I think AI flown drones is a much more realistic goal now than AI driven cars. It’d certainly make it cheaper and easier for Google and Apple to update maps. Is there anyone working in this space?
What (I think) we need is a regulated system where every drone uses a standard transponder and negotiates airspace either with a controller (e.g. IFR) or other aircraft (e.g. VFR). The future is not everyone flying drones with proprietary AI collision avoidance. One existing product in this space is FLARM which is used by a lot of glider pilots and light aircraft, they also make a UAV variant: https://flarm.com/products/powerflarm/uav/
Autonomous drones themselves exist, are inexpensive, and can be set to fly a survey pattern based on a number of pre-selected GPS waypoints. Ardupilot will do this. The data is used for mapping at a much higher level of data than online maps. Think agri, ecology, general site surveying, etc.
That said, drones are not ideal for replacing aircraft in the large scale mapping. The flight time is poor. An aircraft modified for surveying can cover hundreds of square kilometres a day. A consumer drone with an hour's flight time (good luck) is going to struggle to compete.
Collision avoidance at the local level (e.g. are you going to hit a wall) is a different issue, and that can be solved by standard depth sensors.
You are comparing consumer drones to airplanes. A quick google search tells me you can pick up a drone with over an hour of flight-time for 3.5k-ish (I don't know much about drone pricing so someone may have better options)
Another quick google search tells me cheaper planes go from 25k (crappy) to 40k (reasonable)
You can purchase 10 drones for the price of one airplane. Which I can't imagine an airplane could out map/survey 10 drones working together. I don't know much about drones or planes though so there are probably other restrictions.
Sure, because the OP called out Google maps and that's how Google maps (at high resolution) is created. Drone mapping does tend to be much higher quality because you get a higher image cadence at a lower altitude.
Fixed wing drones tend to be better in terms of flight time, that's certainly true. And you can get gliders which will last even longer if you manually thermal them.
> Another quick google search tells me cheaper planes go from 25k (crappy) to 40k (reasonable)
Add on at least another 20k for survey quality cameras (up to hundreds of k) and more for getting your plane modified (hole in the fuselage) and re-certified. Pilots are expensive, fuel is expensive and getting your annual COA (Certificate of Airworthiness, in the UK), insurance etc is not cheap. Google's surveying aircraft have at least five cameras so they can use photogrammetry (structure from motion) to create their 3D maps. As soon as you introduce surveying LIDAR into the equation, add a zero or two onto the cost estimate.
I don't disagree that you could fly a drone fleet instead of an aircraft, but for country-scale mapping, aircraft make a lot of sense.
The flip side of this unhappy mapping equation is that if you're happy with lower resolution remote sensing data the government satellite programmes are mostly free and libre.
On the other end, it's probably not just any plane for mapping, so cost could be higher. Plus the gimbal and sensor cost is going to be non negligible.
Airplanes have to fly higher though, and thus at lower resolutions. The newest satellites are also getting closer to what they do, and they obviously have better coverage, so the market is shrinking.
Collision avoidance when in visual conditions is "see and avoid", which is all aircraft's responsibility. CFR 14-91.113.b [0]
There is no solely electronic negotiation of airspace permitted (at least not currently). It is unlikely that the FAA would change the law to require all aircraft to be so equipped and, even if they did, it would be close to two decades before any such deadline would come to be. Look at the slow adoption of ADS-B, which is only required in a select minority of airspace starting in 2020.
Flarm and Adsb (mostly in for now, out is more difficult/heavy but there are a few prototypes) are seeing some use. Companies are also trying to standardise around existing aeronautical standards, or to create new ones where needed. But it's a free market and it's not clear which solution will win in the end. The regulators are also closely following.
Before that happens, a good first step is to require all drones to transmit an ID linked to a person. I suspect that just that step would help to curb the worst excesses of amateur drone pilots.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/18/iris-automation-raises-1-5...
Iris Automation has raised money to bring (...) truly self-flying capabilities, to drones used for industrial tasks.
Competitors to Iris in the drone industry specifically include SRI spin-out Area 17 (also known as a17), Intel RealSense Technology, Parrot’s SLAMdunk systems and DJI’s Guidance systems.
But I've probably got it kind of backwards. Manufacturing is where unit tests probably come from and we have been slowly adopting them into programming as we realized their value.
You have an optimistic view of the digitalization of construction project management. I attended a talk not too long ago from one of the bigger project management solution players in the field and they reported that the status quo for most construction projects is progress tracking via Excel.
Structured data in a form that could be used together with autonomous drones is still a few long steps away.
There is a lot of Excel and Microsoft project at the higher levels (resource loading, financial tracking), with more specific software tooling for the lower down/more specialized work (think material and labor estimates, load calculations, environmental modeling, other engineering calculations).
It's true, a firm building residential track housing may be working off really simple project management tools, but that may be all you need. Start building things like powerplants, bridges, skyscrapers and you'll see a whole new tool set.
[1] responsible for $100m+ civil entering and construction projects annually
Each truckload of concrete gets cylinders made. soil/gravel gets sent to labs for testing. Landfill liner welds get field tested and sent to labs to be strength tested for every X ft of welding...
I'm not sure how you would use a drone to help this.