Hivemapper Studio, a better way to fly
Tags: 3d, Autonomous Vehicles, Mapping, Drones, Maps

Studio does this by breaking up the world into hexagon shaped tiles — 0.1 sq km per tile. Collectors can map 1 tile or 100,000 tiles and they can do this whenever they want, providing total flexibility. Pilots get paid per tile they map and can track their tiles through the Studio map.

The best part is that pilots don’t need to fly manually for any of this. The Studio system generates automated flight paths for the drone to map your selected tiles. These flight paths ensure contiguous coverage, high quality data, and a simplified collection process for drone pilots.

After uploading video for the tile, the collector earns a financial reward and their username is displayed on the tile — marking ownership of the map. You can’t totally understand the excitement of seeing your piece of the global map grow until you try it for yourself. In fact, one of our early collectors, Mr Dundee, who has mapped over 1,000 tiles in Australia explained it best: “Hivemapper Studio is Pokemon Go for Pilots.”

The map is growing thanks to Studio

We’ve had people all over the world from Australia to Atlanta, Georgia building maps with their drones thanks to Hivemapper Studio.

Since February 2020, collectors in the Hivemapper mapping network have been rapidly adding to and growing the global map:

9,000 sq km — in more than 75 countries — have been mapped

— in more than 75 countries — have been mapped 50% monthly growth of the global map

of the global map In just one week, areas of the map have grown from 1 to 90 sq. km — about three Manhattans

Collectors have already earned thousands of dollars and built thousands of kilometers of map with Studio, but that’s just the start.

We’re just getting started

One of the great things about building a tool like Studio is being so interconnected to the community that you are working with. We have been able to get a ton of feedback from drone pilots which has helped to shape our roadmap going forward. We’re really excited to announce the following updates coming out in the next few months:

On-map leaderboard — we want folks to be able to see exactly how they are doing relative to their fellow collectors.

On-map stats — we want our collectors to quickly be able to track their own personal accomplishments.

Studio Integration with Airmap for better live planning around restricted airspaces.

Account information (account balance, how much map you’ve covered, etc.) — we will be working steadily to integrate Studio more tightly into Hivemapper accounts. This way, in your Hivemapper dashboard, you’ll be able to see exactly how the maps you’ve built have contributed to your tile amounts.

New tile alerts — in the future, we’d love for you to be able to “follow” areas and be alerted when there are high value tiles that pop up.

Tile checkouts — as we get bigger, we want things to be fair between our collectors. Building in some method for “checking out” a tile for a time period will be critical to make sure you don’t map the same area as someone else and not get credit.

We’ve been thrilled with the reception so far for Hivemapper Studio. We’ve loved empowering the world’s drones to build better maps and we’re excited to keep building towards a better 3D map.

If you want to get started with Hivemapper Studio, check out our blog post that outlines how to get started!

Don’t have a drone?

Don’t worry, you can still build a better map with Hivemapper by signing up on our waitlist for Open Dashcam. Check out more here.

Let’s get connected

Join us on our Discord community to get the latest updates on Hivemapper and chat with an awesome group of pilots and GIS enthusiasts.