AGI makes Satellite Tool Kit, an astrodynamics application for designing, visualizing and analyzing air and space flight. It does a lot of heavy lifting for government agencies, the military, and civilian aircraft manufacturers.
One use is the planning of flying unmanned flying drone (UAV) missions and the analysis of gathered data. Not everyone has an STK system installed, however, so now there is a utility that exports that data (and stuff like it) to KML. It’s shown in action in this YouTube video:
Watch it even if just for the eye-candy of seeing how STK’s virtual globe works. Can’t wait for this kind of augmented reality prowess to show up in Google Earth:-) Okay, maybe we’ll have to wait a couple of years.
I had seen this a while back, but haven’t given it a go – yet. I can see where this would have potentially great benefit for some of the smaller commercial contractors out there developing UAV technologies that can be utilized/flown for map collection.
Massive synergistic potential here as well for GE and Maps development.
why doesn’t it incorporate the video footage directly into the GE kml file??? that would be neat… like every sec one screenshot as overlay…. or as a next step a video stream overlay onto GE map with a UAV model flying the path and the video playing synchronous @ the same time
Smokeonit,
This appears to be more of a planning and post-production tool. Using it with a UAV system (such as Pict’Earth, for example) one can imagine the possibilities.
Say you’re a communications company, and you’d like to map the line-routes in very high resolution. You also know that not only is aerial imagery significantly inadequate in resolution to map or monitor your lines, but, you’re also aware of the caveats associated in aerial collection costs. In comes the use of a consumer-grade UAV, and a form of planning and production or analysis tool.
In this case – that communications company could effectively plan a collection route in-office, so to speak — pass that file onto the collection expert (who has a light UAV), the collection made, potentially allowing for QA analysis of the collection-route by the handler prior to finalizing the collect, and passed back to office… Now, an analyst (or whomever) can load-up the actual way-point track in the same application to gain a better understanding of the methodology in comparison to the original route. They can also finalize the procedure entirely by exporting to KML for visualization in Google Earth.
A very practical tool for practical end-use.