Gexel Heron Lite Color

Gexel Heron Lite Color

The current technical sheet lists a 300 m / 640 kpts/s configuration; it also shows a 120 m configuration with a different sensor/head specification.

How it works

The system is essentially a SLAM mobile mapping scanner:

LiDAR → IMU → SLAM processing → 3D point cloud → RGB colorization → CAD/BIM/GIS

The capture head can be mounted on a telescopic pole, vehicle, quad, robot, or backpack, making it useful for areas where a conventional tripod TLS would be slower or difficult to deploy.

Typical applications

• 🏗️ Construction / BIM / as-built surveys
• 🏭 Industrial plants
• 🏛️ Cultural heritage
• ⛏️ Underground mines and tunnels
• 🌳 Forests, parks and gardens
• 📦 Stockpile volume measurement
• 🏢 Digital twins
• 🗺️ 2.5D mapping
• 🚗 Mobile/vehicle mapping
• 🔄 Multisensor projects

Gexcel specifically positions the LITE Color for indoor, outdoor and underground environments and for geospatial and Digital Twin applications.

Important advantage

The main difference between HERON LITE and HERON LITE Color is the RGB imaging capability. The LITE Color adds the Gexcel MG1 4-lens 360° RGB camera, with 8K still imagery and 4K video, giving the point cloud visual color information.

For survey work, this makes it considerably easier to interpret walls, pipes, structures, road surfaces, equipment and other features in the resulting point cloud.

Accuracy

Be careful with advertised accuracy because SLAM accuracy depends heavily on the environment and acquisition trajectory. Gexcel’s current documentation specifies high-performance LiDAR characteristics, while older published HERON LITE Color documentation lists approximately 3 cm local accuracy and 5 cm global accuracy in short close loops.

So I would treat it as a rapid mapping / mobile LiDAR system, rather than a direct replacement for a high-end static terrestrial laser scanner when millimeter-level registration is required.

Software ecosystem

The system is supplied with a fairly complete workflow:

• HERON Desktop — SLAM processing and trajectory/constraint management
• Reconstructor — point-cloud processing, registration, mesh, DTM, sections, profiles and volumes
• GoBlueprint — simplified 2D/X-ray map measurement
• Export to E57, LAS, PLY and Autodesk ReCap formats

In short: HERON LITE Color is a strong option when you need fast, colorized 3D mapping over relatively large or difficult areas, especially buildings, construction sites, industrial facilities, tunnels and underground environments