Armed with robots, lasers, and specialized drones, Pete Kelsey and his team 3D-mapped all of Alcatraz Island, gaining access to areas previously off limits.

San Francisco Bay

A team led by Pete Kelsey has completed a comprehensive 3D mapping of Alcatraz Island using advanced technologies including specialized drones, robots, and LiDAR laser mapping. These efforts have enabled access to areas of the island that were previously off-limits, such as sewer lines, cisterns, and the interior of the power plant’s smokestack. 

By utilizing a $100,000 drone and state-of-the-art scanning techniques, the team produced detailed digital models that provide researchers and scientists with unprecedented views of the site’s structures. One significant find was the rediscovery of the original Civil War-era gate to Alcatraz, which had been concealed for about a century by later construction. Through cross-sectional analysis of the 3D data, the team was able to reveal features not seen in over 100 years.

The mapping also shed new light on the events surrounding the prison’s well-known 1962 escape. The data visualized the path taken by one of the escapees, who reportedly dug out of his cell and navigated pipes leading to the roof, a route that had previously been difficult to document in such detail. Kelsey described the project as the most significant of his career, given its scope and the historical insights it has produced.



Researchers find areas thought lost at Alcatraz

We're about to show you part of Alcatraz that hasn't been seen in more than a century. Pete Kelsey was called in to 3D map the infamous island, now under threat from rising sea levels, using a $100,000 drone. So we sent that thing into some of the worst places you can imagine. Sewer lines, cisterns, up the smokestack at the power plant. Pete and his team also used robots, and most importantly, LiDAR, cutting-edge laser mapping technology, that allowed the team to essentially go back in time and capture data that may save Alcatraz's future. Think of it like an x-ray or a CAT scan of the entire island, and that's where a lot of discovery potentially can come from, is when you can give scientists, researchers, academics a view that no one has ever seen before. So what we're looking at is a modern building, only about 100 years old, which abuts, which is right up against the original Civil War-era gate to Alcatraz. And because they were constructed right up next to each other, this original sign over the gate was blocked, literally blocked. So by cutting a cross-section through this data, like we see here, we see a view that no one has seen in over 100 years. The team's discoveries have also lifted the veil on the prison's famous 1962 escape. And this is where this one of the three guys dug his way out of his cell into this corridor. Then they climbed up all these pipes. Every night for weeks, they'd come up here and start building stuff that they needed for the escape, until on escape night, they got out through this air vent up onto the roof. I've been doing this kind of work for decades and literally all over the world. This project, however, I think it just might be my Mona Lisa.

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