Welcome to the Q3 2020 Issue of GeoCue Group News!
Enough already! We are all growing extremely weary of living under the restrictions of a pandemic. Alas, we have to focus on the things over which we have some control. One of the things we can control is using this time to plan for the future. If your business has slowed, perhaps it is a good time to do an internal assessment of your workflows. Where could a bit of software refresh help with production? What can be done on the training front to prepare staff for the business ramp-up that will invariable come as things ease back to normal?
For us, the biggest impact has been our inability to conduct training at customer sites. Our most successful customers conduct at least annual staff training to ensure everyone is using the latest software and workflow improvements. While this can be done remotely, it tends to be much more focused when conducted on-site. Nevertheless, our True View monthly training for system subscriptions to the True View 410 has very successfully transitioned to a remote format. It is a testament to the ease of use of the software that folks can attend a remote training session and then successfully conduct projects with the system.
True View 615/620 Release
The big news for us this quarter is the release of our new True View 615/620 3D Imaging System (3DIS) for drones. These systems add the Riegl miniVUX2 to our sensor lineup. First systems will have been delivered by the time you read this. There is a detailed article in this issue providing an overview of this exciting new member of the True View family.
LP360 Update
I have been rather undisciplined about stopping the “one more feature” syndrome when releasing LP360. This has delayed our release of the 2020.1 version of LP360 while we upgraded a few core elements. This release will be going out this quarter, I promise!
USDA Project
We have started a research project with the USDA to develop tools and techniques for inspecting earthen dams using airborne and water drone technology with an array of different sensors. This project is just kicking off; we’ll publish our findings when we have collected enough data to draw some initial conclusions. I am very exciting about this project since it presents a use case ideal for drone applications.
Terrasolid Releases Spatix
On the Terrasolid front, the new Spatix-based capability has been released for preliminary evaluation. This new version of Terrasolid runs without a MicroStation prerequisite. There is a detailed article later in this newsletter explaining this new option.
Enterprise Data Management
Our Enterprise Data Management team continues to build solutions based on the Amazon Web Services platform. Our Earth Sensor Portal stack has matured to a very high performance system that is processing gigabytes of data every data. These data originate at a hyperspectral sensor on the International Space Station, are downlinked to the NASA Huntsville Operations Support Center and immediately pushed up to our Earth Sensor Portal. Here the data are pushed through a series of image processing algorithms and cataloged for perusal and download by NASA researchers.
As always, we are grateful to all of our customers for entrusting us with your business. Have patience and plan for the long term. We will all soon look back on the pandemic of 2020 and say “we survived!”