(2015/09) drone imagery economics
TRANSCRIPT
Mapping Cost will be zero.
Maps will be made for humans
machines.
• Started by Stephen Mather on Apr 2014
• self-described as “an Open Source Toolkit for Processing Drone Imagery”
• 31 contributors
• installation takes 10m on EC2
• dead easy usage: ./run.pl in images directory
Open-Drone-Map
Point Cloud
Ortho- photo.
…
(Textured) Digital
Surface Model
• OpenDroneMap makes drone imagery data processing as easy as running a single command
• ~80pics take 1h10m on a 16-core EC2 machine
• but: several steps are quadratic in runtime in # images and resolution
• performance improvements underway
• Where to host drone Orthophotos?
• OpenAerialMap is infrastructure for a “simple open way to host and provide access to imagery”*
• Re-Initiated by HOT in 2015; grant from Humanitarian Innovation Fund
• “supporting humanitarian organizations involved in emergency preparedness and response activities”**
* https://github.com/hotosm/OpenAerialMap ** https://docs.google.com/document/d/
1Cyj3x4MWzif3avAviELNaRThKhBdDoAA0sy38kwyH_g/edit
http://beta.openaerialmap.org/
1. Select Area
2. DownloadOrthoimages0. Search & Filter
OpenAerialMap• OpenSource Project & Infrastructure
• Solves rapid sharing of imagery data forhumanitarian purposes
• Clever data federation architecture by separating indexing from data storage leveragingObject Storage (Amazon S3)
• mostly satellite images & some drone imagery
• 1.1k images indexed yet
A Bigger Picture• OpenDroneMap: free drone image processing
• OpenAerialMap: free 2D image hosting, etc.
• OpenTerrain: free terrain model hosting, etc.
• ArduPilot: free flight control & automation
• DIY Drones, OpenUAV, et. al.: free UAV blueprints
Drone Imagery Economics
Drone Imagery Economics 101 w/ OpenDroneMap
• Drone w/ 4K camera: $1000 range
• Storing 250 high-res images: $0.01 / month (Google Cloud Storage)
• Processing those images: 2h or ~$0.40 (AWS EC2 c4.x4large spot instances)
• 4k Camera @ 1cm resolution & 50% overlap: 250 pictures cover 0.2km2
5 times a day, 1 drone surveying 0.2km2
Per Day Per Month Per Year
Drone* $0.92 $27.78 $333
Data Storage $0.05 $1.50 $117Data
Processing $2.00 $60.00 $720
Covered Area 1km2 30km2 360km2
Total Cost ~$3 $90 $1170
* 3y amortization
5 times a day, 1 drone surveying 0.2km2
Per Day Per Month Per Year
Drone* $0.92 $27.78 $333
Data Storage $0.05 $1.50 $117Data
Processing $2.00 $60.00 $720
Covered Area 1km2 30km2 360km2
Total Cost ~$3 $90 $1170
* 3y amortization
Friedrichshain- Kreuzberg: 20.16km2
3D Mapping Berlin*Refresh
Rate Year Month Week Day
# Drones 3 30 128 892
Monthly Cost $270 $2.700 ~$12.000 ~$80.000
* Berlin: 892 km2; Drone month: $90 / 30km2
… even more numbersQuadrocopter Airplane Landsat 8
Acquisition $1.000 $300.000 $850.000.000
Operations $600 $150.000 (pilot + …) $30.000.000
Amortization 3 years 15 years 30 years
Per Year $900 ~$170.000 ~$60.000.000
http://robohub.org/price-wars-counting-the-cost-of-drones-planes-and-satellites/ http://spacenews.com/40841nasa-official-a-landsat-8-clone-would-cost-more-than-650-million/
$19
$19
space for iPhone baseboard
Some Consequences• Trade very accurate, highly-priced gear with
super-inexpensive smartphone-scale chips
• $100 autonomous drones ⇒ mapping cost approaches $0, becomes a “Big Data’esk game”
• Data Acquisition Cost < Total Derivable Value
• Guiding questions: how stale may imagery data be? What else can we do with it?
Historic Mapping Shift?
• Maps used to be power tools of the world, for humans, by humans.
• Machine Vision for Autonomous Systems has different maps needs
• Maps will be built for autonomous systems, human-scale map only a side-effect
Open Questions• At some point, drone manufacturers will truly
leverage smartphone market economics
• When will the first company deliver the autonomous$100 drone with 8K+ video?
• How will legislation react to this?
• How will 100MP+ camera chips on $1000 drones change the quality in the data collection game?
• OMG Privacy??
Summary
• Drones are quite cheap already. Economics works.
• Historic power shift in maps and maps’ users.
• Mapping cost will approach $0.
• 3D maps: machines & robots the primary user.
Thank you
Meg
apix
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iPhone Samsung Galaxy
Smartphone Cameras
Moore’s Law• 2x transistor count every 1.5y
• translated into equiv speed up every generation
• Now Moore’s law works in “opposite direction”
• same performance, half the size every 1.5y
• 8 Core CPUs w/ less than 4Watt power draw
• Drones will become smaller & cheaper keeping the overall performance level