330
May 2019
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
and development capability could handle?
These are good questions, but examining the
evolution is less fascinating than the uses
of the technology and is therefore too often
overlooked. What inexperienced people see is
that the technology enables nonexperienced
people to produce nice looking maps without
huge investments in the needed hardware and
software. Drone manufacturers reached out
to UAS enthusiasts, many of whom recently
obtained their Remote Pilot Certificate from the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) under
Part 107 “Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems.”
1
This success was mainly driven by affordability
and ease of operation, and the many engaging
uses of drones. One of these uses includes
the bird’s-eye imaging capability. Most of
these drones carry sophisticated consumer
grade cameras. When these cameras are
used from the air, they produce excellent
aerial imagery. Think about the excitement
people experience looking through an airplane
window shortly after takeoff. This excitement
pushed people to purchase a low-cost drone
and start acquiring aerial imagery over their
neighborhood, community, church, wedding,
real estate property, etc. That was all fine,
until some drone operators thought they could
go a little further by offering professional
mapping services. This is due in part to the
image processing software packages on the
market that made the task of stitching images
and producing attractive mosaics as easy as
purchasing a drone.
Such software was designed to streamline
the complicated map-making process and
enable novice users to produce mapping
products, including seamless orthorectified
mosaics and digital surface models regardless
of their experience with the map-making
process. Offering the capability of processing
UAS-derived imagery is a huge service to
the mapping-by-drones community, when
practiced correctly and professionally. The
software allows affordable mapping products
to be produced from drone imagery, unlike
T
1 FAA website.
/
text-idx?SID=dc908fb739912b0e6dcb7d7d88cfe
6a7&mc=true&node=pt14.2.107&rgn=div5.
he geospatial community is witnessing a golden
era when it comes to sensor technologies, data
processing power, and modeling algorithms. In
this era of innovation, we are taking advantage
of a revolution in electronics and integrated
circuitry, data processing techniques and
algorithms, sensor manufacturing, and geo-
location technologies. The same revolution
that is driving fast progress in smart phones
and other electronic gadgets is influencing
geospatial sensor technology, from fascinating
digital aerial cameras and lidar to the latest
innovations in unmanned aircraft systems
(UAS)—also referred to as drones.
These innovations have positively impacted
our industry, but they also have resulted in
some negative implications when it comes to
standards of practice. The ease of use of sensors
and processing software has made the process
similar to a “black-box” concept and easy for
a nonprofessional to operate. The skills and
educational requirements usually required to
practice the mapping profession are no longer
needed to operate such software at a basic level.
The era preceding this revolution was
characterized by its slow pace when it came to
the advancement in geospatial technologies.
The film-based aerial camera, long time
workhorse for the mapping industry, witnessed
little technological advancement over the
50 years before the introduction of the first
digital aerial camera in 2000. However, this
slow technological evolution offered the right
environment to mature the theoretical and
practical aspects of the profession. It also
allowed time to develop best practices for
reliable mapping production processes.
Introducing drones to our industry is a
good example of a fast-moving technological
evolution, begging questions like: Did
this introduction come too fast? Were we
unprepared for it? Was the use of this
technology faster than the pace of our research
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 85, No. 5, May 2019, pp. 329-337.
0099-1112/18/329–337
© 2019 American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.85.5.329
