Soar, on the cusp of a drone-data revolution
“Data is growing faster than ever before and by the year 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet” -Bernard Marr
The Inevitable Inundation of Drone Data
Most data gets dumped into passive memory, meaning it’s utilisation (analysis, availability for resale, or visualisation) is fractional. Currently, “usage and analysis of all data is estimated to be less than 0.5%” says Bernard Marr, “and by 2020, 44 zettabytes (44 trillion gigabytes) of data will exist.” Alarmingly the drone portion of 2020’s 44 zettabytes of data is potentially huge and according to Kevin Logist, “A single autonomous drone can generate the same data trove as 3000 people surfing the internet”.
There’s a good chance the drone data you want already exists, however people still prefer acquiring it themselves or contracting someone else to acquire it. So what makes drone data acquisition more desirable than drone data re-use? Because drone content consumers may have a discrete parameter set (quality, altitude, format, angle of incidence, time of day/year desired, etc) which might preclude sourcing the images using available online image hosting channels. Thankfully because drone data is very discrete, sourcing the drone portion of 2017’s 1.2 zettabytes (Mulcahy, 2017) is achievable using a scalable platform, Soar, specifically designed to tackle this problem.
A 1920s Drone Data Analogy
In the early 1920’s, Sam Mosher, an indebted California farmer teamed up with two brothers and $4000 to build Signal Hill’s first casing head gasoline plant. Prior to the 1920s, casing head gasoline was largely burned off as part of the “wet gas” created as a byproduct of oil extraction. At first, oil well owners wanted no part of Sam’s junky contraption (it’s design cobbled together from industrial scrap), nor did they want part of the revenues, or even the free gas he could provide to fire boilers powering their onsite machinery!
But Sam persevered and went straight to Shell Oil, the owners of Alamitos No. 1, the well that started an oil boom on Signal Hill. Sam convinced Shell to let him produce casing head gas from their well. That was previously unheard of and, furthermore, he sold the gasoline back to them. Consequently Sam Mosher and his company went on to be notorious for exploiting resources nobody seemed to care about.
Sam Mosher’s challenge in 1922 was offloading excess casing head gasoline due to limited storage and customers. Likewise in 2018, the aggregate of drone data presents a similar opportunity. Sam’s challenge in the 1920’s wasn’t oversupply, it was under-utilisation. With the dawn of the great depression, automobile owners sought out high-octane gasoline (fuel blended with Sam’s product) to achieve better fuel consumption and stretch their dwindling dollars. Sam was then strategically placed to capitalise on what other oil producers saw as a down market.
Soar, the Google of Drone Content
We (drone content providers/consumers) are still on the “drone upswing” or as my favourite drone YouTuber NURK FPV calls it “the drone hustle”, but in all this hustle even more data is getting dumped (virtually) on the ground due to under-utilisation. We’re on the cusp of drone content becoming wholly integrated into just about any industry — just as drones have become indispensable for aerial surveying, at-height inspections, crop health assessments, and environmental monitoring.
In the late 1990s, Google set a new standard on how we expect to get information from the internet. Likewise, Soar will change our mindset on these aspects of drone data; accessibility , validity , usefulness & monetary value.
At the core of Soar’s technology is a crowd-sourced global super-map inclusive of geo-referenced drone imagery optimised for the efficient identification and exchange of best-in-class imagery. To drive the global super-map, Soar has implemented a quadtree engine, effectively dividing up the earth into a grid with successive layers at four times the original grid count. Now, aerial imagery from high to low resolution can be quickly incorporated at the appropriate level within its global super-map. Eager drone image consumers are given access to peer-reviewed and quality-controlled aerial imagery at levels up to sub-centimeter resolution. Because of this, Soar is an earth-exploration tool with access to information previously ‘too-hard’ to access.
Just as casing head gasoline of the 1920s boosted octane and added value for desperate clients, Soar is un-harnessing the power of digital drone content globally.
References
Mark Mulcahy, 2017. Big Data, are You in Control? https://www.waterfordtechnologies.com/big-data-interesting-facts/
Bernard Marr. 2015. Big Data: 20 Mind-Boggling Facts Everyone Must Read, Forbes Online. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/09/30/big-data-20-mind-boggling-facts-everyone-must-read/#9aa481f17b1e
Kevin Logist. 2017. Drones Generate Lots of Data. Drone Community Online. https://www.dronecommunity.biz/drones-data/
