drone mapping
October 17, 2013 1:11 PM   Subscribe

Drone Mapping the Matterhorn "The Matterhorn has been mapped in unprecedented detail by a fleet of autonomous, fixed-wing drones, flung into the sky from the peak by their makers. What's more, the entire process took just 6 hours." [via]
posted by dhruva (19 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Doesn't Matter much to me.
posted by Napierzaza at 1:13 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


This is the kind of amazing stuff we could be doing with all that money we throw at the military instead of blowing away little brown people.
posted by nevercalm at 1:13 PM on October 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


That first link has a clickable interactive 3-d map of the Matterhorn that's quite cool. And also really freaky if you don't know what you're doing and turn the Matterhorn inside out and upside down and HAHAHAHAAH I AM AS LIKE UNTO A GOD
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:16 PM on October 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


heh, two drone posts within five minutes of each other...
posted by smoothvirus at 1:18 PM on October 17, 2013


This is the kind of amazing stuff we could be doing with all that money we throw at the military instead of blowing away little brown people.

Unfortunately if the military isn't already using this kind of amazing stuff to assist them in blowing away people, then I'm sure it won't be long. Very cool nonetheless.

Also, do not click on the other New Scientist youtube video titled "Math reveals secrets of mammal urination"

I said don't.
posted by Kabanos at 1:33 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Although I think this is cool, I kind of wonder what it all means to collect data about every square inch of the earth's surface. Isn't it a little like Borges' map?
posted by KokuRyu at 1:45 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I do a lot of terrestrial 3D laser scanning. This sort of automated photogrammetry is pretty interesting stuff. I've seen a lot of examples of it lately, but I'm skeptical of how well it works in actual practice. I mean yeah, this looks great, but I wonder how accurate it actually is.
posted by sanka at 1:52 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Isn't it a little like Borges' map?

Consider this: the internet is Borges' infinite library but searchable.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:00 PM on October 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Very good. Though I must say that the launch of the first drone looked rather like he was flinging his Windows tablet into the abyss. Him too I thought.
posted by Mario Speedwagon at 2:06 PM on October 17, 2013 [6 favorites]


"I can't believe Disney let them do that", I am not admitting to thinking before I clicked the article because that would be a ridiculously dumb thing to think.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:08 PM on October 17, 2013 [5 favorites]


About 4,000 years.

Surface area of land on Earth (presuming you don't care to map water): 57,900,000 sq. mi.

Area mapped in six hours by the drone team: ~10 sq. mi.

Rate of mapping: 1.67 sq. mi. / hour

57,900,000 sq. mi. X (1 hour / 1.67 sq. mi.) X (1 day/24 hours) X (1 year/365 days) = 3,966 years.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 3:54 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


(Of course, you could hire more than one drone team.)
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 3:56 PM on October 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


Note that the company that did the data processing is Mapbox, which just received $10M in funding and employs metafilter's own enf (previously, previously, previously).
posted by jjwiseman at 6:48 PM on October 17, 2013


There are parts of East Africa that have only ever been surveyed from the air and that was back in the 50s and 60s. The maps show the exact track and type of the original aircraft (Aug 3 1962 Lockheed 8676) to allow you to compensate for parallax and vegetation (they could only survey the height of the trees, not the elevation itself. These maps are completely useless these days, and were never that good anyway, but no-one has the money to re survey. It would be incredibly useful if this could make its way into these places for all sorts of reasons: land disputes, crop planning, wildlife management, anti poaching.....this could really change lives.
posted by fingerbang at 8:34 PM on October 17, 2013


Like Sanka says, it's easy for me as a random internet stranger to see how detailed this map is, it's harder for me to say that it's accurate. I assume they'll want to compare it to measurements using more traditional methods to test the accuracy, but that's not the sexy part that the internet loves.

Fingerbang's comment about trees obscuring the land makes me curious how drones fare in jungles or forests, zipping between the trees.
posted by RobotHero at 10:53 PM on October 17, 2013


That's worth at least 50,000 Cronkites.
posted by mazola at 11:00 PM on October 17, 2013


57,900,000 sq. mi. X (1 hour / 1.67 sq. mi.) X (1 day/24 hours) X (1 year/365 days) = 3,966 years.

Visibility might be key - limited to daylight. And do we've already done the Matterhorn.
posted by Mario Speedwagon at 12:50 AM on October 18, 2013


I can talk a little about surveying through trees. For something like that you would want to use aerial LiDAR. Essentially you are using a laser scanner attached to a plane or helicopter or whatever.

As the scanner is using a laser, it can only survey by line of sight. Most of what you survey will be obscured by trees, but like any forest, some sunlight does reach the ground. By making multiple passes from different angles you can get a pretty good survey of what the actual ground looks like. In your scanning software you just tilt the scanworld on its side and crop off the trees, leaving you with just the ground.

Every now and then you hear about archaeologists finding new Mayan complexes in the dense jungles of Guatemala or the Yucatan. This is how they are doing it. You can cover miles and miles of area fairly quickly and easily.

This photogrammetry approach would not work for this application. This is a good description of what I'm talking about. Here is a video or actual data from removing the trees.
posted by sanka at 7:20 AM on October 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I can't believe Disney let them do that

Yeah, now everyone's going to know where the door to the basketball court is.
posted by radwolf76 at 3:18 PM on October 18, 2013


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