Parrot, the leading European drone group, has announced 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.
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.”
