Savvy Technologies Ltd, the owner of HiDef Aerial Surveying Inc, will launch a new camera rig on 1 March. According to the company, the new technology is less expensive to produce and will thus decrease the cost of surveying. The current version of the HiDef technology, which has been operating since 2012, will no longer be built.
Mark Robinson , Managing Director said: “The existing camera rig has been the best performing aerial platform for some time now. Our new rig offers a small improvement in current performance. However, our main goal was to reduce the cost of manufacturing our rigs by 40%, and ultimately the cost of surveying.”
“Over the last few years the aerial survey sector has underinvested in developing its technologies. The result has witnessed new entrants to the market with ‘me too’ offerings. As the ‘first to market’ entrant we wanted to provide clear differentiation between ourselves and our competitors. We decided the best way to achieve this was to target a reduction in costs for customers. Our new rig will allow our licensed operators to reduce survey costs by 30%,” Robinson said.
He further added that within a year, survey costs will be 50% of the current rates, as a collaboration with two university research groups on both sides of the Atlantic will bring the process for identifying bird and sea mammal species to full automation.
Steve Burns , Technical Director for the Group said: “We have taken advantage of developments in camera technology to improve resolution and colour rendition of our new aerial platform, resulting in much faster processing of imagery. We have also automated more of our processes.”
Correction note : The article initially stated that Savvy Technologies as the owner of HiDef Aerial Surveying will launch the new camera rig, which could have been interpreted as referring to HiDef Aerial Surveying Ltd, which Savvy Technologies sold to BioConsult in 2017. The news refers to HiDef Aerial Surveying Inc., the US business still owned by Savvy Technologies.