that you’ve got to be as an applied economics and management from Cornell. You’ve been involved in the movie industry, solar energy, the manufacturer of gimbals. So take it from there.

Grayson Omans (02:19)
Sure. Yeah. At Cornell, I really focused on entrepreneurship. I’ve always… Hindsight’s 2020. I’ve always wanted to get into entrepreneurship and I had several business plans at the university and a lot of it was a thermoelectric cooler and how to ⁓ power small homes with a thermoelectric engine that’s about the size of a dishwasher. Lots of tech ideas and startups. It’s always been a huge interest of mine. And when I graduated from school, I got into product management. I was product management for solar energy for about 10 to 12 years prior to getting into this world of UAV, lidar.

Technology and making the impossible possible, I guess, has always been something of interest of mine really as product management, you find market gaps and you fill those gaps. And there was a wide open gap in this market. Everybody was used to only airborne lidar, which you had 70 kilogram sensors on Cessnas and other aircraft. And then as soon as David Hall over at Velodyne came out with the automotive lidar, things changed drastically. The miniaturization of lidar opened up a huge opportunity and gap.

So, I incorporated in 2012 and progressively developed the tech for a while until it was commercially viable. And drones at that time was all, it was all filming, it was all cameras, right? And that’s why I started the brushless gimbals company to stabilize cameras using a brushless motor versus a servo. Instead of post-stabilizing, you stabilize the footage on the gimbal itself, which saved a tremendous amount of time in post.

But I bootstrapped Phoenix from brushless gimbals. you’ve heard Elon and all these other entrepreneurs talk about the commercialization. A prototype is absolutely easy. But to make a commercially viable product is a whole different ballgame. boy, that was a learning curve.

But all the product management, all that experience from Bosch and from the previous German companies that I worked for really significantly helped with where I am today and where Phoenix is today and filling these gaps. There’s still a lot of gaps, tremendous amount of gaps that we still have to fill until we hit that full value added chain. But it’s been quite a ride. You’ve seen us go through it. And yes, we were in West L.A. And you saw us when we were piled on top of each other like sardines.

Stewart Walker (05:05)
Yes, that’s how it was, yeah.

Grayson Omans (05:07)
Yeah, you saw it in the sales office, tiny sales office. had eight guys in there and production. The first thing you saw when you walked into the building, you saw production producing scouts and rangers and… Well, yeah, that’s pretty typical at all of L.A.

And that’s not the only reason, but that’s a big part of the congestion. West L.A. is not for manufacturing. Maybe it’s fine for production, but ⁓ it is definitely not a place for manufacturing lidar. But I have to give it credit because it’s what got us really to where we are today. it’s been a wild ride, this whole entrepreneurship side of things, the FedEx, the brushless gimbals, to where we are, to organically growing the company to where we are right now.

Stewart Walker (05:59)
So you founded the company in 2013 along with Dr. Ben Adler, who’s currently your CTO. And obviously then you had seven years of considerable growth and packing more and more and more into that building in L.A. And then you came to the realization it’s time to move on. And I just point out to listeners, there’s a very good timeline on your website, phoenixlidar.com that gives some significant milestones that the company has been through.

So tell us about the move to Austin. I think obviously one of the main drivers was just the congestion at your facility in L.A., but there must’ve been cost drivers as well. I’m interested in how many employees did you have in L.A. and how many of them made the move and how many have changed to remote working, which of course is not that easy for assembling UAV lidar systems.

Grayson Omans (06:57)
True. Yeah. And I think the last time you visited us in L.A. was 2019, maybe. Yeah. We were right around 18 to 20 at that time in the office, which for 3,000 square feet is a lot of people. And production and there’s so many factors. Cost, health insurance. California has the highest cost as far as health insurance and we want to cover health insurance for our employees. it was space, parking was a nightmare.

By far, when it came to global distribution, it was great because it was easy for our distributors to fly into. LAX is one of the biggest airports in the country. So it had plenty of pros, but it had a lot of cons that outweighed those pros. And so we did a tour and visited a lot of places, everything from Denver to Portland when we just did the math at the time, it was 2018. It seemed like Austin was the best option, best for calibration year round for lidars. Every day we’re outdoor calibrating. So when 2020 hit, COVID hit, we made the big move and we retained 60 % of the employees. They moved with us, which of course you had no idea at the time if you were going to be able to retain even more than 5%.

So it’s a massive decision for a business owner to move this far away out of state. Lots of very late nights. we made the big move in July 2020 to here. But little did we know that a whole bunch would be right behind us. It was crazy. Here we get to Austin and two months later, the big Gigafactory announcement from Elon comes up and we’re like, God, it’s like tons of Californians moved to Austin.

There was this big rush and housing prices went up. But good news is by now it’s finally stabilizing, was supply and demand. was out of whack. People were paying 200K above asking price. Great for the homeowner at the time that was selling, but terrible for those that wanted to buy a home. But there’s still plenty of breathing room in Austin.

That’s just it. It’s that West L.A. So, you know, so congested and to buy a home, you’d have to drive and commute about an hour and a half. Literally, Lido and a lot of our employees would drive an hour and a half one way. I love podcasts, but not that much. And that’s just not for me. It’s kind of like in L.A., this is the way. My commute was 10 minutes.

And that’s the max that I can handle. It’s 15 minutes now in Austin and that’s enough for me. So no doubt there were some bumps in the road, but in the end it was the right decision. It allowed us to really mature as a company to hire middle management that we could not afford at all in L.A. because they could not buy housing. A shack was 1.5 million and where we were located. It allowed us to grow and ensure in the end it was the right decision.

Stewart Walker (10:20)
Presumably house prices stabilize enough so that some of your employees who left L.A. to pursue the American dream of a single family home have actually been able to get single family homes.

Grayson Omans (10:31)
There’s still heavy recruitment into Austin. You’ve got big players like Samsung and Apple and hiring. The huge campuses that they’ve just built. So there’s still a supply and demand issue, but it’s not like the issue where you had very cash rich Californians that sold their home and moving in and the housing was out of whack. So within a certain reasonable distance, housing is affordable.

So that’s my whole goal is affordable healthcare, affordable housing for the staff. The move wasn’t about profit. was just so that everybody could thrive here, right? Not just the executive side. It was so that everybody could own a home and just that life stability.

Stewart Walker (11:22)
Hmm. Well, let’s talk a wee bit more about your company before we get into the technology. looked at your website. There’s a photograph there. Looks like you got just above 30 employees in Austin and presumably some are working remotely.

Grayson Omans (11:36)
We do. Yep. We have a lot that work remotely. So as with any facility that manufactures, you have to have staff on site. ⁓ The big challenge for hardware companies like hardware, software and service. But ⁓ the big challenge is keeping all of that under one roof. Because it’s really important as a multifaceted company to have that cross communication with the team.

So finding the location where you have your sales and accounting and executive and engineering and support software production under one roof was one of my most important criteria for selecting this 8,000 square foot building that we have. So a big difference, right? From 3,000 to 8,000 square feet. we can breathe, right? Because we’re not sardines anymore. And also, it allowed us to grow our products. We’re not so congested in L.A., where we can develop more mobile mapping and aerial products. yeah, we do have a remote software development team in Germany and in Ukraine ⁓ and Croatia. ⁓ It didn’t help with Ben’s nocturnal nature. He’s still very nocturnal.

And then software and some sales can be remote. But in all, so here we have 30 and full-time remote. have a lot of contractors in Europe. So full-time employees, 30, 15 full-time contractors, I think 12 of which are in Europe and some scattered throughout North America. So about 45.

Stewart Walker (13:28)
That’s impressive. So your customers, know, the market segments or the geography, is there anything distinct there that comes to your mind or you just say, they’re all over the place and they do umpteen different applications.

Grayson Omans (13:42)
Well, that’s the beauty of, as you know, of lidar is that the applications are so broad, right? The UAV lidars has opened up unimaginable applications from insect mitigation, right? From mosquito mitigation to, of course, precision agriculture, which we predicted in academia, too. What you’re seeing come from UAV lidar in academia is wonderful. They’re not our bread and butter applications, the ones that you’re very well aware of, are the utility work.

The majority of our customers are small to mid-cap AEC firms with a drone department. And I would say if we were to segment a majority, that would be the small to mid-cap AEC firms here at Phoenix. As far as Geographics, of course, a big part of our market is North America.

It’s close to 75-80 % in North America. So it’s a big part. We train these customers all the way from beginning to end. We custom cater a lot of the products for their needs. And they appreciate that flexibility. But the most important is support. They’re not getting support from a lot of these big time manufacturers.

They like the ability to go straight to Phoenix and discuss directly with the software development team the issues and the bugs and other things that they need. So they like that flexibility. And let’s face it, most small to mid-cap AAC firms need a faster ROI and their products are more flexibility. And that’s really where Phoenix fits really in the market.

Stewart Walker (15:32)
Yes, I visited one of your customers, Precision Aerial Compliance, a little bit north of Houston, quite a long time ago, but they commented on how pleased they were with the training and the support. That was a factor that they felt that they had made the correct purchase decision for those reasons.

Grayson Omans (15:52)
It’s a two-way stream at Scott McGowan. Scott is fantastic. And it’s been a pleasure working really with him and talk about another one of my favorite characters in this industry. A great, company. And there’s a lot of them. You did an article, right? Yes. A while back. If I recall, was on the Recon series. But glad you had a chance to meet Scott.

Stewart Walker (15:56)
Yes. Well, sorry, starting to get a little bit more into the technology, but first, one of the features of the UAV lidar world, I think throughout these years that we’ve been talking about, it’s been the regulatory environment. We started off with section 333 waivers. Then we moved big change to part 107. Then we got beyond visible line of sight. Now we’ve got NDAA compliance. Presumably all these things have been big drivers on the directions of your company.

Grayson Omans (16:50)
It has been frustrating to say the least as far as the regulation and I get both sides. Let’s just say that by far the lidar technology is way beyond where regulation is right now. Maybe at the time when as 333 went to part 107, it was great. It opened up the floodgates and had a lot of lidar adoption.

The sensors at that time were very range limited. There were a couple that were longer range, but right now the technology is way beyond regulation. Yeah, it’s been a little bit frustrating on that side where you’ve got this product roadmap you would love to develop and introduce to the market, but you can’t because as you know, weight and beyond visual line of sight. part 108 is pretty exciting.

I’m not going to hold my breath, but it is going to unlock a lot of opportunity on the UAV lidar space for quarter mapping, So very excited about that. ⁓ The NDA compliance is, it’s had its challenges. We’ve got our portfolio. ⁓ We offer both types of solutions. We’ll talk about it a little bit. The Ranger series is NDA compliant. ⁓ But you have products for the DJI M300, M350, M400. ⁓ That’s not NDAA compliant. it’s… Sure. If you have that requirement, if government, academia, we have the products for you. And if it’s not a requirement, then great. We have other, a wider range of products for you.

Stewart Walker (18:43)
Okay, thank you. just before we get onto the portfolio, word from our sponsor, LAStools.

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Stewart Walker (19:21)
So now we get into the technology. You’ve got an amazing product range. I found it quite hard to sort it out, which is why I’m asking for an overview. The hardware products seem to be, they divide into MiniRanger, Ranger, Recon, Scout, Halo, and then there are some other products, some of which we’ll talk about in a moment.

Grayson Omans (19:43)
Sure. I would sort them a little bit differently. I would sort them recon, scout, midi ranger, ranger and halo. So, as many of companies know, Phoenix, we catered, we focused primarily on the UAV lidar space. A lot of them know or position us there in the UAV lidar space. ⁓ What a lot of people are unaware is that a lot of our products were flexible use and also utilized on ground vehicles as well as manned air vehicles, right? So you had ground, drone, and helicopter. And they did not know that really since 2016, 2017, we’ve been offering those flexible solutions. It’s an adaptation of the UAV system to the helicopter. So Phoenix is really repositioning itself, not just for a UAV, lidar products integrator, but we have really four segments.

You’ve got the drone space, which you’re well aware of. You’ve got the mobile ground vehicle mapping space. You’ve got the airborne space. So that’s your manned helicopter and Cessna fixed wing. And of course, at the cores is your software. So drone, mobile, airborne software and same software that operates all of those solutions. in the earlier days, was easy to, know, it was this the UAV and these are your accessories for a ground vehicle, whatnot.

Now, as the product portfolio, really, the UAV lied our industries. It’s why manufacturers like RIEGL and some others are making dedicated low-altitude airborne lidar systems for helicopters or for high altitude drones. it’s exciting because it’s unlocked because of the UAV lidar space, it’s unlocked these opportunities, these low altitude or medium altitude lidar sensors that are ideal and perfect for corridor applications and for kind of medium area mapping.

So as far as the portfolio, the Recon is dedicate primarily for light aircraft. It’s your economy type system. It’s a great entry level system. That’s what you interviewed Scott McGowan about ⁓ for his Recon XT. that’s where the Recon is kind of lower altitude, an economy type system. Your Scout is your next step up. It’s a flexible system that can be used for mobile mapping, for drone, but not airborne mapping.

The Scout is still a multi-beam automotive sensor, the Scout Series, and is a great fit for drone and for mobile mapping. That next step up when Rego launched the Mini Ranger, was next, is when we ventured into longer range survey grade UAV lidar. That’s right around 1.5 kilograms. And so the Mini Ranger has been one of our big heavy hitter sales really since they launched it, I believe in 2017, maybe end of 2016, energy of 2016, I believe is when they launched it. A lot of people didn’t believe in the mini. We were the first to adopt it. Everybody said it was too low density, but it tended to be that people didn’t know how to handle the density of UAV lidar at 1000 points per square meter. was ridiculous. was too dense for a lot of applications.

So your mini Ranger is kind of for UAVs right at your 100 meter AGL altitude. As far as the Ranger series, it’s all primarily RIEGL products from the miniVUX all the way up to what we segment the Ultra series or the U series. And the U series is primarily airborne based systems, sensors such as the, we call it the U160, the U240. And the one that you see behind me is the U580. That’s RIEGL’s VQ580 ii-S, which is a relatively new entry into the market that has unlocked a lot of opportunity in the specifically the Cessna space. For the longest time, the products that we offered were primarily, they maxed out at the manned helicopter, but now with the longer range of the VQ580 and how lightweight it is, we can mount it on the Cessna wing strut of the aircraft. And it’s at a point where the at the speeds of the Cessna and the altitudes where it’s unlocking up a whole new segment as well. Just because with the Cessnas 172, the 182s and the 206s, there’s something close to a hundred thousand active Cessna aircraft around the globe.

So think about the transferability of having a strut mounted pod from one Cessna to Cessna. You don’t need a hole, camera hole in the Cessna. You just need a Cessna with a wing strut and you can transfer it. Take this payload in a small Pelican case to wherever your job is and hire a Cessna. So it’s a new market space, the fixed wing low altitude or medium altitude market that we’re excited to venture in and expand that portfolio on the airborne side.

Then, of course, you mentioned the Halo series. So that step above the Ranger is the Halo series, which is a collaboration with Geoloss. And that’s a very high altitude lidar sensor that we’ve worked with specifically for camera holes and very specific Cessna 206 aircraft with those 20-inch camera holes. Almost as niche as the bathymetric side. Very niche, but really a promising segment. yeah, airborne, mobile, and drone. And we cater those solutions really to the customer’s needs.

And that’s why it’s incredibly important for our sales team to qualify these customers on their needs because there’s no one size fits all. Everybody thinks that you’ve got one lidar sensor that’s going to do everything for you, but that’s not true. Every sensor is very unique in its capabilities and we cater specifically our payloads to your needs.

Stewart Walker (26:42)
Yes, it’s interesting that in a way you’ve jumped ahead to one of the thoughts I had. I noticed it intergale this stress on systems that could be deployed more quickly and at lower cost. For example, on the wing strut and typically in a pod, I’m sure you’re well aware that Hexagon launched a new product possibly in that space and there were others and so on.

It’s interesting, I think it’s not just lower cost, but there’s a wish to get from just starting a job to getting initial results back to the end user as fast as possible. More stress on that than there used to be.

Grayson Omans (27:27)
There is. Yeah. As far as cost wise, the drone side would be less cost. But due to regulation, we can’t fly beyond line of sight, etc. So obviously, if you try to pull off a lot of these larger, especially corridor mapping jobs, which could be 40 linear miles, it takes weeks. Unfortunately, with UAV with current regulation, ⁓ you run the numbers and that’s precisely why we’ve adapted the Ranger LR to a helicopter. Because in one hour you can cover that whole 40 mile job versus two weeks with a drone. So it’s a matter of cost and just availability of aircraft as well. So you can find a Robinson R44 and you can find a Cessna in all corners of the globe to cover that job.

Again, I’m not going to hold my breath with part 108. It unlocks a lot of opportunity ⁓ in that space, but it’s economics. You can yield so much more with a manned aircraft than you can at the moment for specific applications ⁓ than you can with UAV-lidar.

Stewart Walker (28:48)
I agree. I think we went maybe through a stage where everyone was tremendously excited and UAVs came along and there was a feeling that you could do anything with a UAV and it was really cheap. But the real situation is what you’ve just described as horses for courses.

Grayson Omans (29:04)
Yep, it was. And I think it has its place where it is economical. It makes no sense to back out your aircraft for half a square kilometer at all. But that’s where the drone or however many kilometers that’s practical. ⁓ it’s a very similar curve to supply and demand that I was talking about as far as housing. That your costs are quite steep. For lidar, the larger the area, the job is.

And so for the smaller jobs, it’s cost-wise, it’s much more economical than a manned aircraft would be, especially helicopters could be $2,000 an hour. ⁓ But then if you get into, of course, the bigger jobs, you’ll see where those paths cross and the manned airborne side is much more economical. So that’s why you see integrators just like Phoenix adapting and customizing products dedicated for the airborne space, just like Phoenix repositioning themselves so that you or others don’t just see Phoenix as a UAV-lidar company, but a solutions provider for mobile mapping ⁓ airborne and for drone mapping.

Stewart Walker (30:19)
Yeah, that’s come across quite strongly in our conversation today, and I think it’s interesting and I think it just gives you so much more potential than if you were totally UAV focused.

Grayson Omans (30:32)
Absolutely true. Sure. We’ve done a terrible job of marketing it in our world. It’s a very small world and word of mouth is a lot for us. And it’s a good problem to have as far as even when you saw us in L.A. barely able to keep up with demand of the product, people have to understand that we’re not just a drone lighter company. We’re a solutions provider for mobile, for airborne and for drone.

Stewart Walker (31:00)
Well, let’s talk about the software for a little while. You’ve got a product called Spatial Explorer with various modules. You’ve got Flight Planner, you’ve got LiDAR Mill. Maybe you could say a little bit about these. And I’m also interested in how artificial intelligence has affected your software world.

Grayson Omans (31:18)
Yeah, the key word, right? Spatial Explorer really is how we acquire the data and process the data. It’s one software tool to operate all of our systems. And that’s what customers love is the simplicity. Is that they know if they operated a Scout M2X, they can operate a Ranger and also post-process the data. So we have Spatial Explorer to acquire and process and then we have advanced tools for Spatial Explorer, which we call Spatial Explorer Pro. So the Pro packet is really for post-processing and that has all your fun tools in there from, we call it NavLab embedded. So that’s your trajectory processing. Then it goes into strip adjustment. Very important is strip to strip.

Lidar adjustment, both for airborne and for mobile, very important to have. As if you’re vetting manufacturers, strip adjustment is really essential. So from strip adjustments to your classification tools, to your QA, QC, your reports, and of course, exports and the coordinate system that’s per your project. yeah, it’s really from beginning…

Stewart Walker (32:23)
Hmm.

Grayson Omans (32:42)
…to the QAQC ⁓ LAS LAZ file is the gaps that Phoenix has filled. So you mentioned Flight Planner, of course, if you’re using a drone or an airborne system, you would use Flight Planner for planning your drone or your airborne flights. And from there, you import it to Mission Guidance or Spatial Explorer, acquire the data, process the data, a QA, QC the data and then you take that from whatever your application is from, know, TerraSolid. There’s several third party software applications that our customers use the data in.

Stewart Walker (33:25)
I noticed that you offer Terra Solid. I mean, I think that makes sense. You can’t do everything yourself. And there are excellent software products out there for the final stages of some quite complex processing. You’ve got an awful lot on your plate already with the hardware and with your own software. If your customers can use something like TerraSolid to finish off their deliverables, it probably makes sense.

Grayson Omans (33:52)
Yeah, TerraSolid has a lot of wonderful modules that it just absolutely makes no sense for us to develop. We’re really from beginning to the QAQC point cloud, we’re constantly filling that value added chain, those gaps. And for us to reinvent the wheels of TopoDot or TerraSolid makes zero sense. So for those that have the need on TerraSolid, that is ⁓ absolutely an option for Phoenix as well. So there’s, like I mentioned before, a lot of applications for lidar. And just like lasers, there’s not a one size fits all software. It’s DOT side, TopoDot. You’ve got a lot of, I’m sure you saw a lot of DOT startup software companies at INTERGEO. And you’ve got the big heavy hitters, TerraSolid and these others.

And it’s interesting too, because at INTERGEO, there’s going to be a lot of little gap fillers really in between us and these third party software as well. And I think that’s, of course, leading into your next question, which is AI. And AI, I think we all know, has been cute. Would you use it in day-to-day production? Absolutely not. It’s getting cuter. I think it’s semi-getting to the point where for lidar processing, it’s something that you really should take a second look at, especially on classification of point clouds. The early days, you would get the loss file back and they said they are 99 % accurate. We’ve got this and this right. And it wasn’t even close as far as accuracy.

But what you see today is night and day difference in the course of really three years. So AI-based point cloud classification is… And all the different flavors. Each one has their own SMEs and their own core competency. And so you’ve got to look through all that clutter. And it’s kind of overwhelming because it’s a new startup here, there, everywhere. And you probably saw a lot of those at EnterGio or at other trade shows as well.

It’s cool. It’s overwhelming. you can imagine if it’s overwhelming for a lot of the integrators, imagine how it is for the end user customers as well. AI definitely has its place. We use AI in our own classification. But ⁓ there’s forestry specific AI. There’s, of course, a rail specific classification and all these SMEs that focus on that. The utility side.

So a big change this year is now some of these tools are starting to get very production worthy where it is saving you overhead costs that would require you to process and classify all that denoise that data. ⁓ And so that’s where you’re seeing it now. And as well as in our software, you’re seeing big leaps and bounds of AI. Of course, ground, non-ground, even from power line tower to power lines to ⁓ the guide wires. It’s really fascinating where the learning has come. ⁓ So that’s what I think from a production standpoint is a big change. There’s a tremendous amount of R &D into AI as far as embedded computing that also is going to have a big influence on acquisition and in post-processing, which yeah, we’re all really excited.

It’s a huge challenge for us, but in the end, it’s going to have a huge advantage, a huge effect to the end user as well as far as acquisition data quality. ⁓ A lot of the reasons that these companies have to refly projects, The QC before you take the data into the office. So I think we’re all excited, a little bit overwhelmed with all the AI options, but I think it’s going to have a huge impact.

Stewart Walker (38:13)
So let me ask you another couple of things quickly and then we’ll draw it to a close. And you’ve already spoken about the fact that some of your products can be mounted on vehicles. Some can even be deployed in backpacks. Is that becoming a significant part of your business? Are you getting a lot of systems out into the field for those applications?

Grayson Omans (38:35)
The mobile mapping side of our business is one of the largest growth areas. ⁓ So the DOT applications, the backpack jobs is an accessory in which you have a hard to reach area. You would use your backpack for some corridor applications, but it’s very small segment. But by far the mobile mapping that the dual head RFM2, which is our Ranger Flex, we call it the Flex because you can…

In that same system, and remember I was talking about these small to mid cap AEC firms that need a faster ROI, that same dual head mobile system, you can remove one of the heads. We have a precise quick release in there. That’s two, like five microns, half the size of a human hair. So when you re-put it, the sensor, put the system back into the RFM2, it retains calibration. But you can take that sensor out, put it on a drone and in the areas that you can’t drive, cover on the UAV.

Drive, I say drive when you can, fly when you must. So drive when you can, fly when you must, if you can cover it in mobile mapping. That’s where the single RFM-1, Ranger Flex Mobile-1 or RFM-2, the dual headed system is used. And so the mobile side has had a huge impact and we’ve had a huge growth on the mobile applications, the DOT applications.

And so it has had a big, big impact. The backpack has, I think there’s some unique applications for it, but it’s nowhere near as big as the vehicle airborne and the UAV. The UAV is a big question mark leading into 2026. I’m pretty excited about it, the opportunities, but yeah, we’ve had a ⁓ huge growth on the mobile mapping side.

Stewart Walker (40:31)
Obviously your systems got cameras on them and we have the time to talk about that but i happen to get an email in from the other day and it’s set me wondering have you had to do much work on integrating hyperspectral sensors are thermal cameras onto any of your systems.

Grayson Omans (40:49)
We have. Yep. And we’ve done a lot of development in thermal and hyperspectral. And that’s a big reason why we have a lot of academia customers. ⁓ Hyperspectral is a tremendous amount of data and has a lot of opportunity. It’s a tricky sensor to integrate. It’s usually a push broom type sensor and ⁓ you go through precision timing and any sensor we integrate has its own sets of challenges. It’s just that it’s a super niche product. Hyperspectrum is, know, like light are very, very expensive. And the Academia we found is a big user of Hyperspec, as well as Thermal.

Thermal is very tricky because a lot of the lower end, more affordable sensor have drift across the sensor. So you need an external shutter really to uniformly take that image in there very slow when you take that image. for a drone, it’s very tricky when you have high dynamics, you’ll get a very blurred image and thermal.

But they also have its own set of applications for energy efficiency and some other exciting applications. But yes, to answer your question, we have integrated those and catered those options based on the customer’s needs. That’s why qualifying these customers listening to their core issues that keep them up at night, that’s what we do to resolve those and cater the solution to them. So high resolution RGB, know, phase one to, you know, economical RGB to hyperspect to thermal and a ton of various lidar sensors. This is what we do. We specialize this and it’s a huge amount of effort to integrate each and every sensor just to ensure the accuracy and consistency.

And that’s what you get when you buy these solutions from Phoenix.

Stewart Walker (42:45)
Yes, indeed. Well, that might be a good place to draw it to a close. You’re obviously growing, you’re satisfying growing markets. You’re in a very competitive market, but thriving. So do you want to say anything about your plans for next year and beyond?

Grayson Omans (43:03)
We’ve got some product launches at GeoWeek. So, if you will be in Denver in February, please stop by the booth and you’ll see the product segments and it’ll hopefully click of what is where and sure, there’s a lot of options out there. Do your homework. You want to meet the team. You want to meet the people behind the scenes and you’ll have a chance to see that at GeoWeek and some of the software products and hardware products that these guys have really this team has done an excellent job of developing. It’s exciting. We’re constantly filling these gaps. So if you are at Geo Week, please stop by our booth. I don’t remember which which booth number. And if you’re not going to Geo Week, I highly encourage you to go. If you’re in North America, that’s the show to go to and really the geospatial side of things. I hope to see you there.

Stewart Walker (43:59)
Thank you very much, ⁓ Grayson Omans. I myself hope to be there and I’ll certainly come to your booth and talk.

Grayson Omans (44:06)
I usually end up seeing you and having a beer with you late at night on usually the second night, but I hope to see you there.

Stewart Walker (44:14)
Thanks very much. I’ve enjoyed this conversation and I’m pleased that you were able to participate in the LIDAR Magazine podcast series. It’s been great to catch up. And as you say, it’s six years or so since I visited you. Listeners will have learned more about your company. think also from this conversation, it’s possible to gain insights into some of the current trends in the lidar industry. So we wish you well for increased growth and success in the years to come.

Grayson Omans (44:28)
Thank you.

Grayson Omans (44:48)
Thanks for having me Stewart. I really appreciate it. Look forward to seeing you in a couple of months here.

Stewart Walker (44:53)
Well, I’m sure listeners will similarly have enjoyed your company and comments. I do want to underline our gratitude to our sponsor, the popular LAStools lidar processing software. We hope that listeners will join us for forthcoming podcasts. We’re expecting some guests that we believe you’ll want to hear. If you want to ask about podcasts or make comments, don’t hesitate to write to us. Thank you for listening. Good day.

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