Smart Technology Using Drones and Satellites Brings Evolution to Maps

This photo captured by South Korea’s next-generation midsized satellite on April 8, 2021, and provided by the Ministry of Science and ICT on May 4, shows the Jamsil Sports Complex in southern Seoul.

SEOUL, Oct. 18 (Korea Bizwire) – The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the National Geographic Information Institute on Monday unveiled high-precision satellite images and the process of making high-precision maps.

Drones play an important role in land surveying. The introduction of exclusive drones mounted with high-resolution cameras has contributed to improving both precision and efficiency in land surveying.

For the establishment of high-precision road maps needed to brace for the self-driving era, vehicles mounted with a mobile mapping system (MMS) are used.

High-precision road maps refer to maps that depict a variety of road information, including lanes, boundary lines, tunnels, bridges, and traffic signals in 3D.

Basically, they are created by marking small dots densely while passing 3D coordinates.

Vehicles mounted with an MMS can take a photo of 1 million dots every second, with the margin of error estimated merely at 25 centimeters. The accuracy is very high, given that navigation maps have a margin of error of 2 meters.

From space, the country’s next-generation midsized satellite developed with domestic technology is also taking pictures.

The institute completed the creation of high-precision road maps for 6,700 kilometers of national highways in 2020, and plans to complete 15,000 kilometers of general road maps by the end of this year.

Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)