« Build Your Campus in 3D for Google Earth Contest | Main | Sydney Aerial Photo Shoot »
January 26, 2007
High Res Photos from an Aerial Drone in Google Earth
In early January, a very cool video was released showing a guy assemble a remote controlled aerial drone with a digital camera and then fly it using virtual reality goggles. A company called Pict'Earth is selling the technology. Shortly after the video was published, an innovative member of the GE Community by the name of Valery Hrosunov joined forces with Pict'Earth to demonstrate the aerial photo data using his SuperOverlay tool. The SuperOverlay tool lets you take large images and break them up into regions so they can be viewed elegantly in Google Earth. As an example, they have flown the drone over a gravel pit near Gardanne, France and you can view the imagery 
with Google Earth. The resulting image is less than a foot in resolution, so it will take a while to load all the layers of images. You can see how a low-flying drone can capture so much more detail. They have purposely outlined the images in GE so you can see how it tiles the images as you get closer. Once the imagery is loaded you can zoom in and out smoothly. You can read the Pict'Earth blog to follow their progress as they commercialize this technology. Great work guys, but I really need to fly one of these myself to do a proper review! *hint* *hint* :-)
Posted by FrankTaylor at January 26, 2007 07:56 AM
Comments
Posted by: Nick at January 26, 2007 10:20 PM
You need to click on Network Link to turn it on.
Posted by: Valery Hronusov at January 27, 2007 06:25 AM
While technology like this is exciting “flying under the hood” (with goggles on) is unsafe to say the least. Any and all commercial UAV/UAS activity in the NAS (National Airspace System, U.S.) post February 13 2007 requires either an experimental or COA issued by the FAA.
Posted by: Patrick Egan at June 20, 2007 01:10 AM
Post a comment:
NOTE: Please use English. Comments are moderated.
When I click on the link, nothing happens inside Google Earth. What am I doing wrong?