Compact LIF LiDAR sensors that read what's in the water at spatial scales no other instrument achieves. Built for the regulatory frames and public programmes that already need this data.
Active R&D under France 2030 and ADEME. Each programme has a dedicated page with partners, scope, and outputs.
Most regulatory monitoring of European waters runs on two instruments: flow-through sampling on research vessels and bio-optical retrievals from satellites. Flow-through averages over kilometres. Satellites estimate from above the surface, with sparse in-situ ground truth. Neither resolves the sub-metre variability that drives an algal bloom, defines the boundary of a hydrocarbon spill, or distinguishes a treated outflow plume from background coastal water. At those scales, the instruments do not exist.
A LIF LiDAR closes the gap. Mounted on a motorboat, glider, drone, or autogyro, the LIFL-11 records forty-eight spectral bands of fluorescence per measurement — chlorophyll, dissolved organic matter, hydrocarbons, suspended sediment, plastics — at ten-second cadence and metre-scale spacing along track. One survey day produces more match-up points for a Sentinel-3 OLCI calibration than a year of conventional in-situ campaigns. One drone deployment maps a port-basin contamination footprint at the resolution port authorities actually need to act on it.
LIFeLiDAR runs this work inside the funding and regulatory architecture that already needs it. OQOMETHI, under France 2030, develops vessel-mounted hydrocarbon and methane detection. SubseaLIF, under ADEME, extends the platform to autonomous underwater vehicles. The ground-truth these instruments produce feeds Copernicus mission calibration and the contamination and eutrophication descriptors of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. The objective is not to participate in programmes — it is to deliver the measurements those programmes have been waiting for.
Programme partnerships, funding consortia, and cal/val collaborations — direct line to the engineering team.