xyHt in print July 2014 Archives
Autodesk and Measurement
“After all of these years, I’m really happy to be able to say that Autodesk is now truly in the measurement business,” says Pete Kelsey, Autodesk’s strategic projects executive. Though he was quick to add qualifiers to that statement: “We are not in the measurement hardware business, but we are now more closely aligned with […]
An Underwater World of Measurements, Positions, and Spatial Relationships
Most people assume that my job consists of digging big holes to remove shiny artifacts, swimming into an intact ship to, again, remove shiny artifacts, or, in extreme cases, using explosives to remove shiny artifacts. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Maritime archaeology seeks to gain knowledge of the past and preserve it for future […]
Cardinal Systems’ Extraterrestrial Photogrammetry
On Earth, photogrammetrists can normally use man-made objects in their frame—such as a road of known width or a curb of known height—as scales. When none is present, they can insert such “ground truth” as needed—for example, by placing onto surveyed locations targets that will be visible in their images. On other planets in our […]
Future of Determining Elevation
A frank discussion of the different heights used in surveying, what’s inside a geoid model, and how geoid model data is used within GNSS software to produce elevations. Certainly most geospatial professionals who have used Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) within their surveying workflows have come across the term “geoid model” before. But who actually knows […]
Growing GIS
Many people view Jack Dangermond as the face of commercial GIS, if not the face of GIS as a whole. As the internationally recognized and celebrated leader of Esri, he has led the company from humble beginnings to a leadership role in the GIS industry and community. xyHt recently asked Jack for his views on […]
Accuracy With Small UAS Mapping
Two recent advances in heretofore unrelated technologies are giving birth to a new way to perform local-area metric mapping. The first is the development of small, unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), spurred on primarily by the miniaturization of autopilot components. The second is the development of novel algorithms for creating digital surface models from collections of […]