Brazil's most iconic statue, Christ the Redeemer, has been completely scanned in three dimensions by a drone. Last fall, NEXT Lab of PUC University in Rio de Janeiro and software company Pix4D teamed up to create an exact virtual replica of the monument, which reaches nearly 125 feet (38 meters) in the air. They ended up using a quadcopter from Canadian drone-maker Aeryon Labs. When visitors were gone, the team buzzed around the statue 19 times in six days, collecting 3,584 images during its 10-minute flights, according to Aeryon. The statue had never been completely scanned, the company said, because the statue's size and location atop Corcovado mountain make it hard to use methods like LIDAR. Now anyone with a 3-D printer can create their own Christ the Redeemer in their own homes.
IN-DEPTH
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- Mapping Christ the Redeemer (Aeryon)