Category Archives: Professional Surveyor Archives
Software Review: Terrain Navigator Pro, Revisited
One of the most powerful productivity-boosting tools these days is probably that little machine right there in your pocket. Plenty gets written about how “mobile is taking over the world.” You’ve probably seen your smart phone changing the way you do your work, or maybe it has in ways you haven’t realized—and you could do...
Feature: MATE
Marine Advanced Technology Education is creating the future of marine surveying and operations from groups of innovative kids working around kitchen tables.Does it seem like those youngsters in the increasingly popular robotics clubs are having a lot of fun? Yes, but they’re doing something else, too. The boom in robotics clubs, and especially underwater robotics, is...
Feature: Hydrography by Remote
Surveyors in parched California measure sedimentation levels in a reservoir using a small, remote-controlled boat integrated with a survey-grade RTK. Before they even start taking measurements, surveyors often have to deal with such practical challenges as how to access and move around in their survey area—which may be rocky, filled with dense vegetation, or obstructed...
Feature: Discovering Lee’s View
A geography professor uses GIS to recreate the Battle of Gettysburg, discovering what General Lee could and could not have seen to guide his fateful decisions. Advances in tech-nology in the last 150 years have been remarkable. In our industry we have seen many changes in our surveying methods and in mapping practices in general....
Guest Editorial: How the Future Surveyor Can Be Relevant
I wrote a guest essay in the March 2013 issue of PSM portraying my vision of the future. I believe I made a miscalculation—the “future” is progressing very rapidly, and a lot of what I envisioned is already here. Here are several notable examples. Locata, the Australian-based company that developed their terrestrial-based replication of the GNSS...
Feature: UAS Applied
Surveyors provide a topographical survey of a harbor in Ireland with a UAS, thus avoiding significant disruption (and risk) that would have been created by a conventional survey. Editor’s Note: Our October 2013 issue features a UAS evaluation by a surveying firm in Ireland; they conducted field tests using UAS photogrammetry and compared the results to traditional survey techniques....