October 2021 Product Release Wrap Up

At DroneDeploy, we see a future where intelligent, autonomous, ground and aerial robotics work alongside us to amplify human potential. They will automate laborious tasks, keep us out of harm’s way, and help us make better business decisions every day.

This future draws closer every year. In fact, it’s even closer today with the launch of our October Product Release.

We believe that all of the media and 3D data you capture on your projects, fields, and assets should be organized in one, simple, measurable source of truth. 

It should be laid out logically and geospatially, as you’d expect to find it in the physical world. Your team should have instant, secure access from wherever they are. Whenever they need it.

We have so many amazing products to share today, including:

• New ways to capture and visualize your building projects and facilities with the Walkthrough App & Floor Plan View.
• New ways to capture from the air with Corridor Flight, and Updates to Drone Support
• Precise 3D measurement and photo inspection tools
• Our much improved view-only link sharing capability, for a specific date, or your entire project.
• A preview of full automation, with our beta Ground Robotics capability.

Let’s dive in!

Your Job-Site, from Every Angle

Last year we announced the first version of DroneDeploy 360 Walkthrough to document your projects from the human perspective. And this year, we’re taking ground capture to a whole new level.

Today we are releasing Walkthrough for iOS, a companion app to help you capture 360 walkthroughs with a couple of taps.  

So how does it work?

• First, download the DroneDeploy Walkthrough app – available now on the iOS app store.
• Sign in and select your project. Nearby projects are automatically highlighted.
• Connect your 360 camera and tap record – the app will select ideal settings, reducing file size by nearly 10 times while retaining detail.
• Walkthroughs will be automatically uploaded and processed on DroneDeploy. It’s completely seamless, and your processed data will be ready to view soon after capture. 

DroneDeploy Walkthrough makes the camera in your pocket ready for any project, a powerful tool to capture any asset or construction project from any vantage point. Field and project engineers can level up their site walks, capturing conditions for client updates, documentation, and planning. Operation leads on an energy site can digitally document assets to facilitate faster and more efficient remote inspections. And we’re just getting started, with even more capture capabilities coming soon.

All users can capture data with the new Walkthrough app, but you must have Enterprise Projects and a 360 Walkthrough subscription to process uploads.

Once the walls go up on your site and reality capture goes indoors, your project teams need a clear view of the data – directly overlaid on floor plans and organized by level within the building. 

Our new interior view does just that - neatly organizing your data by level, making comparison over time quick and seamless. With a single click, you can compare installation progress captured across different dates in the same location within your building.

Similarly, deviations from plans, incorrect installations, or safety hazards can now be marked as issues and pushed directly to project management tools such as Procore or Autodesk BIM 360. Assigned project members can click a simple link back into DroneDeploy for the entire visual context to assist with issue resolution.

Floor Plan View is available on Enterprise Projects with 360 Walkthrough.

Corridor flight is here! Whether you are looking to fly roadways, railways, canals, pipelines, or any other linear area – you can now create highly detailed maps with efficient flights. We know many of our customers fly in harsh terrain and off the grid. That’s why we’re happy to share that Corridor flight works offline, and flight plans are terrain aware. Customers have already found value in linear mapping with DroneDeploy, like Chasco Constructors, who have already mapped over 1,500 miles of road, bridges, and utilities.

Corridor Flight is available on all paid subscriptions.

Measure & Inspect with Confidence

When inspecting infrastructure, like transmission towers or wind turbines, saving time is critical. When you have hundreds of thousands of assets to inspect, reducing the number of images captured per asset by even a few photos can mean hundreds of hours saved in review time. By uploading photos without processing them into a map, you can now perform inspections immediately and on any number of photos captured from the air or with a camera on the ground. We’re excited for you to use this workflow for inspecting transmission and distribution towers, wind turbines, facilities, and more.

If you are in construction, you can now upload your mobile photos from your Walkthrough into DroneDeploy. They will be tagged to the project’s location so you can quickly alert team members of issues on site – bringing all of your site reality into one solution. If you’re in agriculture, you can take photos with your mobile device while scouting a field, then upload them with the map to better document any issues affecting crop health.

Photo Inspections are available to Business & Enterprise customers.

As of today, your annotations will snap right onto the 3D surface and draw exactly where your cursor is pointed, allowing you to make the most accurate measurements ever in 3D. This will enable you to precisely measure complex 3D structures such as towers, buildings, and facilities.

This new enhancement also brings our annotations to vertical inspections. You can now make measurements of facades without the bucket lift, scaffolding, or ladders more accurately than ever. 

3D Annotations are available to Business & Enterprise customers.

For many of you, delivering drone data to clients and stakeholders is just as important as capturing and measuring it. Today, we’re glad to announce two new ways to share your project data, fast.

First, you can now share a view-only link from a particular day, with all of the DroneDeploy content, including annotations, measurements, issue markers, walkthroughs, and more – entirely viewable in the interface – no sign up required.

This capability is available on all paid subscriptions.

Second, for long running jobs, customers on our project-based packages can share a single link that provides view-only access to the entire project, media, and history. One link that always defaults to the latest data automatically. It’s perfect for integrating into a project management platform like Procore or Autodesk Construction Cloud via our Embedded app.

This capability is available on Enterprise Project subscriptions.