Purdue GIS Day

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 For our AT 409 UAS capstone class, we attended the Purdue GIS Day conference. Every year Purdue hosts this conference and it provides an opportunity for students, faculty and industry professionals to gain a greater understanding of what is currently happening with GIS. GIS stands for geographic information systems and provides a multitude of ways to manipulate and represent geographical data. At the conference, there are multiple events throughout the day that people can attend. For starters, there are lightning talks where current students briefly present some of the research they are presenting that relates to GIS. From UAS to forestry students, there was a wide variety of data and studies that were demonstrating information from various parts of the globe. The next major event was the keynote speaker. This presentation was focused on the satellite imagery company Maxxar as this was the company the speaker was currently working for. She talked about the way Maxxar used satellite imagery to build massive orthomosaics, some were as large as entire continents. Her focus was on creating bundle block adjustments and how the corrections were needed in order for the images to properly overlay. Without these adjustments, the final product would not come out as one clean image because there would be large gaps or unneeded overlap between each image, creating a final product that would not be suitable for the intended users. Because of the algorithms that the keynote speaker was working on, Maxxar is able to efficiently create these large orthomosaics.

After the keynote speaker, it was time for lunch. During the lunch, there were a series of speakers who were industry professionals or current students who were interested in the GIS field. This part of GIS day was underwhelming because the speakers who were talking in this time had either already spoken and did not have any new information to present, or were students who were in a similar situation to myself, and therefore did not provide any helpful or new information. This session would have been better used as a time slot for people to mingle and ask questions to the previous speakers. I had wanted to chat with the keynote speaker and some of the other earlier presenters but there was not enough time allotted for that, and most of the presenters had left after lunch. In the future, it would be nice to have more time to ask personal questions to the presenters.

The last event of the day was poster presentations. Posters were mostly created by undergraduate and graduate students, and they demonstrated the research the students were conducting in class. This is how our class participated in GIS day, each group had a poster to present. Our group is focusing on UAS search and rescue techniques specifically with the goal to implement the program Loc8, a software designed to aid in color location in an image. The poster we created can be seen in image 2 below. There was also a competition for a cash prize amongst all the poster groups presenting that day, and our group took home the blue ribbon! This was very welcomed news as our group made a last-minute decision to re-work our entire poster as our previous one did not go in the direction we had intended it to, and it did not accurately represent the work we had accomplished. After a multiple day power session of remaking the poster, we had a product we were more proud of. Upon hearing that we were awarded the best poster at the event, our group was very excited that the extra work we put into the poster had been appreciated. The final product can be seen below.

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This event relates to my future as someone interested in the UAS industry because it provides a unique perspective on how UAS can be beneficial to the GIS field. Most people are aware that UAS is one of the largest growing industries in the world, and finding new ways to implement an unmanned system into a program is very important to my future. Ever since I was a kid I have had a dream of starting my own company, and in order to successfully do that, I need an idea to grow off of. By seeing how UAS might benefit the GIS industry I can start to see how the addition of an independent UAS company would benefit those working with geospatial data, and I can start to visualize what direction I would like to take this theoretical company in. In order to start and grow a successful business it is important to understand not only what direction to take it in, but its business model and potential market. This is another reason why it would have been nice to have more time to chat with the presenters because it provides an appropriate time to ask specific questions and get a better feel for how an unmanned system could change the industry. 

Image 3: The Loc8 Team

Image 4: AT 409 Capstone Class