Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly common in mapping, offering affordable aerial imagery on demand. Once an expensive hobby for tinkerers, UAVs have quickly transformed into a disruptive force in the geospatial industry. The ability to deploy a cost-effective, agile sensor platform for real-time surveying has unlocked vast possibilities for data collection.
This technology enables businesses to gather aerial imagery efficiently, making it invaluable for analytics and decision-making processes. Like many emerging innovations, UAV advancements have progressed much faster than lawmakers can regulate effectively. Safety and privacy concerns require attention, but reasonable legislation for commercial use remains absent in many regions.
Despite these challenges, businesses and tech entrepreneurs continue investing heavily in UAV research and development. This investment ensures they maintain a competitive edge once regulations are finalized and markets fully open. UAV technology represents a significant opportunity to enhance efficiency and improve the quality of data gathered from the field.
To stay ahead of advancements, we’ve partnered with leading players in the UAV space who are driving innovation. These collaborations allow us to remain at the forefront of this rapidly evolving technology while exploring its potential for future applications.
UVM Unmanned Aircraft Systems Team
For the past year or so, The Unmanned Aircraft Systems Team at The University of Vermont’s Spatial Analysis Lab has been working on an innovative project to research Unmanned Aerial Systems for Transportation Decision Support. This initiative, which is funded in part by US Department of Transportation, seeks to exploit the data collected by Unmanned Aerial Systems for disaster response and recovery. In short, the DOT is looking to use UAVs as an alternative to current commercial remotely sensed datasets, which are expensive, often out of date, and low resolution. This data is heavily used by state transportation agencies for transportation planning, operations, maintenance, and program development.
The UAS Team at UVM, lead by Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, has been extensively testing the senseFly eBee fixed-wing UAV platform for collecting and processing aerial mapping data. Their system includes the eBee with associated sensors, mission planning and control software, data processing software, and the computing power and expertise to transform the raw data into 2D orthomosaics (maps) and 3D models.
Integration with Fulcrum
As part of their R&D effort to build guidelines for using drones in this context, UVM reached out to the Fulcrum team for a partner with expertise in ground-level field data collection in the commercial sector. The UAS Team realized that the Fulcrum platform could make an excellent mobile delivery system for this type of data, in addition to providing additional vector data collection capabilities.
Fulcrum makes a great platform for ground-truthing UAV derived aerial imagery. After the imagery has been processed and the orthomosaics have been built, you can quickly deploy this imagery to the field for additional ground-level field data collection, including GPS locations, photos, videos, and surveys. The UVM team is also using Fulcrum to record pre-flight checks and other logistical information related to their missions.
Real-world use cases
First responder and emergency management organizations would be ideal consumers for UAV-based real-time imagery capture. They also need field tools for conducting things from damage reports and needs assessment for Individual Assistance to Public Assistance applicant verification to get infrastructure back in shape. Collected imagery can be used to verify claims on damage to levees, critical facilities, parks, signs, roads and be used to calculate debris removal required. Part of UVM’s development process is to optimize the stages of the workflow:
- Deploy team after an imagery request
- Put a UAV over the area of interest
- Capture imagery
- Download and process data
- Publish finished products for users
So a logical next step was to add the final stage of push data to field operations personnel for offline reference maps.
The process takes as little as a few hours to go all the way from initial team deployment to a finished, processed imagery product for consumers to use, at the cost of a UAV platform instead of putting an aircraft (and a person) in the sky to capture imagery. The final stage is to process that raw imagery output into something usable in Fulcrum: the MBTiles format. So using both TileMill and MapTiler (we tested both), we generated and uploaded sample images to Fulcrum and downloaded them to some mobile devices. Adding less than another hour, our near real-time aerial photography can be available to disaster response organizations in the field the same day it’s captured.
Drones as a Service?
In the relatively short time since UVM began testing their workflow, the commercialization of drone processing has gone a step further, with the launch of cloud-based drone data processing services, such as DroneDeploy. DroneDeploy removes the complexity and expenses associated with standing up your own mission planning and data processing software. While the eBee is capable of covering a relatively large area (up to 12 sq. km), the computing power and expertise required to process that much data quickly is not trivial.
DroneDeploy provides an intuitive platform for drone data collection, offering a streamlined solution for aerial mapping needs. Their mobile app allows users to define an area of interest and quickly prepare for a mission. After defining the area, the software connects to a drone, typically a DJI quadcopter, for pre-flight checks. These checks include confirming battery levels, ensuring a GPS fix, and verifying sufficient camera storage for the mission.
The drone autonomously flies the mission with precise photo overlapping, ensuring accurate and reliable data capture during the process. Once the mission is complete, the drone returns home and uploads the data for immediate processing. DroneDeploy generates a web map, an exportable GeoTIFF, a digital surface model, a 3D model, and an NDVI product. This workflow ensures users receive high-quality outputs with minimal effort and maximum efficiency every time.
Conclusion
The processes are still evolving, but we’ve made excellent progress in demonstrating UAV imagery’s practical, real-world applications. For example, disaster relief operations now benefit from the rapid deployment of UAV-based imagery to assess critical situations. Whether investing in an in-house system like the eBee or leveraging cloud platforms such as DroneDeploy, options are expanding.
These advancements make it easier than ever to capture fresh aerial imagery to support fast and informed decision-making. With technology improving rapidly, the future for UAV-based solutions in diverse industries has never looked brighter.