Many industries have relied on photogrammetry for decades to evaluate project sites, anticipate danger, enhance safety measures, create accurate 3D models, monitor forestry, and more. Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), including drones, have become a useful tool for accurate, extensive aerial photogrammetry.

Drones are easier to use and more affordable than operating a helicopter or airplane or performing a manual survey. In the past, aerial photogrammetry often relied on manned aircraft that cost several hundred thousand dollars to purchase and thousands more to operate and maintain. With drones, you can purchase a top-notch device for a couple thousand dollars, remotely fly it over the area, process the data with Agisoft or Pix 4D, bring it to Summit Evolution, and start mapping immediately.

Summit Evolution is a user-friendly photogrammetry software that can create vector data from drone imagery, satellite, close-range, IFSAR, and orthophoto imagery. As a world-class photogrammetric workstation, this technology by DAT/EM offers many useful tools for customization and works with almost every imaging format. It integrates with your project design software, mapping software, and other photogrammetry software so you can do even more with the images you capture from above.

Curious how Summit Evolution can meet your needs? Talk with a sales representative.

The Summit Evolution Product Offerings

As a quick overview, the Summit Evolution software is used to discover, capture, view, and analyze 3D information from stereo data. Projects can be captured from almost any imagery source or imported from a third-party system. This data can then be edited, translated, and configured for your industry needs.

Summit Evolution offers many user-friendly tools. The Summit Status Tracker and the Summit Project Viewer allow you to manage data processing projects, and the Coordinate Conversion tool makes it easy to drag and drop coordinates. This software boasts unlimited zoom levels, offering unobstructed visibility, and the Professional version includes interior, relative, absolute, and exterior orientation tools. Image tiling tools allow you to pan and zoom your image in real time, in addition to offering image adjustments and histogram equalization.

Summit Evolution is compatible with many different image sizes and formats commonly used with drone shots, aerial photography, and satellite imagery, including GeoTiff, BigTIFF, MrSID, ECW, and others. It’s compatible with software such as AutoCAD, MicroStation, ArcGIS, Global Mapper, Geomatica, Inpho, Metashape, and Correlator3D.

The Summit Evolution software is available in three primary different product levels, depending on your needs. We also offer a fourth product offering called the Summit UAS, but we’ll dig deeper into this technology in a bit. These include:

• Professional: Our most inclusive product level including orientation measurement orthorectification, terrain visualization, contour generation, point translation, DTM collection, Airfield3D capabilities, and more.
• Feature Collection: A photogrammetric tool including advanced 3D editing and attribute handling tools, terrain visualization, project status tracking and more — designed for those whose project setup, orientation, and ortho processing needs are met elsewhere.
• Lite: Designed with resource specialists, QA professionals, and GIS technicians in mind, Lite has basic vector collection tools plus the ability to use these vector collection tools in their associated CAD program. Project setup and other advanced tools are not included.

Not sure which features you need? Speak with our sales representative.

Summit UAS: A Must-Have Tool for Drone Imagery

For industries that rely on unmanned aircraft systems, we offer Summit UAS which blends features from Summit Evolution Lite with LandScape, another powerful tool offered by DAT/EM. With LandScape, you can view and edit 3D point clouds to view and analyze your terrain’s dataset.

LandScape can operate with LiDAR and SfM. It offers a variety of automatic and interactive tools for data interpretation, allowing you to create, modify, and classify data points and then draw vectors based on those points. These data can then be further configured, edited, and saved in a variety of formats.

With Summit UAS, you can display this point cloud superimposed over stereo imagery. You can then use the Summit Evolution cursor to add, select, and edit these points and collect vector data. You can also use Summit Evolution Lite and LandScape independently, depending on the project needs. When working with a UAS, these combined software types are the best option for analyzing UAS data in 3D stereo and then capturing it as fully georeferenced 3D points and vectors.

Using drone imagery with Summit UAS offers many industry-specific uses:

• Transportation: Identify any surface defects in terrain and better measure and evaluate signage. Effectively map out roadways, bridges, and other infrastructure.
• Conservation: Assess and monitor regions that are remote or inaccessible, evaluate fire damage, track animal populations, map vegetation health, and more.
• Agriculture: Conduct fertility time analyses, determine crop yields, and evaluate biomass and health assessments. Respond to floods by evaluating crop damage and surveying land changes.
• Forestry: Manage forest surfaces by optimizing harvest timing, performing stand typing, creating a revegetation plan, conducting forest fire assessments, and logging road layouts.
• Land Surveying: Visually map out landmasses, available resources, geography, and more to take precise measurements for remote areas.
• Mining: Map out stockpile inventory and monitor mine environment and conditions, identifying potential hazards on the worksite.
• Emergency Response: Conduct various types of hazard mapping to identify potential dangers, increase situational awareness, and create more effective response plans.
• Utilities: Inspect and maintain utility stations and help monitor vegetation encroachment. Scan utility corridor infrastructure, transmission towers, and more.

Drone Photogrammetry and Summit Evolution: Get Started Today

DAT/EM offers top-notch photogrammetry solutions for a variety of industries, including engineering, utility and resource companies, government agencies, universities, emergency response teams, conservation and forestry, agriculture and more. With Summit Evolution, you can easily use drone imagery to map your worksite and streamline your processes with accessible features such as customizable menus, navigable tool bars, and drag-and-drop controls.

We’re constantly updating our product offerings, from creating the Summit UAS to releasing the most recent Summit Evolution 8.0 update. With feedback from our customers, we made several useful updates with version 8.0, including but not limited to:

• DAT/EM Admin tool: Release check, license server setting, CAD/extension enabler, and more, all in one place
• Summit: New images filter in the model generator, new project templates contain your favorite settings
• Terrain Projects: Speedier image and stereo mate generation from 100% of your LiDAR input
• Keypad: New keyword lists to start Summit and LandScape functions
• ArcMap: New DAT/EM Replace Geometry, Contour Up/Down, and Explode Polyline tools
• ArcGIS Pro: New Zoom to Selected Object and XYZOUT tools; Support up to ArcGIS Pro 2.8.1
• AutoCAD: AutoCAD 2022 support
• MicroStation: Release of Capture and MapEditor for 64-bit MicroStation CONNECT products
• Global Mapper: Global Mapper 22.x support

We also offer one year of system support for every product level, so you can always reach out if you have any technical issues or need help navigating your new software. We’re always open to receive your feedback and make updates as needed to offer you the best photogrammetry software on the market.

If you’re interested in what we have to offer, we offer a 30-day demo so you can try the full Summit Evolution 8.0 software. This allows you to test out the ropes and see for yourself how this technology can improve your workflow and make the most of your drone imagery.

Want to give Summit Evolution 8 a try? Contact us to start your demo.