78
February 2019
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
INDUSTRY
NEWS
To have your press release published in
PE&RS
, contact Rae Kelley,
.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dewberry
has promoted Phil Thiel to executive vice
president. In his new role he will lead Dewberry’s federal
market strategy and business development. A consulting
industry executive with nearly 35 years of experience, Thiel
will direct and broaden Dewberry’s engagement with federal
agency clients throughout the enterprise.
Thiel has been with Dewberry for 17 years and will continue
to lead the firm’s national Geospatial and Technology Services
practice. Under his direction, Dewberry holds numerous federal
contracts involving state-of-the-art mapping, remote sensing,
GIS, and IT services. Federal clients include the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security,
the National Reconnaissance Office, National Geospatial-
Intelligence Agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. To learn more, visit
.
AXIS GeoAviation, LLC
(AGA) is pleased to announce the
newest addition to its fleet; a Vulcan Air P68C Twin Engine
aircraft. The additional plane allows AGA to support future aerial
surveying and mapping projects particularly in the Southeast
US, Caribbean and also nationwide. AGA’s sister company,
AXIS GeoSpatial, LLC (AGS), recently acquired Mapping
Resource Group, Inc. of Florida with a significant customer base
in the Southeast and the Mid-Atlantic regions of the US and the
Caribbean. The Vulcan P68C provides the additional capacity to
serve AXIS’ clients, as well as versatility in that it is fast enough
for aerial imagery collection yet can be flown slower and at lower
altitudes to capture higher density lidar data—additional aircraft
in AGA’s fleet include a Cessna 206H and a Piper Navajo.
In addition to its growing fleet, AGAhas expanded its capability
to collect lidar data through the purchase of two RIEGL VQ
1560i dual-channel airborne mapping sensors. AGA invested
in the additional lidar sensors to meet the increasing client
demand for higher density datasets. As experts in hi-definition
lidar acquisition, AGA offers survey data collection, processing
and classification for design scale mapping of airports, college
campuses, environmental remediation, highways, railroads,
pipelines, corridors, and other design and maintenance projects.
Currently, AXIS GeoAviation is the only company on the East
Coast of the United States to own two RIEGL VQ 1560i sensors.
The new acquisitions bring the total assets owned by AGA
to three fixed-wing manned aircraft, two Unmanned Aircraft
Systems (UAS), one Vexcel UltraCam Eagle system, one RIEGL
LMS-Q1560 lidar sensor, and two RIEGL VQ 1560i lidar sensors.
AGA currently employs four pilots and eight crew members
operating out of its Easton, Maryland and Ormond Beach,
Florida hangars.
GeoCue Group
(via its wholly owned AirGon subsidiary) has
completed the integration of the new DJI Phantom 4 Pro RTK
(P4R) into our widely used AirGon Sensor Processing Suite
(ASPSuite). ASPSuite is used as the post-processing solution
for our Loki direct geopositioning system for DJI and other
manufacturer’s drones.
ASPSuite enables integration of the P4R with third party L1/
L2 GNSS base stations such as systems from Septentrio, Leica,
Trimble, Tersus, TopCon, CHC and others in a high accuracy
Post-Process Kinematic (PPK) workflow.
Currently, the DJI D-RTK-2 base station (optionally
available) for the P4R can only be used in RTK mode and then
only if it is being sited on a known location. The D-RTK-2 does
not allow access to an observation file, preventing it from being
stationed using an online positioning service such as OPUS,
AUSPOS, Canadian Geodetic Survey services and so forth. An
additional consideration in our integration into ASPSuite was
that professional surveyors already have a survey kit that they
need incorporated into this workflow.
GeoCue is offering camera calibration services for the P4R
for those customers who wish to do minimal or control-free
high accuracy mapping projects (the DJI “calibration” is not
a rigorous photogrammetric calibration). In a recent test of a
GeoCue-calibrated P4R using an OPUS positioned base station
and PPK processing with ASPSuite, we achieved about 4 cm
horizontal and 5 cm vertical network accuracy (RMSE) with no
ground control points. While not quite as accurate as a Loki
solution, these results are remarkable for a low-cost drone.
We have partnered with hundreds of engineering, mining and
industrial firms as well as government agencies, providing high
accuracy drone mapping solutions. For additional information
and system quotations, please contact us via email at
CALENDAR
• 25‑
27 February,
2019 STRATUS Workshop— Systems
and Technologies for Remote Sensing Applications
Through Unmanned Aerial Systems
, Rochester, New
York. For more information visit
/
rochester/grss/STRATUS2019.
• 25
‑
28 February,
2019 GIS /CAMA Technologies
Conference
, Portland, Oregon. For more information,
visit
/.
• 3
‑
7 April,
AAG 2019 Annual Meeting
, Washington, DC.
For more information, visit
/.
• 29
‑
30 April,
Digital Image & Signal Processing
,
Oxford, United Kingdom. For more information, visit
.
• 3
‑
5 May,
5
th
International Conference on
Geographical Information Systems Theory,
Applications and Management
, Heraklion, Crete,
Greece. For more information, visit
.
• 11
‑
15 August,
SPIE— Imaging Spectrometry XXIII
,
San Diego, California. For more information, visit spie.org/
OP423.
