Advanced geospatial augmented reality overlays now compatible with ANAFI platform drones
Paris and Middleton, WI – April 27, 2021: Parrot, the leading European drone group, announced today its partnership with Rapid Imaging – a technology provider delivering geospatial augmented reality (AR) and situational awareness solutions to government and enterprise users.
This partnership pairs Parrot ANAFI USA, ANAFI platform drones, and the FreeFly SDK with Rapid Imaging’s SmartCam3D® SDK, the industry-leading geospatial Augmented Reality and situational awareness platform for Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
SmartCam3D® overlays valuable geospatial data such as Street Vectors, Road Names, Points of Interest, Polygons, and other pertinent map entities onto real-time, full-motion-video (FMV) provided by the ANAFI USA’s powerful 4K HDR video, 32x zoom, and live video streaming capabilities – providing mission personnel with advanced situational awareness as they perform critical drone operations. SmartCam3D® also allows end-users to interact with live drone video in the same ways they would a map display, such as dropping a pin to mark a location or geocoding a selection from the real-time video stream. These powerful situational awareness capabilities present opportunities across a variety of mission-sets ranging from Airborne Law Enforcement, Insurance, and Industrial Inspections, to natural disaster response, Real Estate, and search and rescue operations.
The SmartCam3D® SDK is easy-to-integrate, providing a turn-key solution for UAS Platform Providers seeking to enrich their offerings with geospatial augmented reality and situational awareness tools. Available features include geospatial AR, allowing users to enjoy a “Google Maps-like” experience but with live drone video as the background layer as opposed to a satellite image, granular declutter options, allowing users to select the types of map entities displayed on their live video feed, custom GIS data integration, allowing users to import their own geospatial data to display, Pin-Dropping, allowing users to mark locations within the live video with AR annotations and communicate those locations to a map display, forward- and reverse-geocoding, allowing professional drone pilots to designate a point in the video and immediately receive the geospatial data associated with that point (e.g., Lat/Long or Address) or designate a location (i.e., Lat/Long or Address) and mark the location with an AR annotation within the video display, and Cross-Cuing, allowing end-users to simultaneously navigate a full-motion-video display and map display.
“Leveraging Parrot ANAFI USA’s precise GPS coordinates and advanced flight features, SmartCam3D® provides first responders and military personnel with up-to-date geospatial AR overlays on live video, combining the benefits of both a 2D map display and a Full-Motion-Video display into a single operating picture.” said Jerome Bouvard, Parrot Director of Strategic Partnerships. “This new partnership will provide easy-to-comprehend data to better assist first responders into making quick and accurate decisions during high-stress missions.”
All data captured through SmartCam3D® during sensitive missions is secure, as Parrot drone users must opt-in to share flight data with Parrot’s secure to store footage. Parrot ANAFI USA also features Secure Digital (SD) card encryption, which ensures complete protection of photos and videos if the drone or the SD card is lost.
“The Parrot ANAFI USA has been a great platform to work with – as a developer with a long history of providing geospatial situational awareness technologies to military end-users, platform metadata reported from the UAV is critical to mission success,” said David Geisler, CEO of Rapid Imaging. “The team at Parrot does it right, ensuring high-quality, synchronous metadata from the ANAFI and ensuring accurate geospatial information and overlays for end-users.”
Rapid Imaging has been developing and licensing geospatial situational awareness software for over two decades. Its technology was originally deployed with the NASA X-38 in initial unmanned testing and today is deployed with all US Army Tactical Unmanned Systems as a module within the US Army’s Universal Ground Control Station (UGCS). Additional efforts have been with the Federal Aviation Administration, the US Air Force, and a variety of Enterprise Customers in the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance space.
The SmartCam3D® SDK is available for Android, iOS, Linux, and Windows systems for use with ANAFI and ANAFI USA platform drones. To learn more about Rapid Imaging and to request access to the SmartCam3D® SDK, please contact Rapid Imaging through its contact form.
For more information about ANAFI USA or for any request, please contact Parrot through its ANAFI USA contact form.