Month: December 2019

The use of drones to capture aerial imagery and create maps has become common in many industries, like construction, oil and gas, and telecom. Drones excel at capturing large areas quickly, accurately, and affordably, and photogrammetry software for converting photographs to 3D or orthomosaic maps keeps getting better.

But did you know that drone photogrammetry software is now capable of much more than stitching photos together? New software options enable users to take accurate measurements from maps and use AI to automatically identify objects and patterns, among other capabilities.

Here are some new and exciting ways UAV maps are being used across several industries:

Agriculture

For a precision agriculture approach, farmers use UAV technology to closely monitor crops and maximize profits. 

AI-driven photogrammetry tools can help farmers quickly assess the biomass of their crops — as well as key factors like drought stress, soil erosion, pests, and disease — by estimating volume and automatically identifying problem areas. 

Farmers also use aerial maps to monitor irrigation systems, provide verification for crop insurance claims, and to make better replanting decisions.

Law Enforcement and First Responders

In emergencies, time is of the essence. UAV photogrammetry can be used to rapidly document crisis situations, such as natural disasters or traffic accidents.

The resulting maps are being leveraged by first responders to map out evacuation routes, plan tactical responses, assess damage, and improve public safety. Drones can be used to map areas that are too dangerous to access on foot, and mapping technology can provide more accurate measurements that could be critical to search and rescue operations, such as the speed and depth of flood waters. 

Construction

The construction industry was among the first to adopt drone photography, and they continue to drive innovation with new use cases. In addition to performing fly-overs and site surveys, UAV photogrammetry software can be used to accurately measure distance, elevation, and volume, such as the volume of soil moved during an earthworks project.

Oil and Gas

In the oil and gas industry, UAVs have been used for some time to replace manned aircraft in surveying large areas for pipeline construction and inspection.

Now, tools like AI object recognition have enabled oil and gas companies to use their aerial maps to automatically identify damage and leaks, accelerating remediation and limiting environmental impact.

Special cameras can even be used to capture damage that’s invisible to the naked eye, such as corrosion under insulation (CUI). 

Learn more about drone solutions for the oil and gas industry.

Telecom and Energy

Electrical and telecom line work is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S., with 20.5 deaths per 100,000. Traditional methods for inspecting and repairing cell towers and power lines require dangerous climbs, putting workers at risk for falls and electrocution. 

With UAV photogrammetry, these jobs are safer. Accurate 3D models help telecom and energy companies assess the safety of cell and transmission towers before sending up workers, so they can implement detailed repair plans and minimize unnecessary climbs.

Environmental Conservation

As with agriculture, special cameras and UAV processing technology can be used to record changes in the environment (e.g. landscape features, vegetation, soil erosion, pollution, water levels) in order to help scientists monitor ecological issues, assess the health of ecosystems, and focus conservation efforts. 

In addition, detailed and accurate UAV maps are enabling scientists to perform in-depth assessments of environments that were previously too difficult to access.

Entertainment

UAV photogrammetry also has valuable uses in the entertainment industry. The rapid creation of 3D models helps with set design, visual effects, and animation in order to create more realistic, true-to-life experiences in TV shows, films, and video games.

Conclusion

As UAV technology becomes more widely available, more industries are finding creative uses for photogrammetry.

From making dangerous jobs safer to boosting profits to creating better-quality entertainment, UAV photogrammetry is transforming business.

Don’t get left behind — leverage drone technology to add value to your services.

Mapware provides state-of-the-art photogrammetry technology that can create bigger, more accurate maps. Learn more.

A bird on the brink of extinction could benefit from advanced software that helps the U.S. Air Force monitor forests, tree health, and golden-cheeked warbler habitat. How can UAV technology help this native Texas bird thrive?

The golden-cheeked warbler, a bird known for the bright plumage on its face and a black stripe near its eye, only breeds in one place in the world: approximately 39 counties in central Texas near the Edwards Plateau.

These colorful native Texas birds make homes in stands of trees with of a mix of drought-hardy evergreen Ashe junipers and Texas hardwoods, peeling the unique strippable bark from the mature Ashe juniper to build their nests during breeding season.

A dwindling habitat

But habitat destruction and fragmentation due to urban sprawl in the fast-growing state of Texas, along with parasites and cow birds invading their habitat, has kept the golden-cheeked warbler on the list of endangered species for nearly 30 years.

Without intervention to preserve lands where Ashe juniper trees grow, the bird is at risk, with dangerously dwindling numbers: Audubon estimates there are only about 27,000 birds left.

Bringing them back from the brink

Managing endangered species habitats in Texas Hill Country is on the agenda for the Camp Bullis Military Training Reservation, which encompasses 27,990 acres northwest of San Antonio, not far from the Balcones Canyonland Wildlife Preserve.

There, Ashe juniper trees grow among deciduous Texas oak, black walnut, pecan, sycamore, and hackberry trees. Forests with the right ratio of deciduous hardwood and mature Ashe juniper trees provide ideal habitat for the golden-cheeked warbler.

To protect the bird’s habitat, the U.S. Air Force needed a solution that could assess the forest canopy, tree distribution, tree type, tree class, and ratio of one type of tree to another. Imagery gathered from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, proved a good place to start.

In September, Mapware flew several drone flights over 400 acres at Camp Bullis, capturing natural color and multispectral image data. When this aerial data is combined with multiple sources of geolocated data like digital elevation models, LiDAR, and infrared data, it creates information-rich data sets about the Camp Bullis site.

The result is a powerful tool for determining the precise location of habitat that gives on-site personnel the ability to help protect the birds.

Sensing habitat with the power of AI

With drone and satellite data in hand, Mapware is working with the Air Force to build a vegetative analysis software toolkit (VAST) that can autonomously identify areas of golden-cheeked warbler habitat.

The software begins with Mapware’s advanced photogrammetry engine and builds it into a pipeline of powerful image classification tools. It uses cutting-edge algorithms and artificial intelligence to sort complicated data sets and process many parameters at once. 

VAST is an autonomous habitat detection software that can determine tree height, diameter, and class, and delineate tree crowns from one another. 

Its strength is not only in high-powered results that can be used in decision making, but in the flexible way in which data can be combined and processed, making the job easy for personnel who previously spent months and millions of dollars using expensive airborne and on-foot surveys to accomplish the same task. Using UAS makes the job faster, easier, and more accurate.

“It’s like a build-your-own machine learning tool for geographical data analysis,” says Mapware Chief Technology Officer Nathan Sullivan. “It’s like no other system I’ve seen.” 

Sullivan refers to the system’s submodule functionality, which allows a user to funnel different types of data into processing nodes and then string together a variety of prebuilt and custom modules into a new tool.

The result is a pixel-sorting machine that can handle a range of data analysis, supervised and unsupervised machine learning commands, and solve black-box problems as well as common geographical data analysis.

The outcome is a scalable system that can accurately label different types of trees on the map and locate the exact location of healthy bird habitat.

An abundance of data

Data is available in abundance, and VAST can handle huge amounts of it.

To test the limits, Mapware’s programmers are gathering data from a variety of sources and feeding it into the system to increase the accuracy of results. Data could come from public data sets like Landsat, Planet, Quickbird, Ikonos, and Digital Globe satellites, or from other sources like data gathered by the Air Force and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) is the go-to source for the U.S. Department of the Interior and other organizations to obtain natural-color, leaf-on data at a one-meter ground sample distance, and the data is collected every five years.

Near infrared reflectance data and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data is used to gauge plant health and identify plants based on their spectral reflectance, the wavelengths of light reflected when sunlight hits the plant. 

Automated analysis

Driven by the need to combine multitudes of data into a single workflow, VAST is an automated data analysis system backed by the power of machine learning and an interdisciplinary team of experts.

At Camp Bullis, VAST will allow the U.S. Air Force to make decisions about land management related to the golden-cheeked warbler habitat. At other sites, it could be scaled to include other types of habitats and different data sources from a variety of drones and sensors.

The Air Force is expecting the project to have a wide variety of applications across the organization for other sites, species, and complex problems that could benefit from powerful vegetative analysis software.

“This project is one of those rare instances where you can massively increase operational effectiveness while improving efficiency and reducing cost,” says Marc Vandeveer, AFIMSC Chief Innovation Officer. “It didn’t take me more than five seconds to recognize the potential for Air Force-wide impact, and credit goes to Air Force natural resources subject matter expert Kevin Porteck for pushing this revolutionary concept forward.” 

The VAST project is a partnership between Mapware, the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center (AFIMSC), and the Air Force Innovation Hub Network (AFWERX). 

You can read more about the golden-cheeked warbler project at the Air Force Materiel Command.