In June, 20th to 23rd, 2016, the mapKITE project achieved one of its major milestones: the first-time-ever operation of a tandem aerial-terrestrial system conceived for simultaneous geodata acquisition in corridor mapping missions. Such achievement validates the first half of the European Horizon 2020 project, in which an international consortium of ten teams from six different countries have partnered up to turn mapKITE into a reality.

During three days, mapKITE system testing and demonstrations were carried out at the BCN Drone Center, a UAV testing center including 2500 ha of segregated airspace located in Collsuspina, Barcelona. Within its premises, a 2 km rural road was selected as a testing corridor and was operated successfully around ten times. The testing site was prepared with several ground control points measured along the corridor and marked with black and white markers for quality checking.

Following its recent dissemination impulse, GeoNumerics has been invited to present the mapKITE terrestrial and aerial tandem geodata acquisition concept and project at the Geospatial World Forum 2016, held in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). On its fifth edition, the congress and fair aimed at the theme: Where's the Money? [DISRUPTIVE BUSINESS MODELS]. This theme allows the conference to take on the business perspective of geospatial industry today and its direction for the coming years. Future technology trends and the next big opportunities will be part of the servings. It aimed at being an excellent platform to discuss the role of policymakers, decision-makers, technical users, multilateral agencies and academia in commercialization of the technology.

The mapKITE presentation was framed within the workshop entitled "Benefits and key-features of the European Global Navigation Satellite System (E-GNSS) for the Geospatial World", organized by the European GNSS Agecy (GSA). The purpose of the workshop was to establish the dialogue on the benefits of Galileo in Geospatial applications, including the bottlenecks the industry is facing to adopt E-GNSS smoothly, concerns and needs to be met while implementing Galileo, discussion on potential usage of Authentication service within Location Intelligence/high accuracy application.

The project SAT406M was presented at the conference “SENSORDEVICES 2016”, held in the framework of the conference “NetWare 2016” on 24th - 28th July in Nice, France. This conference was organized by the International Academy Research and Industry Association (IARIA), and covered several topics such as sensor technologies, emerging security systems or advances in future internet. In particular, the conference SENSORDEVICES' main topic was sensor device technologies and applications.

The objective of the SAT406M project is to develop a wrist-worn Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) providing an end-to-end solution based on the Galileo Support to Search and Rescue (SAR) Service –the SAR/Galileo service– and particularly on its unique Return-Link-Service (RLS).

GeoNumerics' mapKITE terrestrial and aerial tandem geodata acquisition concept and project were presented on May 10th in the sixth edition of “MundoGEO#Connect Latin America 2016” and in the second “DRONEShow Latin America 2016” joint events, in São Paulo, Brazil. The joint events gathered more than three thousand participants between May 10th and 12th.

The group ENGEMAP, a GeoNumerics partner, organized a session in the aforementioned events where ENGEMAP's Business Executive Antonio de Lira and GeoNumerics' Chief Executive and Scientist Dr. Ismael Colomina presented the applications and concept of mapKITE respectively. With some fifty participants, the session was well attended and ended with small group discussions.

MapKITE is a novel geodata acquisition and georeferencing paradigm for 3D corridor mapping. MapKITE combines Terrestrial Mobile Mapping (TMM) with unmanned airborne Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (APRS) and enhances the combination with new and innovative concepts: Kinematic Ground Control Points (KGCPs); point-and-scale photogrammetric measurements of artificial targets; way point-based, land vehicle-to-unmanned aircraft virtual tethers; mobile ground control stations for unmanned aircraft (“drones”); and the use of the new Galileo ranging signals.