LAIRA App — Product Fact Sheet¶
The 60-second pitch¶
LAIRA is a mobile app on the iPhone Pro and iPad Pro that turns the device's built-in LiDAR into a survey-grade pavement, sidewalk, and right-of-way inspection tool. A field engineer walks or drives a route, the app captures continuous LiDAR and 4K RGB, the detection pipeline classifies every distress against the standards that govern the surface (ASTM D6433, PROWAG, ICAO Annex 14, MUTCD, EN 13036, and others), and the output is a standards-compliant ArcGIS feature service in the customer's own tenant, plus IFC and PDF exports. What used to take a day of inspection produces a result in an hour with 3 to 7 times more detected anomalies and an audit chain that cites the standard for every observation.
What it does¶
| Capability | What that means in practice |
|---|---|
| Continuous LiDAR + RGB capture | Walk a sidewalk, drive a parking lot, scan a runway taxiway. The app records continuously and tracks position with on-device sensor fusion. |
| Standards-mapped distress classification | Cracks, depressions, faulting, rutting, joint deterioration, surface defects, ADA / PROWAG sidewalk barriers, MUTCD marking degradation. Each distress is classified against the section of the standard that governs it. |
| PCI (Pavement Condition Index) per section | D6433-compliant sample-unit sizing, deduct curves, CDV iteration, PCI 0–100 per section. The output is the same number a manual D6433 survey produces; the path to it is 5 to 10 times faster. |
| ArcGIS feature service in customer tenant | Data lands in the customer's own ArcGIS Online or Enterprise tenant. They keep their data. We do not host inspection records on Airwai infrastructure. |
| IFC + PDF export | IFC for AEC project handoff. PDF for the auditable record that lives in the project file. |
| Pass-over-pass change detection | Re-scan the same surface a month later; LAIRA tracks degradation per location, per distress, over time. |
| Offline-capable capture | Scan without connectivity; sync when the device is back on Wi-Fi. |
Device requirements¶
| Device | Minimum |
|---|---|
| iPhone | iPhone 12 Pro / Pro Max or newer (LiDAR required) |
| iPad | iPad Pro M1 or newer (LiDAR required) |
| iOS | iOS 17 or newer |
| Storage | 64 GB free recommended for a half-day capture session |
App Store distribution. Single-user purchase under the federal micro-purchase threshold (a federal employee can buy Pro on a corporate card without procurement-process friction).
Output formats¶
- ArcGIS feature service (primary) — pushed to customer's ArcGIS Online or Enterprise tenant
- IFC 2x3 / 4 — for handoff into BIM workflows (Revit, Autodesk projects)
- PDF inspection report — audit-grade record with cited standards, distresses, photos, geolocation
- CSV / GeoJSON — generic exports for any non-Esri downstream system
Standards LAIRA maps to (the headline list)¶
Full matrices live at docs.airwai.com. The headline standards every prospect will recognize:
- ASTM D6433 — Roads and Parking Lots PCI
- ASTM D5340 — Airport Pavement Condition Index
- 23 CFR 490 — FHWA pavement and bridge condition reporting
- PROWAG (2023) — Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines
- 2010 ADA Standards Chapter 4 — Accessible routes
- MUTCD 11th Edition — Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices
- ICAO Annex 14 — Aerodrome design and operations (international)
- FAA AC 150/5380-6C — Airport pavement maintenance
- EN 13036 — European surface characteristics for roads and airfields
- UFC 3-270-08, UFC 3-260-16 — DoD pavement maintenance and airfield standards
What LAIRA does NOT do¶
| Limitation | Why |
|---|---|
| Subsurface structural evaluation | Requires physical loading (Falling Weight Deflectometer). LAIRA covers surface only. |
| Friction / skid resistance to ASTM E274 | Requires tire-contact measurement equipment. |
| Material core sampling | Requires lab specimens. |
| Aerial-only inspections (rooftops, full bridges, tall vertical assets) | LAIRA is ground-based. Aerial supplement is a separate product roadmap item. |
| Replace the licensed PE / Civil Engineer | LAIRA is a tool for the engineer, not a substitute for licensure or judgment. |
These limitations should be communicated honestly to every prospect. Mis-selling capability creates churn.
Proof points (use these in scripts)¶
- 3 to 7 times more anomalies detected at San Bernardino International Airport vs. the manual inspection it replaced. Source: Esri case study (joint with Airwai).
- 2 million+ data points captured per inspection pass.
- 70% labor reduction on a typical pavement inspection cycle.
- 11 compliance standards mapped at docs.airwai.com today; 60+ more queued.
- $1.7M Navy SBIR Phase II confirmed, non-dilutive.
What the call center should know about how the product gets built¶
Manomit Bal (Director, Software AI) owns the product roadmap. The Albania ML bench does the model training. The platform updates every two weeks. Feature requests from the field flow through the customer-feedback/escalation-routing.md channel and Manomit prioritizes the queue.
Where to learn more¶
- Public docs: docs.airwai.com
- Public website: airwai.com
- App Store: search "LAIRA Airwai" (Apple devices only)
- Esri customer story (with permission, ask Airwai before sharing)