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The Equal Earth Wall Map is for schools, organizations, or anyone who needs a map showing countries and continents at their true sizes relative to each other. Africa appears 14 times larger than Greenland as it actually is. And wherever you live, the map has you covered. Download a choice of three versions centered on these regions: Africa/Europe, the Americas, and East Asia/Australia. It's free!
Watch Tom and Bojan introduce Equal Earth at the 2018 NACIS conference.
Read full story at Equal Earth…
first published week of: 02/04/2019
NGII plans to implement a new method of State Space Representation to improve the accuracy of its positioning terminals, which are usually used in general location correction information services.
( Korea Bizwire )
It is predicted that location information that is used in smartphones, drones and others will become more accurate in the future.
The National Geographic Information Institute (NGII) said Thursday that it will launch a satellite navigation-based positioning information service from the end of this year to expand its location-based service with State Space Representation, which was used for survey purposes, to general location-based services.
Location correction information is additional information that is used to improve accuracy on satellite measurements using GPS and other satellite navigation systems.
Since 2007, the NGII has provided free location correction information services via the Internet in real time.
The current method employed is the on atack replacement (OSR) method, which is used by more than 1 million people annually.
However, there is a limitation that requires the use of a measuring device, while a measurement is possible with an accuracy of 3 to 5cm.
In response, the NGII plans to implement a new method of State Space Representation to improve the accuracy of its positioning terminals, which are usually used in general location correction information services.
Read full story at Korea Bizwire…
first published week of: 09/09/2019
If anything, the ban that Trump’s administration had laid on the world’s second-largest smartphone company; Huawei, made everyone aware of how dependent they were on U.S. technology. After being hit by the shockwave earlier this year, Huawei has realized the importance of being independent. Ever since the company is doing all it can do to stand on its own legs so that it doesn’t face the brunt of monopolistic power in the future. In its latest move, Huawei is gearing up for its own Maps service.
But before you jump the gun, this isn’t a service that will serve end-consumers directly as Google Maps or Waze does. Instead, this service is aimed at software developers who make use of mapping services for applications.
The Huawei Map Kit will be available in 40 languages and will cover more 150 countries and regions. The mapping service will offer real-time traffic conditions and a highly sophisticated navigation system that will also be able to recognize lane changing. It will also support augmented-reality mapping.
Read full story at Mashable India…
first published week of: 08/26/2019
Agricultural Drones Market will be driven by increasing funding for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) manufacturers and growing awareness about benefits amongst farmers. Improving automation and precision farming initiatives will support the industry growth. Farmers are implementing this advanced technology to obtain better productivity and efficiently use their land, water, and fertilizers. These products also help farmers in taking pictures of their fields, and providing crop and soil data for assisting crop management. Adding sensors and other equipment such as GPS and Geographic Information System (GIS) has benefited UAVs for better positioning and traveling.UAV LiDAR and photogrammetry imaging applications are potential opportunities for the agricultural drones market size. UAVs mounted with lidar drones in community projects will help in providing aerial view and building topographic maps. Imaging software is important for processing images that are captured by the cameras mounted on the UAVs. This software also enables data analysis for the required fertilizer amount to be sprayed in the fields. The UAVs equipped with thermal, infrared, multi spectral, and hyperspectral cameras provide a better vision for farmers to protect their crop and plantation.The agricultural drones have gained maximum leverage from the Internet of Things, arguably making agricultural industry much more advanced than ever before. The IoT is now set to drive the future of farming to the next level. High-tech and smart farming are no more things of the past, thanks to sensors and agricultural drones. Software solutions are in a way helping farmers by delivering real-time data for boosting yields. Furthermore, all of these technologies including satellite farming and agricultural drones are helping precision farming market to stimulate over the coming years.
Read full story at Tech Mag…
first published week of: 02/18/2019
The field of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t new, and neither are its grand promises. AI as an academic pursuit has its roots in the 1950s. Early AI researchers were filled with optimism, but—despite some initial work that appeared groundbreaking, such as the first artificial neural networks—the field saw slow progress over the next several decades. By the mid-1970s, the field had hit a bit of a roadblock—there was a loss in interest largely due to inflated expectations as well as the failure to deliver on the promise of AI. This period is known as the first AI winter.
Following the first AI winter, advances in the field saw AI once again, albeit slowly, gaining momentum and funding, but only for a brief time. By the early-1990s, AI had again failed to live up to expectations. While AI had been tightly integrated into people’s everyday lives, it still largely failed on problems that most humans deem simple, such as recognizing features in images or understanding speech. With a 40-year history and a failure to live up to the hype, things appeared bleak for AI.
Then something happened. In the last decade, due to the advent of massive volumes of data gathered from the Internet and powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) capable of supercomputer-like performance on certain tasks, a particular type of AI algorithm has seen massive resurgence.
Read full story at American Association of Geographers…
first published week of: 04/22/2019
Could 95 percent of self-driving car projects using lidar be heading down the wrong path?
Elon Musk's objections aside, lidar is powering self-driving vehicle development. The spinning lasers are the keystone sensor in most autonomous driving projects. Prices are falling, and with so-called solid state solutions from companies like Innoviz, Google's quirky dome top lidar sirens are a thing of the past.
And still, not all lidar is created equal. In fact, with news last week that Audi is tapping Silicon Valley startup Aeva to supply lidar sensors for its self-driving ambitions, there are now two competing lidar technologies coming to market: Those that use an amplitude modulation (AM) approach to sensing, and a newer class of lidar that relies on frequency modulation (FM).
A quick primer, which you can use to bore your kids on your next road trip. Companies using AM lidar modulate the amplitude of pulsed waves from the spinning laser array and then calculate the time it takes for the light to bounce back. It uses the information to get a fix on objects in the sensing field, such as other cars or pedestrians.
To date, over 95 percent of the $1.1 billion "lidar bubble" is invested in companies pursuing AM sensing. So it must be pretty rock solid, right?
Not according to companies like Aeva and Montana-based Blackmore, another lidar company that's developed an approach to laser sensing. Blackmore has spent more than 10 years developing FM lidar for the Department of Defense, where the company's lidar sensors have been used to scan perimeters and detect intrusion. It started shipping products to OEMs, Tier 1s, and AV start-ups globally in early 2018. It also has some impressive backers, with funding from two industry heavyweights: Toyota AI Ventures and BMW i Ventures.
Read full story at ZDNet…
first published week of: 04/22/2019