Looking for freelance income streams as a commercial drone pilot?
Hivemapper is currently paying freelance contributors for aerial and ground 3D video—keep reading to find out how you can become a contributor.
What Hivemapper Needs
Hivemapper will pay drone pilots (or non-drone pilots, if you’d like to collect ground-level 3D imagery) to plan flights and automatically capture 3D video imagery along a particular route, road, or pipeline.
Hivemapper organizes the 3D imagery it needs by tiles, which represent 0.1 sq km. Contributors get paid according to the number of tiles they cover.
Contributors can put their name on a global map—Hivemapper operates in over 80 countries throughout the world—and get credit for each tile they cover.
How Payment Works
Here’s how payment works:
- Gold tiles earn $2 each (these are in preferred locations)
- Silver tiles earn $.50 each
If you’re planning to fly in a certain area for fun or for another job, it might be worth looking at Hivemapper’s map to see if you could make extra money while you’re there by collecting 3D imagery.
You could also consider taking flights to collect 3D imagery for the sole purpose of getting paid by Hivemapper.
How to Get Started
Hivemapper contributors do all of their work in Hivemapper Studio, which is a one-stop-shop for planning, tracking, and getting paid for collecting maps for Hivemapper’s network.
Once you’ve set up your account in Hivemapper Studio, here are the steps you’ll follow to complete 3D imagery collection for Hivemapper (taken from the Hivemapper Studio website):
Get started now with Hivemapper Studio.
Hivemapper’s Approach to Mapping
Hivemapper relies on the data received from its network of GIS enthusiasts and drone operators to constantly refresh its maps.
Using a decentralized data collection process, Hivemapper has gotten rid of the need for specialized fleets or satellites, streamlining the mapping process and enabling updates that are four times faster than traditional mapping companies can provide. As a change is detected, Hivemapper’s maps are automatically updated, resulting in more accurate and more accessible location information.
Because Hivemapper Studio was natively built for 3D data, the maps it produces are visually crisper than those made with alternative methods.
It also uses object classification techniques to search and detect changes to mapped areas, and integrates with VR applications to automatically recognize and distinguish different objects within images, such as trees, roadways, or buildings.
This screenshot shows an example of Hivemapper’s before/after change detection:
After collecting and categorizing its visual data, Hivemapper’s proprietary georegistration process assembles the tiles, stitching them together into a single, comprehensive global map.
Currently, maps are expensive to produce and updates are infrequent. We believe there is enormous potential in mobilizing people to be a part of creating and continually updating a more dynamic, accurate global map.
– Ariel Seidman, Founder and CEO of Hivemapper
To date, Hivemapper contributors have inventoried nearly 9,000 sq km around the world, and the scale of the map is growing 50% month over month.
Each week 250 sq km of tiles are uploaded, which represents an area 2.5 times the size of Paris. By the end of the year, 3,000 sq km tiles will be mapped every month, which is roughly the size of London and Bangkok combined.
About Hivemapper
Hivemapper is a decentralized mapping network that enables monitoring and autonomous navigation without the need for expensive sensors, aircraft, or satellites. Anyone with a video camera can quickly and easily build a smarter and fresher map. The map you build can live and grow alongside the maps of thousands of mapmakers, or keep your map private just for your team. You build it. You control it. For more information, go to: www.hivemapper.com
Hivemapper provides 3D maps to a network of customers that rely on monitoring and change detection for navigation across the defense, supply chain and logistics, transportation, urban planning, utilities, and insurance industries.
Hivemapper works with over 9,000 contributors located in 80+ countries. Get started as a contributor now at Hivemapper Studio.
