Photogrammetry, long the foundation of mapping, has evolved much since 1987 when DAT/EM Systems International was founded.
Despite all the advances in both hardware and software, however, the latter cannot yet reliably differentiate among, say, building edges, utilities, and fence lines or between a small car and a rock boulder. Therefore, human operators are still required to interpret what they see in a 3D stereo model.
“The ultimate goal is to make as much of the whole workflow as automated as possible,” says Jeffrey Yates, the company’s general manager, who’s been in the business since 1982.
DAT/EM develops products to extract and edit 3D terrain and object features from stereo imagery, point clouds, and UAS data. Based in Anchorage, Alaska, the company has been developing digital mapping and photogrammetric software and hardware since its founding, serving photogrammetric firms, engineering companies, and government and non-government agencies worldwide.
The DAT/EM Photogrammetric Suite includes the Summit Evolution digital photogrammetric workstation and the LandScape point cloud viewing and editing toolkit, with the complementary components Capture, MapEditor, Ortho+Mosaic, Airfield3D, Contour Creator, and Summit UAS.
The following are descriptions of different uses of DAT/EM software by four of the company’s clients.