Lockheed Martin’s Hydra Fusion builds 3D maps in real time from drone footage

A drone is a great eye in the sky, but if you want richer data than what its cameras show — for example, detailed 3D maps — you might be looking at a few hours of processing time. That is, unless your HQ is rocking Lockheed Martin’s cool-sounding Hydra Fusion tools, which can build that 3D map in real time from just video.

It’s an impressive feat of photogrammetry — which, if you didn’t know, is the technique of minutely tracking features in a series of images to determine their absolute sizes and positions. Computational photogrammetry is useful, and has been applied to all manner of scientific and military pursuits — recently, it has helped reconstruct and map historical sites with impressive accuracy. Read more