Mapping The Hidden Geography Of Language Through The News

Geography gives us an incredible lens through which to see the world. While we often think of maps in terms of information that already exists in the spatial domain, such as building addresses or GPS coordinates, the written word contains a tremendous volume of locative insights. What happens when we combine fulltext geocoding with the power of the cloud to analyze hundreds of billions of words of global news coverage to map the hidden geography of the language of news? Read more...

The Drone that Submerges, Floats and Flies

After two years of designing and prototyping, the team at SwellProUSA and Urban Drones, a drone technology company, have introduced The Spry - the first ever waterproof drone that can briefly submerge like a submarine, float like a boat, and fly in the air at over 43mph. The Spry has a self-contained 4K camera that can capture video at 30fps, images at 12 megapixels, and wirelessly transmit the video signal to a monitor embedded in its waterproof remote control. Read more...

MIT Researchers Develop Virtual-Reality Testing Ground for Drones

Training drones to fly fast, around even the simplest obstacles, is a crash-prone exercise that can have engineers repairing or replacing vehicles with frustrating regularity. Now MIT engineers have developed a new virtual-reality training system for drones that enables a vehicle to "see" a rich, virtual environment while flying in an empty physical space. Read more...

Perhaps Nobody Knows it Yet, But Geomatics is Cool

The geospatial industry faces a major challenge: how to attract a new generation of mapping and surveying professionals. The sector is crying out for talented young individuals who are willing and able to enter the profession. But, as a quick glance at the labour market reveals, they are currently in short supply, so other measures are needed. A good starting point is to increase the industry’s interaction with children in primary and secondary schools to help them see the relevance of geomatics. Read more...

FAA Releases Study on Potential Mid-air Drone Collisions

On November 28th the FAA announced the release of a report by the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research, aka ASSURE. This report was commissioned in 2015 to test the potential damage to manned aircraft due to mid-air collisions with drones and how that compared to the more traditional airborne hazard: bird strike. The report concludes that drones which collide with manned aircraft can cause more structural damage than birds of the same weight for a given impact speed. Click HERE for more...