How Lucrative is the Drone Mapping Business?

you're listening to the ask of droney podcast you ask we answer your drone questions whether you're here to turn your passion into profit and you simply fly for fun we're a community of wares and teachers who aspire to achieve greatness we are hey everyone welcome to another spectacular episode of ask drone you my name is Debra and I'm just Rob and this is episode number 6 what is this 665 thank you guys Rob aka Chuck nasty the nasty that only happens when the Hat goes it's only happens when he drives into the parking lot with his hat on backwards and he's driving the suburban with gangster wins yes he does have one of those convinced that we have gangster rims you have black 20-inch rims and it's not like he got it done for any particular reason it was just you bought the car like that right oh yeah well yeah I wouldn't buy them and not into that it's not that's not your financial mo no no it definitely is not suburban I'm gonna spend like five grand on rims no that's not that's not a that's not me no it's not me either I try to keep things factory on the car because I do too it lasts longer I actually prefer that but anyways that didn't happen in this particular case it's okay nasty well let's get into today's question it's actually gonna be a deep one we're gonna be getting all kinds of scientific we're gonna philosophize we're gonna talk about deep scientific things we're gonna we're gonna make America holy this I think it'll be good no I say scientific things we might lose some people know if you this is where the industry is going this is where and I'm glad I learned about this stuff five years ago but this is this is where the money is because if you want to if you want to do more than just fly and film and you really want to make a career and support a family and build a retirement fund and pay for health care or not I don't know the healthcare things up to you I think you're gonna want to hear this question which is brought to you by hmm brought to you by our friends at videoblocks com4 / drone guys if you've ever been on a project I know Paul's been in the situation where he's done a project been out filming gets back and even Paul let me say so hmm gets back and realizes crap I didn't get X Shawn or me and I really needed this b-roll that I did not get mother-effer or there's a lot of that actually or there's a particular sound I'm looking for well you know what just head to videoblocks comm or audio blocks comm and by the way if you go to that video blocks comm slash drone you're gonna get both for 149 bucks check it out it's a really good option for a lot of you guys out there putting these videos together you know you said something that actually I've been doing a lot of audio sound bits recently because I realize just how much they're used in cable television and so like I did this I really wanted to showcase kind of the ocean vibe of wake surfing and I needed some some pelicans literally like I'm pretty sure I can pull up the video right now surf how there you go surf how you want give me the video surf how you want and it literally know that that's not the right one that's the Instagram at it but it literally starts out with pelicans let me see if I got the pelicans in here yeah so you might be out shooting and the birds are not cooperating they're sleeping yeah they're it's not the morning you can't hear that whoa here we go so you wanted the sound is that which I wanted the sound yeah okay play this thing play that [Music] before you fall asleep on us we'll get back to the show okay hey guys my name is Ryan and I just got a 90% this morning on the 107 thanks to your program I have a couple quick questions about some of the competition I have around my area in the state that I'm gonna be building my business and there's a lot of multispectral hyperspectral thermal mapping light detection and ranging which I guess some lasers that they use I'm not too familiar with this and I'm still learning all about it I was wondering if you guys have had any experience with this and how lucrative it may be I realized there's probably a lot more equipment I'm going to have to buy as well as software to get into this but if you guys could give me you know just brief explanation of some of it or what's worked for you guys I'd really appreciate that thanks Thank You Ryan this question is a little deeper I love it yes definitely definitely can be lucrative we know that and you're definitely gonna have to spend some money he's definitely in fact I feel like one of the most lucrative jobs right now is mapping with lidar systems but in order to get below the accuracy of what photogrammetry can do you're definitely spending a hundred grand on the ground and if that's why 80 grand on the sensor but let's talk a little bit about these sensors let's talk about what they do and let's talk about the practical jobs that you can get from these sensors so lidar is like detection and ranging that's literally what it stands for and lidar is really used in mapping complex objects complex arenas complex areas but it's also used in pipeline and gas line inspection it's really really powerful for seeing cracks in pipelines especially oil pipelines so if you're flying a vehicle like that chances are you are charging a few hundred dollars a minute to fly it I'm not exaggerating there's someone here in Albuquerque doing that right now that's not me but I can tell you who it is but I'm not going to because I don't like anyway but it is very very valuable you may want to look at a fixed-wing drone to fly that the silent Falcon is a very good drone for that again you're talking a hundred grand for the drone but when you can make hundreds of dollars a minute you tend to make that cost up significantly and rather quickly let's talk about multi spectral sensor so even if you google multi spectral sensor or hyper spectral sensor you really don't get the official how do I say this the official technical term the definition of what it really is so multi spectral sensor is essentially looking at multiple bands of light that's how I want you to remember multi spectral multiple bands of light but what it's doing is it's using filters to filter out every single band of light that is not specific to what you're looking for so multispectral sensors are looking for the specific reflectivity and absorbance of light to give you specific information now multispectral sensors are used to significantly in agriculture to do disease prevention and control it's also used to see how healthy plants are by looking for specific elements in those plants and people also use multi spectral sensing in mining it's actually more like hyper spectral sensing but when you're looking for multiple things on the surface multi spectral sensors can be very helpful if you're using multispectral sensors chances are you're working in agriculture and if you are working in agriculture I would recommend something like the precisionhawk system they've got an entire I mean it is an end-to-end solution you can buy a multispectral sensor but how was your client going to visualize the data how are they going to interpret the data and how are they going to take actions on the data what precisionhawk does is it provides you with a drone it's a land caster drone and a multispectral sensor they actually set the camera up to look for what you want to look for but they also give you a back-end solution to process that data to create maps with the multispectral stuff the multispectral images and they index that data so that your clients can also view that data on the backend now for a precision hawk again you're looking in the fifty to a hundred thousand dollar range and a lot of people have said to me they're not firm believers in precision hawk I kind of questioned those people who have said that because I think it's one of the best and the end solutions but again unless you're in agriculture or mining or discovery or oil discovery probably not for you now hyperspectral sensors I call the hyper spectral sensor and the way that you can remember it is looking for a needle in a haystack it is the one thing that I think that we could find Forrest Fenn's treasure with here in New Mexico Rob hey I'm serious I believe I know you're serious so and I actually found out what that treasure chest is made out of so as soon as we get our hands on one I know we're going up to Pilar and we're gonna go fly some mapping missions mm-hmm so does he have rules or does it I don't give if he has rules what thing we were doing with our coach and my whole how was challenge the status quo there you go okay the question was not do you care whether or not their rules anyway so hyperspectral sensor is a needle in a haystack and I talked about this in my book live in the drone life which is on Amazon if you pick one up and please leave me a review I would love to see what you think about that but a hyperspectral sensor is literally having the availability to find a needle in a haystack why because you are only looking for one specific band of light you're looking for that band of light based off of one specific reflectivity and one specific set of absorbency so every single chemical every single how do I say this I'm not finding the right word here scientists are gonna kill me right now every single particle every single thing like copper versus plastic versus polycarbonate versus I'm trying to think lead they all have different rates of absorbency and reflectivity so if you can set your hyperspectral camera to look for your wife's turquoise ring on a beach riddled with minerals you will literally be able to see nothing in the camera but turquoise so it is a very cool technology it is how you find a needle in a haystack it is also how a lot of oil agencies are looking for oil they're looking for humates they're looking for different things on the ground to tell them what's below to see if it is a hydrocarbon rich area to do drilling and oil essentially exploration it's really cool all the different things I'm even noticing here that lidar is being it's in one of the main technologies behind driverless cars oh yeah a hundred percent Bella dine is actually the the main manufacturer of that and we are trying to get a bird in the air that can fly a Bella dine unit but the issue is that the lower-end valid ein unit only has accuracy of two centimeters per pixel which as a ground sampling distance is not very accurate interesting so you really have to dig into this stuff super super deep and I'm hoping that we can do classes on it in the future because there is a lot of money in exploration there's a lot of money in pipeline inspection there is a lot of money in oil rig inspections um but they take very specific drones and for example if you're doing oil offshore oil rig inspections you've got to have drones that are spark proof you've got to have there are levels and levels of nuances that you would have to be prepared for so if you want to take on those challenges if that really excites you I would love to hear from you and I think it's I think it's a very cool interesting field to get into and it is deep stuff though it's it is deep stuff but if you go into it I mean this is the type of stuff that DARPA is using to develop new platforms new vehicles it is the wave of the future it all you know it's funny because someone once told me they loved their Tesla because it's got autopilot on it but I would never trust autopilot because it's based off of stereoscopic sensors which is essentially two visual cameras I would trust it if it was based off of lidar interest not radar lidar so when I know more about radar now because of our hush-hush contract that I can't talk about well there are various ways to go about this and so there's kind of it's cool I mean there's a competition all ultimately going on but obviously lidar seems to be taking the lead with self-driving cars so it is you can even get an RP lidar sensor on a drone which RP lidar is only I think 500 bucks on Amazon but you've got to learn how to program a little computer to actually process that data your drone cannot process that data on its own if you do have an M 600 there is the I forget the name of the DJI you know I think it might be called the DJI module but it's essentially a secondary bored computer that can process that data and store that data so you can actually get the data on the point cloud from the lidar so yeah I mean created you actually think about what's in driverless cars I do think there were a few years out just because I don't believe that the processing power is there yet because essentially lidar is creating a point cloud the software is reading the point cloud and in my how do I say this experience of using radar and lidar and point clouds I don't think that many of these programs can even handle the speed at which that is necessary to do complex operating environment which makes the vehicles too expensive for the market yes because you could you could make it happen but now you've got whatever I don't $200,000 car you remember that computer we priced out yeah it would probably have to be three or four of those yeah yeah so like it's not gonna work forty grand not the market it's not gonna accept that but not yet it's coming it definitely is coming and like all things in technology will we will grow we will scale we will have faster and faster things for cheaper and cheaper prices so um it's funny what is that Elon Musk has repeatedly pushed the idea that if humans can perceive and navigate the world using just eyes ears in a brain then why can't a car hmm you on your cool dude I'm not gonna tell him he can't do it no right me neither so but how do you put intuition in a vehicle yeah because there are times like that's more intuition in a 16 year old my son's about to start driving I might take the computer over that then well like there are times like this morning where an old man is on his phone and I hate old people young people middle-aged people if you're on your phone and you're driving you're threatening someone's life and I am going to let you know about it on the road so I'm not going to be aggressive but I am going to literally pull up next to you and rail on my horn and let you know that I don't like the idea that you're threatening my life and the people around us but uh intuition for example is when someone pulls out and they're on their phone and they don't really are able to accurately gauge the speed that you're going and you have to aggressively speed up to actually avoid an accident that's what I mean about intuition most people don't know that if you are driving over 35 miles an hour you should actually speed up to avoid an accident not slowed down you will learn this information if you attend the BMW driving school in Spartanburg South Carolina boy go in all kinds of directions in this oil you always say how I'm super analytical when I Drive and it's true oh my gosh I there I defy you to find somebody else who is more of an analytical track and some people think I'm aggressive and literally last night I was on the phone with an APD officer and I'm like I just watched three people go through and this is my friend I wasn't ratting these people out but I was like I just watched three people run a red light because they were on their phone and I said I wish police officers would seriously ticket every single person who goes on their phone and let speeders go because if you're speeding and you're not aggressively speeding I mean like you're speeding you're like 15 over the speed limit and you're not aggressively changing lanes you're just in a hurry you tend to be more perceptive you tend to be more observant and when you're on your phone you are less observant all significantly honestly I just I want to be a cop for a week to just create a youtube series with how I pull people over for being on their phones and make fun of people and be like are you making fun of me meow do I look like a kitty gentleman from tree to tree on nimbly bhimli I'm feeling you get in trouble if they allow that I'm sure I would but I'd sure love to yeah anyways Ryan you're getting more than you bargained for with this question but hopefully hopefully it's been helpful it's it's always an education to me actually to hear Paul talk about this stuff I love I love hyperspectral sensors and I wish I could have not get my hands on one too to do a class on it because I think that you know this goes back to like what I learned in school the human eye can really only see about 1% of all light and with these other sensors we can see about 30% of all light and I think that's really cool yeah it is cool and what's really cool is the technology that's coming out of that capability so think about this if we can only see 1% of all light then how do you know that there's not an alien this room right now well I don't smell anything you know kind of weird or anything that's the copy machine yeah anyway guys that's gonna do it for us today if you found this episode useful or valuable please leave us a review or share the show do us a favor please especially if you're not a member if you are a member thank you so much for the support we greatly appreciate it and if you're not a member and you want to support the show becoming a member is a great way to do it because you get a lot deeper information and a lot more of it and it's on demand whenever you want it so check it out the drone EUCOM that's gonna do it for us today my name is Paul my name is Rob this is ask drone you [Music]

Channel: Drone U

Views: 19,771

Keywords: drone license, drone training, Learn to fly a drone, Start a drone business, Part 107 exam, Commercial drone test, Faa drone license, Part 107 drone test, faa certificate, how to get your drone license, drone U, droneu, commercial drone license, How to fly a drone, How to start a drone business, Making money with a drone, how to fly drones commercially, learn to fly drones

Id: NxYhR2HjjAw

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 06 2017