Startup is focusing on active shooters and accident construction, but SkyeBrowse can also be used for building and construction projects.

Not many good stories start with a motorcycle crash, but Bobby Ouyang, CEO and founder of SkyeBrowse, has one. As he hit a 25-mph curve at 60 mph in a mad rush to get to class at Rutgers University, he lost control of the bike.

A cornering bike rider can either lose control by leaning too low on the inside of the curve, causing the bike to lose traction and skid. Or they can fail to lean enough and the bike will tumble, ejecting the rider. This is the dreaded highsider crash, as a tumbling bike and rider will be more damaged than if they were skidding—as long as the rider’s skin is adequately protected by thick, abrasion-resistant clothing and shoes.

“I was wearing sneakers, though, not boots,” admits Ouyang. “Something poked a hole through my foot.”

Hobbled, Ouyang went back to the scene of the accident hours later to figure out what happened and found a crew there for the same purpose.

Even Ouyang’s pain addled, pain-killer suppressed brain, knew that accident reconstruction should not take this long.

Why not fly a drone over the road and make a model from the images it captures? There would be no road blocked for days. No engineers, road crew or police exposed and put at risk.

“More police die on the scene of an accident than from any other cause,” notes Ouyang.

After getting his bachelor’s in computer science from Rutgers, Ouyang assembled a small team and created software for video-based 3D model construction for which he received a patent. He founded SkyeBrowse five years ago. The company raised $2.3 million in a seed round that allowed him to grow the company from 4 to 24 people.

SkyeBrowse’s patented software uses videogrammetry instead of photogrammetry and the more costly LiDAR scanning. A drone scan will provide millions of frames instead of the hundreds of images photogrammetry provides and will have better visual resolution than LiDAR scans, which provide only point clouds.

SkyeBrowse can map 50 acres in five minutes and process the images into a 3D model in 10 minutes, according to the company.

SkyeBrowse provides only the software. Customers must have their own drones, either a DJI or an Autel, and know how to operate them.

Users can launch the drone to autonomously fly above an accident scene and record the scene on an SD card, then upload the file to capture it on video in just two minutes. Once the video is uploaded to the SkyeBrowse site, they will receive an email with a link to a 3D model that is “accurate to the centimeter.”

Unlike photogrammetry solutions we have seen, SkyeBrowse’s videogrammetry works without any manual interventions or processing. You don’t have to register the photos, take photos at intervals of time and space and laboriously upload them—nor do you have to stitch them together or heal the resulting ragged images, according to Ouyang.

As the late great Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and SkyeBrowse would seem to qualify as magical.

It is available for $1,499 or $2,999 per year, depending on how hyper you are (the Hyper version promises results in just two minutes).

Shots Fired

In April, SkyeBrowse announced that it was splitting a $10 million Department of Homeland Security grant with Rutgers to develop an application that would provide a 3D model of a live active shooter scene. Called TacBrowse, the application allows those in charge at an active shooter scene to track the location of personnel inside and around a school or other building and structures.

“They’ll be able to see a point for every single officer. You can click on a point and get the officer’s information. It will show their location in the 3D model in real time,” said Ouyang in an interview with DroneLife. “Because the app uses iPhone or Android technology, incident commanders also will be able to see a live video feed of what each individual officer is seeing.”

It’s too early to show TacBrowse, but Ouyang sends me a link to a football stadium and the Point of View tool.

“You can pick any seat in the stadium to see that person’s lines of sight,” he says.

How’s It for BIM?

Sad that an application such as TacBrowse has become necessary. We wonder if SkyeBrowse can be used for site surveys to map building and infrastructure projects, as it appears to provide a clear advantage over photogrammetry.

Indeed, we have a few customers using it for building and construction projects, says Ouyang.