Hyderabad (India), February 11, 2015: The first day of the India Geospatial Forum 2015 saw experts deliberating on one of the most prominent trends in the geospatial industry today — commoditisation of technology.
Kick-starting the first plenary talks, Bhupinder Singh, Senior Vice President, Bentley Systems, US, stressed on the importance of making geospatial technology cost effective. “There has been a major advancement in technology, be it laser scanning, smartphones, digital cameras and drones. New methods are replacing the traditional means of surveying,” said Singh. He also revealed that Bentley has recently acquired Acute3D for advance reality modeling. Acute3D automates the generation of high-resolution, fully-3D representations from digital photographs taken with any camera, whether highly specialised or embedded in a smartphone.
While Singh presented case studies based on geospatial technology for infrastructure, Bert Turner, Senior Vice President – Sales & Marketing, DigitalGlobe, US, highlighted the use of geospatial crowdsourcing in various causes like Ebola. “Complex problems need investment to be solved,” said Turner, adding that we shouldn't allow commodisation of imagery deter innovation. He also informed the audience that there are 164 earth observation satellites orbiting around the earth.
Quah Beng Chieh, Director-Asia Pacific, FARO, educated the attendees about the evolution of geospatial sensors and highlighted vital factors that drive commodisation: price; accuracy; simplicity; mobility. “From entire table of products to compact, light and affordable laser scanners, technology has come a long way. We are also working on something called ‘FARO Scanner Freestyle’ which would put laser scanning in user’s hands,” said Chieh. He ended his talk by pointing out the application of laser scanning in gaming, historical preservation and forensics.
Source: Our Correspondent
