Introducing AeroPoints: the world’s first smart ground control points
It’s been two years since Francis Vierboom and I founded Propeller.
We started with a simple problem: capturing data with drones was cheap, easy and effective — but actually using that data wasn’t. It was difficult, expensive, and only the most technical people understood it.
We think Propeller’s online platform has changed that. And we’re excited to change things up again.
Thousands of people are now using Propeller to process and share drone data. Our cloud-software and custom analytic tools make it easy for people to deliver useful surveys and inspections without technical training.
We’re incredibly proud of this. But we’ve always known it could be better.
Every day at Propeller we’ve been seeing our customers upload gigabytes of coarsely georeferenced imagery. They can’t justify the cost of hiring a certified surveyor to capture ground control points — but they aren’t able to generate good quality data without one.
And then, around this time last year, we were throwing a Frisbee around outside the office and I thought:
What if I could just put a crosshair on a Frisbee-like-device, stand in the middle of a site, and throw the ground control points out myself? The positioning equipment would be contained in the device — and it would report back when its GPS position was established.
No more spray painting GCPs. No more buying or hiring expensive equipment, and the specialists needed to use them. And there’s no need to add complex RTK to drones. With this device, any drone could deliver survey-grade data.
We finished the game of Frisbee. And then spent the following year theorizing, writing algorithms, and running around in muddy fields with various prototypes.
Finally, this idea is now a reality. And we’ve called them AeroPoints.
They’re portable and smart ground control points. They’re easily visible from the air and capable of quickly capturing their own position down to 2cm absolute accuracy. They’re fully solar powered, weather resistant and incredibly durable. (We even spent an afternoon running one of them over with a car — it survived with barely a scratch.)
You just lay them down, fly your drone, and then pick them up. They’ll automatically connect to a wireless or mobile hotspot to upload their captured positional data. Just like that — your precision georeferencing is taken care of.
To quote one of our customers, Gavin Docherty from Position Partners, “The AeroPoints have exceeded all expectation for delivering repeatable and precise data.” That makes me pretty excited.
We’re about to start shipping our first production run, and it’s a proud moment for the whole team. For me, it feels like something has come full circle. Propeller is all about processing and sharing the highest quality drone data for our customers — and now we’re helping them capture it too.
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