Oct 31, 2014 -- The American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) UAS Reno Symposium Data Processing Team leader, Lewis Graham, has issued the following statement in response to the October 29, 2014 press release by SimActive:

“SimActive incorrectly characterized the data processing that we performed at our hugely successful ASPRS unmanned aerial system conference held in Reno, Nevada on 21-22 October 2014 as a competition between UAS imagery post-processing software.  The intent of the data processing component at the symposium was to provide an objective, real-world data processing perspective to the attendees.   The ASPRS UAS Reno Conference committee invited a group of volunteers to process data collected by our hobbyist fliers over an ASPRS calibration and demonstration range so that an objective real-world perspective could be developed. 

Data were processed using a wide variety of software applications, all running on low power Windows laptops and external USB disk drives.  None of the volunteers encountered any difficulty with the various software applications running on these machines.  Not all data were processed, not due to processing issues but because volunteers were splitting their time between attending the conference and processing data.  SimActive was the only company who shipped a workstation dedicated to data processing and devoted a full time person to the effort.

As was conveyed to attendees during the wrap-up of the conference, all of the software packages used in the data processing segment distinguished themselves with different strengths.  There are many applications for sUAS-based photogrammetry that range from simple orthomosaics for remote sensing data analysis for agriculture to precise point clouds and stereo photogrammetry suitable for 3D analytic work such as volumetric analysis. 

Practitioners of photogrammetry who intend to use sUAS technology need to define their business case and then make software selections specifically suited to these business uses.  It must be emphasized that SimActive’s statement “The ASPRS demo showed that we offer the only viable photogrammetric solution to produce survey-grade results in the most efficient manner,” made in their press release is patently false.   The independent assessments of the results were not provided to SimActive and hence there is no supportable basis for their claims.  In fact, the SimActive Correlator3D software is incapable of generating a color rendered high definition point cloud and hence was not even evaluated on the critical criteria of vertical point cloud accuracy.

The ASPRS holds itself to the highest standards of professionalism and I sincerely regret this very unfortunate overreach in advertising by SimActive.”

The American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) is “The Imaging and Geospatial Information Society”, a scientific non-profit association with a mission to advance knowledge and improve understanding of mapping sciences, to promote the responsible applications of photogrammetry, remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and supporting technologies.

Contact:

Becky Morton,
UAS MAPPING 2014 RENO
Symposium Chair
Email Contact
510-619-6262