In an exclusive interview with Rob Cammack, CEO of SmartDrone, a trailblazer in the drone manufacturing industry, insights were shared on the company’s journey, its innovative solutions, and the future of commercial drones in a changing global landscape.
Discovery 3
Founded in February 2020, just before the world ground to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic, SmartDrone faced unprecedented challenges as a startup. “It was really a lot to work through for a startup when you were locked down and couldn’t really access your customers or get your engineering team together in a physical location,” Cammack explained. Yet, these challenges also birthed unexpected opportunities. Supply chain disruptions prompted the company to enhance in-house development, significantly strengthening its manufacturing resilience.
SmartDrone, based in Tyler, Texas, prides itself on its three main business divisions: manufacturing, services, and soon-to-launch data processing. Their flagship product, the Discovery 3 integrated LiDAR platform, was developed closely with land surveyors to ensure it meets their specific needs. “We interviewed over 50 land surveyors during development… it’s the easiest platform for a land surveyor. They can learn it in less than a day, be doing jobs that day, and create their own deliverables the next day,” Cammack noted.
We are winding down our Industry Predictions 2020 series now, with one more week to go. The commitment of industry professionals to what lies ahead in 2020 is demonstrated in these informative views.
This week we cover topics such as digital adoption maturity in construction, VR/AR, drone capture and laser scanning, and cloud adoption. CMiC, Autodesk, Trimble and Workspot are our featured voices.
Every January AECCafe Voice publishes blogs of industry predictions from our readers. This article is the second installment of those predictions. This year we have extended the deadline to Tuesday, January 14th for entries.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – JANUARY 01: Thousands of people line the harbour around the suburb of North Sydney during New Year’s Eve celebrations on January 01, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by James D. Morgan/Getty Images)
The annual Bentley Systems Year in Infrastructure Awards was held in Singapore this year at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Finalists and attendees gather to learn about the projects and ultimately to see who is awarded the winning distinction in each category. Categories include Buildings and Campuses, Road and Rail Asset Performance, Digital Cities, Bridges, Power Generation, Utilities and Industrial Asset Performance, 4D Construction Modeling, Reality Modeling, Mining and Offshore Engineering, Rail and Transit, Roads and Highways, Manufacturing, Water and Wastewater, and Communications and Utilities.
2019 was a banner year for Bentley’s Year In Infrastructure thought leadership conference, in its focused attention to what organizations need to manage increasing quantities and densities of data. Digital Twins were definitely the order of the day this year, with other technologies taking front and center stage in the form of acquisitions.
GeoCue President and CTO, Lewis Graham, answered some questions for GISCafe Voice about GeoCue products and their new TrueView platform. TrueView is UAV/LiDAR fusion by design, according to company materials, an integrated LIDAR/camera fusion platform designed from the ground up to generate high accuracy 3D colorized point clouds.
