Black Swift Technologies (BST) has announced that it has overcome the challenges of mapping terrain in difficult conditions at altitudes exceeding 14,000 feet using a small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS). BST demonstrated that a sUAS can successfully be deployed at extreme altitudes and deliver geo-referenced digital aerial images enabling detailed actionable information cost-effectively without concern for a surveyor’s well-being or equipment malfunctions.
Utilizing BST’s SwiftTrainer, a turnkey sUAS flight system designed specifically for GIS mapping applications, BST captured millions of data points in a fully autonomous flight over Colorado’s Mount Evans. The geo-tagged images were easily integrated into processing software resulting in an accurate 3D orthomosaic (a highly detailed map in true scale).
“Surveyors have been using sUAS in place of more expensive manned aerial missions for quite some time now,” stated Jack Elston, Ph.D., CEO of Black Swift Technologies. “Being able to demonstrate that a sUAS can be an effective and accurate mapping platform in areas inaccessible to vehicles or at extreme altitudes solidifies the added value surveyors can offer their clients.”
Using BST’s exclusively developed Mission Planning Software, surveyors can program the SwiftTrainer in minutes to calculate the area under review and then begin collecting data for immediate analysis and decision making. Leveraging an intuitive tab-driven interface, flight planning is easy to accomplish. Mission monitoring and mapping is all done from a handheld Android Tablet loaded with BST’s SwiftTab software. Intuitive gesture-based controls enable users to confidently deploy their SwiftTrainer with minimal training while being able to collect data over geography that is topically diverse.
BST’s aerospace and software engineers designed the hardware, flight management system, and essential software from the ground up. This unified, fully integrated approach ensures that users have the right airframe and sensor suite to address their specific application requirements without compromise.
Watch a video overview of the SwiftTrainer test below:
