Terra is an easy-to-use map-based interface developed to help industry professionals transform real work scenarios into digital assets by capturing, analyzing, and visualizing their project environment. It is a GIS, design automation, and data management platform enabling developers to manage multiple development projects and sites with preliminary site evaluation and design topography options.
Key Concepts & Methodology
Terra helps in reducing the complexity of the terrain analysis. Below are the steps followed.
Photogrammetry
SenseHawk uses a method known as photogrammetry to generate 3D surfaces and terrain maps. Photogrammetry, as a science, is more than a century old - the basic technique involves the collection of aerial photographs that overlap with each other. Overlapping photographs are analyzed for standard features in the area of overlap. Suppose the exact location and orientation of the camera are known at the time of capture of each image. In that case, the XYZ locations of these common points can be precisely determined to construct a 3D point cloud, using which a 3D surface and a color orthomosaic map are generated. Below is a high-level overview of the photogrammetry process.
FIG 1: OVERVIEW OF PHOTOGRAMMETRY PROCESS
With the help of RTK (Real-time kinematic) equipped drones and adequate ground control, 3D surfaces generated by this method will have absolute accuracies of up to +/- 1 cm (0.4 inches). In most cases, the accuracy levels exceed those obtained from more traditional methods like LiDAR1.
Additionally - our proprietary terrain filtering process removes extraneous objects such as vegetation, buildings, farm machinery, and so on from the surface model, giving an accurate picture of the bare-earth terrain.
FIG 2: OUR PROPRIETARY TERRAIN FILTERING ALGORITHM REMOVES EXTRANEOUS OBJECTS
SUCH AS TREES FROM THE SURFACE MODEL, GIVING YOU A TRUE PICTURE OF THE TERRAIN.