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DroneDeploy moves beyond drones to let industries analyze visual data captured at ground level
October 14, 2020

DroneDeploy moves beyond drones to let industries analyze visual data captured at ground level

Since its inception in 2013, DroneDeploy has served to help companies access commercial drone operators and create professional-grade imagery of the built environment from the skies above. But at its annual DroneDeploy Conference today, the San Francisco-based company announced that it’s coming back down to Earth with a new service that captures visuals at ground level.

Thus far, DroneDeploy has enabled companies across industries such as agriculture, construction, insurance, mining, and oil and gas to manage drone fleets and analyze aerial infrastructure data. Now, with 360 Walkthrough as part of its product lineup, DroneDeploy can give companies a more holistic view of their properties through combining data from just about any angle.

The launch comes as numerous companies have emerged to capitalize on the construction industry’s much-maligned inefficiency problem. In particular, startups such as Disperse and OpenSpace recently raised sizable funding rounds to automate photo documentation on construction sites. Expanding its scope to on-the-ground documentation makes a great deal of sense for DroneDeploy, as it means existing clients can use a single company for all their documentation needs.

Automation

As part of its testing phase, DroneDeploy teamed up with construction giant Brasfield & Gorrie, which has been using DroneDeploy to track progress on building sites since 2015. Together, they enlisted the help of Boston Dynamics, the robotics company famed for its viral videos that demonstrate robots doing all manner of crazy things, to develop the workflow required to capture 360-degree video construction documentation from the ground.

DroneDeploy retrofitted Spot, Boston Dynamics’ $74,500 robot, with a 360-degree camera to autonomously capture data from inside buildings and snap close-up photos for anyone to inspect remotely — this is particularly notable at the moment, given that social-distancing guidelines may limit the number of people who can safely be present at a build at any given time.

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