In one hour, we’ll show you exactly what changed in 2025 that will impact your revenue, liability, and competitiveness in 2026, and what top firms are already doing about it.
On November 4th, 2025, DJI announced the latest upgrade in their aerial lidar sensors, the Zenmuse L3. But will it be a good sensor for surveyors? And should US surveyors even consider investing in a DJI product given all of the regulatory uncertainties in the world right now? Let’s dive into the details to find out.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: no true peer competitor exists today. Dollar for dollar, DJI remains the best overall platform for most commercial applications. There is no close second. This post explains why, how to think about the current regulatory environment, and what that means for surveyors, civil engineers, or really anyone who cares about safety, turnaround time, and profit.
Earlier this year, Logan Campbell, founder and CEO of Aerotas, spoke at the Land Surveyors Association of Washington (LSAW) annual conference on how to make a profit when flying drones for land surveying applications.
The video is embedded below, and the materials referenced in the video can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.
On February 22, 2019, Aerotas Founder and CEO, Logan Campbell, spoke at the Utah Council of Land Surveyors Summit (UCLS 2019). The presentation is titled “From Drone to Linework”, and covers the workflow requirements to get from flying a drone, to survey-grade linework files. This includes the following topics:
Photogrammetry Processing
Airborne RTK / PPK GNSS Processing
Measuring & Reporting Accuracy
Drafting Linework
Finishing in CAD
Creating a Complete Workflow
The video is embedded below, and the materials referenced in the video can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.
When you use Aerotas to process your drone data, you immediately get access to our Flight Ops team. The sole responsibility of Flight Ops is to guide your mission planning and data collection process. This will ensure that you are successfully planning missions, setting UAS-specific ground control, and getting the most accurate results possible from your drone-collected data.
We have processed thousands of drone survey projects for our customers, and we have learned the hard way why photogrammetry is a Ph.D. level science. We have banged our heads against every wall there is, and learned some valuable lessons that we now apply to every project we complete for our customers.
Airborne RTK for land surveyors has been a technology with an enormous amount of promise for quite a few years now, but was being held back by extremely expensive, complicated, and unreliable technology. However, with the recent announcement of the DJI Phantom 4 RTK, it seems as if this is about to change. Overall, the Phantom 4 RTK is a great piece of technology that will improve both accuracy and efficiency for most surveyors, but it is not a magic bullet. Good operations are required both in the field and in post-processing the data.
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