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iOne Sensor Systems – An industry positively disruptive technology

A lot has changed in the geospatial industry since GIS first became commercially

available; GIS software today has a level of sophistication that we could have only

dreamed of years back –it is now core to “the science of where” and the “spatial enabling

of information”. Digital technology and the Internet have transformed how we do

business and how customers utilize imagery. And the geospatial industry has grown

tremendously. Most importantly, geospatial imagery and data is everywhere today, used

in countless applications by private companies, non-profit organizations, government

agencies and the public. That is deeply rewarding to people who have devoted long

careers to advancing the technology and promoting the use of geographic information.

The world has changed a lot over the last two decades and the use of geospatial

information has grown exponentially, but in many important ways sensors have changed

very little over that span of time. No, sensor technology has not been static. There have

been important advancements that make them more powerful. But in a very fundamental

way, digital sensors have not changed much since they were first commercially

introduced back in 2002: Sensors today are predominantly monolithic, single-purpose,

proprietary devices, just like they were 10-20 years ago.

That would be fine if the world we live and work in was single-purpose world, but it’s

not. We live in a multi-purpose world, and that requires a new approach.

A New Direction for Sensor Design

Our industry needs a new generation of sensors that are designed to move beyond that

monolithic approach. Some people might contend that the traditional sensors are OK as-

is, arguing that the longevity of these traditional sensors prove that they work fine and

arguing that a new generation of sensors is unnecessary. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,”

some might say. But the truth is that the monolithic approach is broken and has been for a

while. Companies that use the sensors have been incredibly creative in working around

the limitations of those sensors, and they have shown saint-like patient with the

frustration of working with those outdated devices.

Traditional sensors are too limited in functionality, too hard to work with, and too costly

to operate and maintain. Their design drawbacks and inflexibility impact geoimaging

companies’ bottom lines every day by imposing unnecessary hard costs, soft costs and

opportunity costs. The companies that use these sensors to collect imagery and data need

better equipment in order to increase their productivity, increase their margins and grow

their businesses. And we firmly believe that our industry will not achieve its true

potential and advance the “science of where” until sensor technology evolves in a way

that overcomes those limitations and drawbacks.

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The Next Generation of Sensors

So what are the key attributes that the next generation of sensors needs to have in order to

meet the technical and business requirements of geospatial companies for the next 5, 10,

15 years and beyond?

• Flexibility and Multi-Purpose Capabilities – As the use of geospatial data has

grown, the specifications of collection projects have grown in variety and

complexity for geoimaging companies. On a given day, the collection company

often needs to do radically different projects using the same plane or helicopter.

Single-purpose sensors are an obstacle to the variety of projects they are doing,

forcing companies to do tedious and time-consuming set-ups in between flights in

a business where time on the ground is money lost. The next generation of sensors

must be highly flexible, multi-purpose devices that can easily adapt to the needs

of each project.

• Standards-Based Design – Traditional sensors are typically built on proprietary

designs that create interoperability issues between sensors that need to work in

concert with one another. The lack of standards-based design has also inflated

maintenance and repair costs for geospatial companies who must deal with the

chaos of so many different platforms, maintenance programs, etc. Standards-

based design would dramatically simplify things and reduce costs in the process.

• Oblique and 3-D Capabilities – One of the biggest market opportunities for

geospatial companies going forward will be oblique and 3-D imagery, which will

require sensors designed to support those collection capabilities and that are

designed to work in sensor arrays that are integrated to deliver the necessary

precision. The next generation of sensors will be able to do ortho, multispectral,

stereo, oblique, 3D, point clouds and geoinformation product generation, all in

one pass.

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• Miniaturization – The future of sensing will include deployment on a larger

range of aircraft and locations than in the past, and sensors will need to be

optimized for rapid deployment on not only aircraft and helicopters, but also

miniaturized airborne devices and other mobile applications.

These are the key design principles that are shaping the new generation of geoimaging

sensors, and they will provide a powerful foundation for the geospatial industry as we

continue to grow and as we continue to support new applications of geographic

information.

Multipurpose Sensors for a Multipurpose World

Those design principles are being utilized by a new generation of sensors that bring that

vision for the future of geoimaging to fruition. These next-generation sensors leverage

flexibility, multi-purpose capabilities, standards-based design, oblique and 3-D

functionality and miniaturization to support the kinds of revenue-generating geoimaging

projects that companies are doing not only today and tomorrow, but well into the future.

Visual intelligence’s is at the forefront of bring these next-generation sensor solutions to

market, taking them from a mere concept to a solution that customers can put to use

immediately. Visual Intelligence’s family of iOne sensor solutions are based on each of

these design principles discussed above.

The iOne n-Oblique is the newest addition to Visual Intelligence’s iOne family of

solutions. iOne nOblique takes advantage of the iOne Sensor Tool Kit Architecture

(STKA), a next-generation software/hardware foundation for high-performing, multi-

purpose 2D-3D geoimaging sensors for aerial, terrestrial and mobile applications. Using

the power of the iOne STKA platform, the iOne n-Oblique offers three major sets of

advantages to small and large collection companies:

1. It helps geoimaging companies grow their business

2. It allows them to minimize risks

3. And it allows them to enhance the products they provide to their clients

We help them grow their business by:

• Generating new revenue streams with value-added services

• Rapidly configuring/scaling to meet market needs with our sensor toolkit,

enabling customers to do more projects

• Taking advantage of a go-as-you-grow model for sensor functionality

• Providing a path to greater profits.

• Enabling flexibility for large and small projects alike to fit your business model

and new opportunities.

We help them minimize risks with sensor solutions that:

• Have the best price/value in the industry

• Deliver higher margins for the customer

• Are built with a ready-to-go-out-of-the-box design

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• Reduce costs with less flight time, less acquisition time, less fuel, more area

covered

• Produce imagery that is directly ingestible by industry standard photogrammetric

software suites and the leading GIS program

• Have no moving parts and all solid state engineering means highest reliability and

nothing to wear out

• Feature a single sensor that can do the job of two standard sensors

• Are maintainable by customers in the field

• Are reconfigurable and upgradeable by customers

• Are resilient to obsolescence and longer usable life

We help them enhance their products by providing sensor solutions that:

• Are designed and engineered to be modular and scalable

• Offer equivalent or better collection performance than competing systems at a

much lower cost

• Deliver production at lower cost to buy and operate

• Are based on best of breed sensor tech and software, with the best ecosystem of

partners that provide leading edge tools.

• Provide multi-purpose reconfigurability to large-area collection to oblique, and

vice versa

• Enable collection scalable from medium to large to extra-large formats

• Are functionally scalable, allowing customers to buy what they need now and

then add functionality as they grow

• Enable customers to fly low and fast during collect projects

• Are based on numerous key patents

• Provide industry-leading industry accuracy and base-to-height ratio

• Are engineered to be rotated to increase accuracy as needed

The emerging market for oblique and 3D imagery is an exciting opportunity for

collection companies and device-content eCosystems; having the right technology will

make all the difference in pursuing these revenue opportunities. The iOne n-Oblique is

the first and only multi-purpose sensor for capturing oblique/3D imagery, giving

collection companies of all sizes a solution that is flexible, powerful and cost-effective –

a perfect sensor for a multi-purpose world.

Our motto at Visual Intelligence is “Confidently Collect More. Do More. For Less.” and

the iOne n-Oblique affirms our commitment to those principles by providing a solution

that is more productive, less expensive and more accurate than single-purpose solutions

that are being marketed for oblique and 3D use.