Yes, I too agree that the unmanned mapping are for a different purpose where a well defined and much smaller area (like a mining site) is required to be mapped in greater detail.
I have to admitted that an accuracy of 2.5mm is impressive and of course in this case, this is required to see individual piping on the ground for managers to make decisions.
Interesting that the article did not mention how long the mapping exercise takes or for what sized area. But the most important question is at what cost?
But costs aside, even if it takes a drone 2 weeks to precisely map even a 100 km square area than I think upscaling this technology to a typical city wide level of 10,000 km square will roughly take 200 weeks to perform (or almost 4 years) !
With Nearmap refreshing locations 4 times a years, I don't think trying to sell a solution with a refresh frequency of every 4 years is going to go down that well for many customers.
Besides, under certain "special" circumstances, Neaarmap can in fact produce photomaps at 2 cm resolutions (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearmap), so they are constantly improving on their camera systems to make their images better anyway.
NEA Price at posting:
96.8¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
