Category Archives: Aerial/UAS
UAV Stakes Out New Ground
Above: A prototype of the Civdrone UAV preparing to drill a stake into the ground. A flying/staking robot has taken a huge step forward in automation for site layout, including road, rail, utilities, and energy applications. Working the traditional way, how many surveyor-days would it take to mark the 300,000 points needed to lay out a...
Harnessing Drones the Photogrammetric Way
Above: The Inspire 2 drone, using a Zenmuse X7 sensor and 16mm lens, captured this high-resolution image of County Line Road in Beavercreek, Ohio. Credit: Woolpert. Considering that UAS are just another platform to carry sensors, new mappers should embrace merging photogrammetric techniques and practices with innovations by the computer-vision community to produce scientifically sound...
Caretographic Representations
In parts of the world where both man-made and natural catastrophes frequently occur, how are geospatial technologies being used? And for those of us whose jobs are to create maps of construction sites and other built-up areas, how can we responsibly use the same technology to monitor destruction and wreckage? I pondered these tough questions...
Many Sensors for a Tulip Tree Map
Above: The forests of Puerto Rico are second-growth, making for useful modeling. After hurricane deforestation in Puerto Rico, NASA scientists study forest regrowth using high-resolution, multi-sensor image data. The Biospheric Laboratory of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is dedicated to increasing knowledge about the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystem. One group of scientists there has been...
Adventures in Droning: Part One
So, here’s my idea: as I enter semi-retirement I’m looking for additional revenue streams, ironically to replace clients who are also entering the retirement phase. As long-time readers of Pangaea will note, I’m pretty excited about the possibilities of UAS, so it’s no surprise that I might consider expanding my side business in that area....
Edge Computing Supercharges UAS Workflows
A new computer networking approach called edge computing is promising to radically accelerate UAS workflows. Simply defined, edge computing distributes the task of computation to the edge of the network, generally very close to the sensor. In terms of UAS, edge computing accomplishes the post-processing of sensor data right on the UAS itself. Think about...
