News
An Australian spatial project has received international recognition for its capability of capturing the location, distribution and physical characteristics for more than 15 million structures.
PSMA Australia’s new initiative to capture Australia’s built environment, Geoscape, was awarded with the Geospatial World Excellence Award at the Geospatial World Forum on Wednesday 25 May 2016. PSMA Australia has been receiving a lot of attention first for the opne release of their national addressing file G-NAF and now for the ambitious new dataset. Geoscape is set to provide a greater understanding of what exists at an address—buildings, features and land cover—for every address in Australia.
PSMA Australia’s Chief Executive Officer, Dan Paull accepted the award on behalf of PSMA at the award ceremony in Rotterdam, saying it was a great honour to have Geoscape recognised by this important international geospatial forum.
“This award confirms that Geoscape is a leading spatial industry development both in terms of the technology we are using and the originality of the solution we are developing,” he said.
“Our ability to combine these disruptive technologies with authoritative government data will enable the capture of key built environment data such as 3D building attributes, land cover, tree heights, roof materials, swimming pools and solar panels across Australia’s 7.6 million square kilometres.”
With support from partners such as DigitalGlobe, PSMA is leveraging leading edge technologies such as high resolution multi-spectral satellite imagery, satellite derived digital surface model, high performance cloud computing, crowdsourcing, machine learning and automated feature extraction.
Paull said the development of Geoscape is attracting incredible interest internationally: “There are many 3D datasets that cover towns or sections of cities but nothing that comes close to the scale of Geoscape in efficiently providing such data for an entire nation or continent.
“Geoscape could have an enormous impact if other nations apply similar techniques to rapidly fill their geospatial information gaps.”
“In particular, this would support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by helping to establish important economic infrastructure such as addressing and land registration systems as well as improving the delivery of humanitarian and natural disaster relief.”
PSMA Australia has recently made a Geoscape Evaluation Dataset available for download. The 300MB zip file provides a 25 square kilometre area approximately 5 kilometres south/south west of Adelaide’s central business district. This covers an area that is entirely ‘urban’ and takes in 25 suburbs as well as a reasonable proportion of buildings with solar panels and properties with swimming pools.
By Anthony Wallace
Sourced from http://www.spatialsource.com.au/international-excellence-award-for-geoscape/
Employer demand for more staff is gaining momentum, with the number of job advertisements hitting a four-year high.
Job ads on the internet and in newspapers spiked by 2.4 per cent in May, after stalling for six months.
And for the year to May, job ads were up 9.1 per cent – the biggest rise in eight months, figures from ANZ show.
ANZ head of Australian economics Felicity Emmett says the economy is chugging along nicely and the transition to non-mining activity is gaining traction.
“The rise in job ads is consistent with the strength in business conditions, which point to ongoing solid growth in the economy,” she said.
Ms Emmett said the strong first quarter national GDP report, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics last week, shows that the housing and services industries are doing the heavy lifting as the mining boom fades.
“These sectors are also clearly helping to support jobs growth,” she said.
Gross domestic product rose 1.1 per cent in the March quarter and 3.1 per cent through the year, in each case the fastest for at least three years.
Ms Emmett noted that ongoing weak wage growth is likely to continue to drive solid employment gains.
“But very low growth in labour costs is feeding through to very low inflation,” she said.
“With inflation set to stay outside the RBA’s target band until at least mid-2017, we expect to see another cut in the cash rate in August to a low of 1.5 per cent.”
CommSec chief economist Craig James said the jobs market remains in solid shape and May’s lift should be positive for companies in the consumer discretionary sector.
“Still, it’s important to note that job ads aren’t as good a leading indicator on employment as they were a few years ago,” he said.
“Job seekers are increasingly going to corporate websites directly and others are using social media like LinkedIn to find positions.”
Sourced from https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/job-ads-hit-four-high-065707242.html
Since its establishment almost five years ago, the open source education and research initiative borne of multiple memoranda of understanding between the Open Source Geospatial Foundation and the International Cartographic Association, followed by the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, has transitioned into GeoForAll – the Open Source Geospatial Education and Research outreach. As of today, more than 100 laboratories and centers worldwide have formally joined the community, and GeoForAll has expanded and organized its infrastructure in response. Multiple coordinators across the globe now guide and manage regional membership activity. GeoForAll is a very open and inclusive organization. The requirement to support its mission (making contributions to free and open source software, data, education and access) is very broad, making the threshold to join relatively low,reflected in their wide and diverse membership base.
Recently Directions Magazine had the opportunity to catch up with Helena Mitasova, one of the North American regional chairs of GeoForAll, to learn how GeoForAll has been progressing towards its goals. Mitasova, a faculty member at North Carolina State University, is also a recently elected member of the OSGeo Foundation Board of Directors and one of their vice presidents.
Directions Magazine: Membership in GeoForAll growth has grown significantly in the last couple of years. Can you share some of what’s driving it?
Helena Mitasova: What you’re seeing is in part the result of consolidating parallel efforts and activities. Because of the rapidly expanding interest in open source geospatial we quickly outgrew the slow growth, top down organization outlined in the original memorandum of understanding between OSGeo and ICA. The original idea was that there might be one lead center on each continent but the interest was well beyond that. There were multiple centers of activity happening on different continents at the same time, and there were similar types of activity going on in the Education and Curriculum Committee of OSGeo itself. So in January 2016, the OSGeo Board consolidated its educational agenda under the one, single GeoForAll umbrella going forward. This structural change has been very helpful as we aim to streamline and clarify our infrastructure and relations with partners, such as ICA and ISPRS.
DM: What have been the recent priority areas of activity for GeoForAll?
HM: Having gone through this tremendous growth in membership has required us to better organize and develop our online resources, such as our wiki and website. Helping faculty and students from across our labs find each other based on their common interests is important to support a broad range of collaborative activities, and for developing grants and funding opportunities.
This also allows members to see that they do not all have to be programmers of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Many other ways to contribute exist such as writing documentation, or just being an active open source software user. We are also aiming to have a simple but robust platform for sharing the development of educational materials. We have an open repository that supports resource distribution already, but are still deciding on the best platforms for collaborative development and updating of the materials. Perhaps GitHub may be one answer. Organizations that are led by volunteers distributed around the world all face similar challenges. We have always been a “do-acracy” – if you need to get something done, you do it! So it’s a current goal that we’re working on.
DM: Share with us some of your success stories.
HM: We are very proud of having been able to involve students from across the GeoForAll network in activities such as code and community sprints to increase participation in open source software development. And we’ve had over 20 students in a given year participate in Google Summer of Code. That is a big accomplishment that is very empowering to students from around the world.
With our expanded network, we have also been able to organize and populate the academic tracks and scientific planning committees of numerous conferences, including FOSS4G global and regional conferences as well as others such as the upcoming ISPRS congress in Prague or past American Geophysical Union meetings. This works well to help spread our message. It is tremendously exciting to see the genuine global demand for all that GeoForAll is striving to do.
Another important area has been our webinar series. Before we consolidated, we used multiple different platforms based at different host institutions and we were not particularly well coordinated around the topics or the schedule. Now we’re able to be much more effective at offering these regularly and we will start to market these more. Rafael Moreno, at the FOSS4G lab at the University of Colorado – Denver, manages this effort, and the recordings are available through our YouTube channel.
DM: What are the current thoughts from GeoForAll on the topic of certification and credentials in the geospatial arena, and with FOSS in particular?
HM: We widely recognize that something is going to be needed, and is strongly desired by many in industry. Exactly what will emerge in the FOSS world is not established yet but the trend is more towards a technical-type certification (for example there is a QGIS certification effort) rather than a general geospatial one. In the short time frame, it’s more likely to be developed by business or industry as it is also a business opportunity. The demand for such a certification is so far too ambiguous for an academic institution to take it on at this point. Plus, students really need to be experienced with both FOSS and proprietary software platforms to be as knowledgeable as they can be for work and research. Both big and small companies use FOSS tools extensively but in combination with other proprietary software as well. The world doesn’t work with only one or the other; we all need both.
DM: What is next on the horizon for GeoForAll?
HM: Planning for conferences is always on-going. FOSS4G Global events rotate between venues in Europe, North America and other non-Europe/non-NA sites. So we have FOSS4G Global in August 2016 in Bonn and August 2017 will be in Boston. Now there are also regional gatherings as well. For example, the North American FOSS4G was held in Raleigh, North Carolina in early May 2016, and we had over 500people attend.
We would also like to increase our membership with universities in the United States, not because we have any quota to reach but because we know that there is interest. Though being part of GeoForAll isn’t what every geospatial academic lab must do. I am frequently asked “What can GeoForAll do for me?” or “What are the benefits of joining?” and I let them know they are asking the wrong question. The right question is, “How can I contribute?” Having that kind of attitude is how you will get the most out of being part of the GeoForAll community. Whether it has to do with teaching or research, making these connections and exchanging knowledge is how everyone benefits.
By Diana S. Sinton
Sourced from http://www.directionsmag.com/entry/geoforall-grows-its-grass-roots/469520
Job platform Workible has announced its partnership with WiC Group to expand its job reach to regional centres around Australia. Both companies have worked together to roll out 45 regional job sites to address the lack of access country residence have to local jobs.
“Regional Australia has certainly drawn the short straw when it comes to being looked after by job providers,” said Tim O’Brien, WiC Group founder.
For many residents in regional Australia poor access to jobs means they often leave their hometown and head to the cities in search of work.
The WiC Group, founded in 2011, has launched job websites and focus groups to strengthen local employment networks in regional Queensland. The partnership with Workible means both companies can leverage each other’s resources and give regional residents access to more job sites, helping both local employers and local job seekers connect.
“We’re aiming to remedy that with sites that specifically help locals connect with each other, especially when distance can be an issue,” said O’Brien.
Each of the 45 sites that both WiC Group and Workible have created are in various stages of roll out and include sites like JobsInTheIllawarra.com.au and remote areas like the Pilbara Riverina in Western Australia. The sites will cover all work types, from casual to seasonal jobs, and permanent full time work in all industry sectors.
The growth of Workible as a job tech provider has seen the company expand its software all over Australia and is now the largest connected network of job sites in the country.
“That means that anyone, anywhere can post a job to any platform in the Workible network and it will appear on the sites that are most pertinent to it,” said Fiona Anson, cofounder of Workible.
Workible’s mobile-first technology means job seekers have instant access and communication with employers when they’re not in reach of a computer. Anson says having access to everything via mobile devices is essential, especially for people in rural and regional areas.
“We’ve seen national clients in Melbourne post a job for a Newcastle-based role that appears on JobsInTheHunter, the Retail Network, Charlestown Square’s Job Network and Hunter TAFE’s job site as well as WorkibleJobs our own jobs marketplace,” said Anson. “The connectedness of our platforms means that jobs go the places where the right people will see them.”
Workible has also recently announced the launch of a rural specific job site called FarmJobs.com.au. The site lists jobs from the regional networks that apply to farm work, along with jobs specifically posted through the Workible site.
Recently the startup sector has seen regional areas begin to grow their tech communities to spur greater job growth and support local industries. In late April the Bega Valley launched a Regional Innovation Week as the first step in building the communities tech sector. The innovation week aimed to support local tech startups that may very well see the community create 1,000 jobs by 2030.
Australia has also seen regional innovation hubs launch in areas like Ipswich to connect entrepreneurs with tools and mentoring services to build up startup communities in regional areas.
With State and Federal governments mostly focused on the major cities, the launch of these initiatives have come for the most part through the work of the local communities themselves.
As technology continues to diversify so do regional communities in Australia. In an effort include these communities in the technology and innovation boom startup hubs and new job sites provide further support to regional areas and recognise the opportunity to drive innovation and build local communities.
Image: Fiona Anson and Ali Baker
24 May 2016. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) and the Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that will further the missions of both organizations by collaborating as partners in the development and conduct of outreach and education program activities to advance standards-based, interoperable modelling approaches to address the needs of each organization’s membership.
Further, SIBA will assist with local promotion and education regarding OGC standards in the Asia Pacific region, including advocating the use of OGC standards by the Australian and New Zealand governments.
The collaboration will build upon the significant and successful relationship seen in the mid 2000s between OGC and SIBA’s previous incarnation, ASIBA.
“OGC’s success in advancing our mission is greatly enhanced through the many alliances and partnerships we have forged with leading standards organizations and associations worldwide,” said Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of OGC. “We are excited about our alliance with Spatial Industries Business Association, which will enable OGC to further extend our reach and impact in Australia and New Zealand while providing SIBA an international platform for articulating and advancing its industry association mission.”
“SIBA is pleased to be working together with the OGC to contribute to supporting and unifying the industry on an international platform where there is common ground and cause to do so,” said Kellee Ireland, Executive Director of SIBA. “We are excited to be working with the OGC to establish broader international relationships and raise awareness and understanding of international standards throughout the Asia Pacific region.”
About SIBA
SIBA is the leading association representing the Spatial Industry in Australia and New Zealand. SIBA focuses on four core areas: networking, growth, support and influence at a government level. SIBA is a not-for-profit organization and seeks to inform, assist, and grow private enterprise within the spatial industry. Visit the SIBA website at www.siba.com.au.
About the OGC
The OGC is an international consortium of more than 515 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org.
From http://www.directionsmag.com/pressreleases/ogc-and-siba-sign-memorandum-of-understanding/469190
Editor’s note: Welcome to the third installment of our 2016 monthly series, Geospatial on a Budget. Today we’re going to take a look at one of the GIS software tools that comes highly recommended by a throng of our readers, so many recommendations that it earned its own moment in the spotlight!
“After 25 years in the geospatial industry, one of the things I’ve learned about “Geospatial on a Budget” is that first cost isn’t always total cost. There are low cost entry points to GIS, but they often lack advanced features that will eventually require a change in software, which is painful,” Directions Magazine(DM) reader Jim Stone told us.
I bet many of you can relate! All too often we start hobbling together free or low-cost GIS solutions and end up with a mish mash of software that still doesn’t really do what we need—especially as our needs evolve over time. If you’re staring down an overwhelming stack of data, wishing for a magic wand to wave and get powerful analysis and great maps in a tool that is: simple to use, grows with your needs, easy to learn and a low entry-level price; then, according to the many readers that wrote in, Maptitude’s your sparkling solution.
Maptitude from Caliper costs just $695 for a single-user license, which includes a one country data package of maps and demographic data. For GIS beginners, the software couldn’t be easier to use: just select the Create-a-Map Wizard™ to create “a map at any scale, from all of the countries of the world, to streets around an address, landmark, or intersection.” Answer a few questions and end up with “color and pattern maps, dot-density maps, scaled-symbol maps, and maps with integrated pie or bar charts” that can be saved in a variety of formats and dropped into your presentations and handouts with little muss and fuss.
But what if you’re well beyond the beginner stage, and need to crunch big data sets to perform more in-depth analysis? Maptitude still meets the challenge.
Stone added, “I’ve used many GIS software tools and I’ve never hit a wall with functionality [with Maptitude], even when doing advanced analytics and visualization… I’ve been using Maptitude since 1995 and it’s very mature and stable. It comes bundled with a huge amount of cartography and data (including demographics) and can be used right out of the box to generate insights and visualization that will have an immediate impact on your organization.”
“Maptitude’s greatest strength is the software’s ability to crunch through ‘big data’ sets, and display that spatial data in just a few steps,” another DM reader, Brett Lucas, commented. “Maptitude is a great alternative to [other mapping software]. Using Maptitude, I can easily create 3-D maps, heat/hot spot mapping, Thiessen Polygons (Areas of Influence), drive-time rings, flow maps (desire lines and spider maps), territory mapping, and spatial overlays (tagging features from one layer to another), trade area/site selection and much more. I can also easily bring in shape files, imagery and terrain data from a variety of sources. Maptitude has a robust geocoder built-in, that can instantly locate data that you have stored in Excel, Google Sheets, Access or other SQL formats. Maps can be exported in a variety of formats and interacts nicely with the Microsoft Office Suite environment.”.
Maptitude’s website primarily focuses on its ability to wrangle customer, employee, sales, facility and territory data into new visualizations, allowing a company to:
- Know exactly where its customers are,
- See where sales are highest,
- Find hidden opportunities,
- Spot geographic patterns and trends that cannot be seen in database tables and spreadsheets,
- Answer geographic questions that impact operations
Reader Michael LaVigne of Ribbon Demographics urges first-time users to contact the company directly to find out more about what it can do for your specific projects. He told us,” Maptitude is capable of many more functions that can be utilized than are immediately apparent from looking at their website.”
“If you need more power, you can upgrade to TransCAD, which is a ‘superset’ of Maptitude, and everything you have learned and built can be used without change,” according to Stone.
The software’s user-friendly interface is also perfect for students, who often have limited time to learn their GIS software before they need to begin mapping and analyzing data — and Caliper is very supportive of student efforts.
Grant Thrall of the University of Florida shared, “Caliper has been very supportive of my and the Miller Center’s GeoSpatial initiative by providing, at no cost, current versions of Maptitude for students [to] use during the semester or year that the student is working with me. A clear benefit to those students is that when they enter the job market, they come equipped with the technology and knowledge that 21st Century employers look for that differentiate employee prospects.” Thrall has created several instructional videos on Maptitude for his students that are available on YouTube®.
Maptitude has no subscription fees and supports secure off-line data storage. Wave that magic wand and wrangle your data sets into shape!
By Rebeckah Flowers
http://www.directionsmag.com/entry/geospatial-on-a-budget-3-the-magic-of-maptitude/467970
A new tool from APSEA award winning team at NGIS have released a first of its kind tool to allow Australians to visualise how sea level rise driven by climate change will impact their areas.
A BETA version of the Coastal Risk Australia interactive webmap has been made openly available and charts the majority of Australia’s enormous coastline to show how sea level rise could impact Australia under a number of different climate scenarios. Coastal Risk Australia incorporates 3D LiDAR, Google Engine and local tidal data to accurately map how rising sea levels could encroach on cities, towns and beaches under three scientific scenarios.
The interactive tool clearly shows that iconic beaches like the Gold Coast and famous coastal spots such as Cairns in Queensland and Queenscliff in Victoria will be among the most vulnerable places to rising sea levels, and will help individuals, communities and all levels of government prepare in the decades to come.
The map has highlighted that if waters around Australia rise by 0.74 metres by the end of this century, some of the most vulnerable sites around Australia will include:
- Queensland: The Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Cairns, Port Douglas
- Victoria: Brighton Beach, St Kilda Beach, Queenscliff
- New South Wales: Narrabeen, Byron Bay
- South Australia: Port Adelaide, Hindmarsh Island
- Western Australia: Cottesloe Beach, Mandura
- Northern Territory: Kakadu National Park
The data was captured using airborne LiDAR technology to create detailed digital elevation models (DEM), which are then combined with ‘bucket-fill’ inundation modelling to create the map-based visualisations.
The calculated inundation is based on high tide, the Australian Height Datum and various sea level scenarios based on findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, as shown in the below calculation.
Inundation = Sea Level Rise Scenarios (Low, Medium and High) + High Tide + Water-Land (MSL-AHD) Offset
The underlying DEMs have been mapped in great detail using airborne LiDAR at a resolution of 5 metres along Australia’s coast.
NGIS Australia Principal Consultant Nathan Eaton said it was difficult for people to appreciate what rising sea levels in decades to come could mean for their homes, community and the places they love.
“Maps are a universal language that everyone can understand. This website allows every Australian to visualise our climate change future with pinpoint accuracy, and gain a better understanding of how rising sea levels will affect our coastline, neighbourhoods and favourite places.”
NGIS Australia built the website based on an earlier model used to map sea-level rise in the Pacific Islands.
“Our main goal is to raise awareness of how sea-level rise will affect the places we live, but this will also help all Australians prepare for change, from all levels of government, in policy, conservation and community engagement.”
Across the globe, sea levels have risen an average of 17cm over the course of the 20th century and the average sea level rise around Australia has been at a similar level. Scientists are forecasting sea levels will rise between 0.4–1.1m over the remainder of this century depending on how rapidly the world reduces emissions of greenhouse gases. More than 80 percent of Australians live near the coast and a Climate Council report has already warned that future sea level rises could put more than $200 billion of infrastructure at risk.
By Anthony Wallace http://www.spatialsource.com.au/ngis-highlight-sea-level-rise-risk-sites-across-australia/
Brisbane-based spatial technology start-up Ozius Spatial has taken out an award at the 2016 National Planning Institute of Australia Awards for its contribution to Logan City Council’s Environmental Offset Estimator tool.
In partnership with project lead Logan City Council and global consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff, Ozius Spatial won the award for Improving Planning Processes and Practices for the innovative on-line tool. The Environmental Offset Estimator allows residents, developers, and councils to accurately and easily estimate the environmental costs of planning and development decisions.
According to Logan City Council and the Planning Institute of Australia, the tool will allow for a real-world assessment of costs and assist developments in reducing their environmental footprint.
Founder and Spatial Scientist, Alisa Starkey, said this innovative tool fuses advanced spatial technology and environmental science, and will ultimately assist in reducing environmental impacts and hopefully reduce the overall costs of housing developments.
“The tool will help accurately determine the funds required from development which can then be re-invested by Council back into environmental projects”, she said.
Until now it was a complex process to accurately identify the environmental offset fees, this online tool is available on Logan City Council’s website for all residents and customers.
Ozius Spatial specialises in using imagery from RPAS (also known as drones), aircraft and satellites combined with advanced algorithms and technology to deliver land management and environmental monitoring solutions for clients. These solutions have been implemented by customers across multiple markets including infrastructure, agriculture, mining, and government. Ozius Spatial has also provided expert training services to users in New Zealand and Australia.
“We have only been operating for just over two years, and in that time we have used this innovative approach to environmental monitoring and assessment to analyse almost one million square kilometres of the Australian landscape.”
“We’re hoping this National award for Logan City Council really highlights the economic and environmental benefits our solutions and spatial technology in general can have for all businesses.” Ms Starkey said.
By Anthony Wallace http://www.spatialsource.com.au/ozius-wins-planning-award-for-environmental-innovation/
Australia’s leading researchers of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) technology, also known as UAV or drones, have been recognised by Australia’s CSIRO with exclusive backing to oversee the development of collision avoidance technology over the next three months.
The Australian team behind perhaps the most innovative RPAS solutions for remote sensing, Hovermap, has been selected to take part in the next round of CSIRO’s ON Accelerator. The proposed collision avoidance technology is necessary to ensure safe, efficient and responsive navigation by RPAS. The ON Accelerator program aims to boost Australia’s innovation performance by accelerating big science and technology ideas into commercially viable opportunities over a period of three months.
The existing Hovermap system, developed by CSIRO researchers, is itself revolutionary for its combination of LiDAR technology and it’s 360×360 degree senor capabilities. The Hovermap payload gives a spherical view around the vehicle, and that sensor data can also be used in real-time for the vehicles navigation and safety. The sensor achieves this impressive spherical view by rotating relative to the vehicle (see below GIF and video), using similar algorithms as CSIRO’s Zebedee precise handheld scanner. This Hovermap sensor data will then be used to inform collision avoidance algorithms, and eventually, true autonomy.
Dr Stefan Hrabar, the Principal Research Scientist and Research Team Leader at Hovermap, said to Spatial Source that he envisages three distinct stages of development towards the evolution of autonomous detect and avoid algorithms.
- Warning systems
Much like existing reverse parking sensors or lane detection technology, this initial phase of the technology acts to provide notifications or warning systems to inform the RPAS operator of detected obstacles. The operator then reacts manually to the supplied information. There are obviously limitations to this in terms of human error and also the minute times and distances within which collisions may occur.
- Automatic avoidance
The next level of development will involve both operator and machine input. In the case that the operator attempts to fly the RPAS into an obstacle, the system will automatically refrain from navigating towards it. The operator can then resume navigation by choosing another alternative routing. The problem with this however are the problems involved with beyond visual line of sights (BVLOS) operations and incompatibility with dynamic.
- True autonomy
True autonomy will permit the system to navigate itself safely and efficiently in any environment, independent from human operation. Once made possible, it will be possible for systems to be given directions to investigate an entire cavern system and return once all features have been mapped to the desired level of resolution. The potential applications go well beyond mapping, to logistics, surveillance, arts and even to autonomous vehicles.
The Hovermap solution is unique in that it will operate independently form satellite navigation (or GNSS), meaning that it can be used underground, indoors or among large buildings.
Dr Hrabar points out that the mapping applications are in fact independent from the collision avoidance technology: “The collision avoidance algorithms that we have developed are not specifically tied to the mapping hardware that we currently have.”
“You can imagine in the future pretty much every UAV is going to need some form of collision avoidance.”
“In a few years time, pretty much every UAV you buy, off the shelf, will have these collision avoidance sensors on board and they will need the algorithms that we are developing right now.”
The three month ON Accelerator program is focussed on assessing the business opportunities and commercialisation of the system, so the Hovermap team are consulting with customers and potential investors to oversee the best way forward to develop and roll out the technology. Depending on their findings, after the three months we may see the establishment of a company called “Hovermap,” or the rollout of the technology more broadly.
The Hovermap team are looking to establish an early adopter program once they have prototypes ready in the coming 3-6 months. From there, Dr Hrabar expects that there will be approximately 12 months until a commercial Hovermap system is available, with true autonomy available within 2-3 years.
From July this year the ON Accelerator program will be expanded nationally to include all other publically funded research organisations, as well as Australian universities, as part of the Federal Government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda.
For further information about Hovermap, please visit https://confluence.csiro.au/display/ASL/Hovermap.
By on 11 May, 2016 in Email Newsletter, Unmanned
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