VISUALISING AUSTRALIA, THEN THE WORLD Aerometrex, one of the most advanced imaging companies in the world, was founded in Adelaide and has a global reach.
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hen is a picture worth more than a thousand words? When it captures an entire city with a level of detail that allows you to zoom in to see objects that measure only a few centimetres across. Known colloquially as "Google Earth on steroids", Aerometrex offers both ultra-high-resolution images, and 3D renderings of vast areas, gathered with its own small fleet of aircraft, 60kg cameras, and lasers that are capable of pulsing at two million times per second. Founded in 1980, Aerometrex boasts a number of firsts in the Australian market, and globally. It was the first Australian company to introduce large-format digital aerial cameras to the domestic market, and the first in the world to offer 3D modelling using massive-multi-ray photogrammetry as a commercial service. Aerometrex is now a publicly-traded company on the ASX. Mark Deuter, the Managing Director, attributes their continued success to the appreciation of the importance of customer service, gained when it was privately owned. The company has made large investments to stay ahead of the competition, including designing its own camera system, which is manufactured in the US by a specialist. “It is the best, highest resolution camera in the commercial market that we know of, and we developed it in under a year,” explains Deuter. As a technical innovation, it is extraordinary. The device uses an array of lenses, taking multiple photos, that are then woven together to create a single map image. There is a significant amount of physics and optics involved, with the end result giving a seamless, stunning image. To get an idea of the resolution of the camera, it can capture a swathe of 70,000 pixels. For clarity, a
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pixel is the smallest element of an image on a screen, a small coloured dot. A top-of-the-range television can show roughly 3840 x 2160 pixels. And each pixel rendered by Aerometrex with their cameras can be reasonably measured to show an area of 5–6cm on the ground. What does this mean? Each image taken by the company can accurately show an area of up to 3.8km at the highest resolution. It is a question of need though; “If somebody wants to do a 150,000km2 survey of Western Queensland, we can map that at a 20cm pixel size,” notes Deuter. In practice Aerometrex technology has been used in police work, like mapping illegal activity around shipping containers, or to locate illegal crops. Its 3D mapping technology has applications in movies, computer games, simulation systems, augmented reality, and virtual reality systems. It’s even been used to map cemeteries, creating a historical record that outlasts even the most wellmade headstone. It has been used to document historic towns in France, so that in any worst-case scenario they can be reconstructed accurately down to a single centimetre. Born and bred in SA Adelaide, where the company is based, has a few comparative advantages that have helped Aerometrex to succeed. Good infrastructure is key for data-intensive companies like Aerometrex, and Adelaide has the best internet infrastructure in Australia, along with a reliable power supply and strong-performing universities that the company can tap into for new talent. “The company’s founders were born and bred in South Australia, though we have a more
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