Nano Mapping For Drones
Drones have been a huge development in the world of small aviation technology but also in the world of filmmaking. To achieve the equivalent of drone shots, filmmakers either had to use a helicopter or a crane but both are expensive and the crane can’t always get the shot you want. Today drones have become more commercial and the prices are reducing as more advancements get released. Among these new releases is the development of NanoMapping for drones. The Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Massachusetts has created a modelling system of uncertainty to help drones fly more safely. The system uses depth sensing technology to analyse the surrounding environment and allow it to fly up to speeds of 20mph.
This is great new for Amazon who plan to use drones to deliver packages but it is also good news for film and TV as the technology can be use to make camera drone operators safer in high density environments.
The system is different to it’s competitors who usually rely on complicated mapping to navigate the drone around areas. This can be unreliable as a slight drift of the drone can cause a crash. The NanoMap technology can collect environment information in real time and high speeds. This makes the crash rate at 2% compared to the mapping systems at 25%.
“The key difference to previous work is that the researchers created a map consisting of a set of images with their position uncertainty rather than just a set of images and their positions and orientation,” says Sebastian Scherer, a systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.
Similar to VR and AR development, the technology will be really useful to national services. The NanoMap team already believes it will be very valuable to search and rescue operations as the system is ideal for processing new environmental data fast and is capable of maneuvering successfully in and around cluttered environments such as forests or warehouses. The technology can also be applied to auto self driving cars.
The NanoMap technology is bound to bring about a great advancement in drone operation and environmental navigation systems and I look forward to how the technology will be applied to other fields of industry, particularly film and television.
