That company is Vancouver-based Spexi.
And while it might not be a household name yet, a growing number of professional drone operators are using its palette of tools (including its mobile app), to plan efficient and accurate flights for the gathering of geospatial data.
The Spexi platform has been designed for a wide variety of sectors requiring actionable data from above, including real estate, construction, precision agriculture and more.
On the real estate front, here’s an example of a panorama produced with Spexi. Get in there with your mouse and scroll around. You can also zoom via scroll or pinching on your trackpad.
The big picture
That panorama was seamless, and with great resolution even zoomed in. But it’s only one of many offerings on the Spexi platform. So let’s take a step back for a look at the bigger picture.
The Spexi website outlines the company’s many offerings, along with features of its powerful mobile app.
In terms of data products, Spexi offers the following:
- 3D models and point clouds showing proportionality of the building and structural features
- High resolution image galleries with annotations for easy collaboration
- Up-to-date Google Map tiles showing the property with the ability to measure slopes & volumes and annotate features
- High resolution image galleries with annotations for easy collaboration
- 360˚ panoramas with hot spots for points of interest
Here’s a look at a volumetric calculation captured and computed via Spexi. Beats trying to do this manually:
The Spexi app
A large part of the Spexi value proposition is its mobile app. It allows pilots to quickly plan flight parameters, carry out autonomous data capturing missions, upload and crunch the data – and share the resulting files with stakeholders.
Specific features of the app include:
- Planning tools for efficient and accurate data acquisition
- Autonomous flight using the latest DJI drones
- Secure, cloud-based footage processing and sharing
- Spexi can carry out survey work using Ground Control Points.
Not a pilot but need a job? Spexi offers access to its network of pilots who can take on the mission on your behalf.
Cost?
Good question. Spexi offers a couple of options here, suitable both for those requiring the odd one-off job as well as Enterprise users.
If you’re interested in only the occasional mission, Spexi offers both value and incentive via its “credit” option. Sign up for a free account and you’ll receive five credits. A single credit can be used for a job like the panorama you saw above. A single credit covers up to 100 uploaded images and processing. So just by signing up you can cover five jobs like this. Additional credits can be purchased for $15 each.
Users with high volume processing needs can sign up for the monthly plan. It allows for the processing of up to 3,000 images per month at a cost of $300 per month. If you’re an ultra heavy user, Spexi offers packages for requirements exceeding 3,000 monthly images.
“Our goal is really to help companies and people transform their operations to be more efficient using drones and make better decisions with drone-based data,” explains Spexi Chief Operating Officer Alec Wilson – a helicopter pilot with a degree in geography and remote sensing. He was also a key part of the team that built Coastal Drones into a large online learning platform.
“Spexi is really the only Canadian drone software-based platform that can service contracts at this scale,” he says.
Spexi has already received a vote of confidence from the federal government. Innovative Solutions Canada offered financial backing to Spexi on its path to commercialization and enabled testing and evaluation of the product, including some pretty ambitious missions. Here’s COO Wilson, in a video explaining just one of multiple projects it carried out as a result.
Just the beginning
Though Spexi is already an easy-to-use platform with mutiple use-cases, expect more features to come. With the promise of routine BVLOS flight hopefully somewhere around the corner, COO Alec Wilson has ambitious plans for the near future.
“Looking into the future, we see our platform being used to produce drone-based data at much larger scales,” he says.
“There are some amazing new emerging technologies that enable collaboration in ways we have never seen before. We are in the infancy of this technology, and we at Spexi have some big plans to get drone-based data into the hands of those who need it most including leveraging BVLOS capabilities once available.”
Plans also include collaboration and integration with the FLYY training platform, enabling students to take a deep dive into Spexi’s capabilities. More on that soon.
InDro’s Take
We’re pleased to see a Canadian data acquisition and processing company begin to make its name in the field. While it’s up against some stiff competition from larger photogrammetry companies, the Spexi platform is simple to use and powerful – with plans for enhanced capabilities as the industry evolves. Its option for pay-as-you-go credits for those requiring one-off missions is attractive and a great way to test the waters (especially with five free credits on sign-up).
InDro Robotics has some collaboration underway with Spexi, and anticipates this relationship will only grow. More details on that…down the road.