Emesent Hovermap Autonomous LiDAR Mapping

Emesent is a LiDAR and SLAM technology company headquartered in Milton, Queensland, Australia, with offices in London and Centennial, Colorado. It builds mobile scanning and autonomy products for places where GPS is unavailable or access is dangerous, and reports 2,100+ active users in 50+ countries through 65+ reseller locations.

Hovermap STX is a 32-channel LiDAR scanner that mounts on drones such as the DJI M350 RTK and Freefly Astro Max, or on backpacks, vehicles, poles and the Boston Dynamics Spot robot. Its Cortex autonomy engine provides collision avoidance, GPS-denied flight and beyond-line-of-sight waypoint missions, mapping underground stopes, tunnels and structures as it flies. Scans are processed and visualized in Emesent Aura and exported to Autodesk, Trimble, Bentley and Leica tools. Users include BHP, Barrick, Evolution Mining and Bechtel.

• Hovermap STX: 32-channel LiDAR, 0.5-300 m range, up to 1.92 million points per second in triple return.
• Autonomous waypoint mode: tap-to-fly missions beyond line of sight with obstacle avoidance.
• Pilot assist: omnidirectional collision avoidance and GPS-denied flight for close inspection.
• Multi-platform mounting: drones, backpack, vehicle, pole, cage and Spot robot.
• Emesent Aura: point cloud processing, visualization and analysis powered by Cortex AI.
• Rugged build: IP65 weather sealing, 1.57 kg, 512 GB onboard storage.

• Coal mines in Quang Ninh mapping underground roadways and measuring convergence.
• Metro and hydropower contractors scanning tunnels for as-built and deformation checks.
• Cement and steel plants measuring stockpile volumes and inspecting silos and large structures.

• Maps GPS-denied spaces such as underground mines, tunnels and building interiors without exposing people to hazards.
• Survey-grade accuracy of about ±15 mm in general environments and ±10 mm underground.
• One sensor works on a drone, backpack, vehicle or robot, raising utilization across teams.
• Data flows into common CAD and BIM tools from Autodesk, Trimble, Bentley and Leica.

Mining, tunneling and construction are adopting autonomous scanning to reduce human entry into hazardous areas and to speed up reconciliation and as-built surveys. Drone-mounted SLAM LiDAR is extending mapping to places satellites and GNSS cannot reach. Southeast Asian mining, hydropower and metro tunnel projects are creating demand for this kind of data capture.

Head office in Milton, Queensland, Australia, with offices in London and Centennial, Colorado. Winner of the Mining Technology Awards 2025 and the Smart Tech category of the Queensland Export Awards 2026. Received a A$3 million grant to develop the Cortex AI GPS-denied autonomy platform; team of 110+.