Technology has been advancing at a rapid rate and while learning and developing the skill level to put this tech to good use may seem daunting, I can tell you that the opposite is true. Through skillful programming from innovative hardware and software companies like AUTEL, DJI and SKYEBROWSE, intuitive application design have made it far easier than one would imagine!
Let's take a look at Skyebrowse in this first of a series on "Environmental" use for drones. Skyebrowse converts a drones video into a photogrammetric model, that's right a 3D measurable manipulated model. It is able to render from captured video in close to real time. They accomplished this through their proprietary algorithms that converts video into photogrammetric images and provide a backend 3D rendering engine all based online. So what is photogrammetry?
Simply stated it is the use of photography in surveying and mapping to measure distances between objects. However in this case the model is created from video vs a series of coordinated still images.
Skyebrowse was designed specifically for FIRST RESPONDERS. What we are now seeing is a re-purposing of this technology for the Environment. A couple examples of this can be seen below.
Repurposing of Oil Platforms into wind and wave generator stations. Rincon Island in this example.
Repurposing of Oil Platforms into wind and wave generator stations. Rincon Island in this example.
Marine Life: A beached adult Humpback whale. Use and analytical assessment of imaging to determine injuries and source such as propeller strike on this whale. The data also yields size which tells us if we are dealing with an adult or juvenile of a species.
Sea Level Rise: Measuring an area that may be impacted by sea level rise and keeping an eye on sand movement. Monitoring the depth between seawalls protecting a beach community.
Next month in part 2 of this series we take a close look at the use of autonomous drone flight to monitor and identify leaking oil wellheads off the coast of California. The work was done by Heal the Ocean for California State Lands Commission. The automated flights were programmed by Heal the Ocean field advisors to check over 30 different wellheads at a time (each flight) from a total field of over 192 offshore abandoned wellheads.
