A Northeast Kingdom company is pioneering drone technology that can instantly generate precise 3D models for forestry and agriculture.
Matthew Clark is co-founder of Whiteout Solutions, a three-person environmental science software company that operates out of Do North, the co-working space in Lyndonville. Whiteout has developed remote sensing technology for use with drones.
Clark and his wife and co-founder, Christine Heinrich, have spent the last two years developing the software for Whiteout. They’re now working on several pilot projects and the company’s first commercial contract — a coastal erosion mapping project in southern Connecticut.
Clark studied information technology and has spent 25 years in software development. He met Heinrich when he moved to Vermont from southern Arizona about 15 years ago to work at Microdata GIS in St. Johnsbury, a company founded by Heinrich’s father that originally provided data collection for the 911 system. By the time it was sold to a Maryland company in 2012, Microdata was in the business of 911 call delivery and routing, and had more than 100 employees.
Clark spent some time talking to VTDigger about the new environmental science technology and about doing business from the Northeast Kingdom. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
VTDigger: Where is this technology applied?
Matthew Clark: We put LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors on drones and collect 350,000 sensor points per second. We merge that information with the telemetry data on the drone, and the GPS location of the drone, and can create an instantaneous model of what we are covering and flying.
By being able to fly and collect the hundreds of thousands of points per second, you end up with a very granular picture of what is out there. We stitch that into a 3D model and overlay all this additional remote sensing information, such as thermal imaging, infrared, RGB imagery (a standard photographic image), and multi-spectral banded imagery. You can do some pretty extensive analytics from the 3D model we create with the LIDAR points.
So, for our core product, we can fly a forest and come back to generate a 3D model of the forested land to be able to tell you how much wood you have on that land. The part that gets us excited is doing this on a recurring basis, because it gives you predictions of ‘Where is your tree stand at today? What is its health? What direction is it going?’
We can fly crops, whether it’s hemp or cornfields, and give you information about what the moisture content levels are. We can tell if a crop is in good health or bad health, not just across the board, but on a very granular level. We can tell you individual plants that are having issues, and do predictions on bug infestation.
Urban mapping is becoming a big thing as well — creating 3D models of urban landscapes. On a daily basis, we’re always finding new uses.
VTD: So how did Whiteout get started?
MC: When Microdata GIS was sold in 2012, Christine and I decided to start something new. We knew we wanted to be involved with drones in some kind of technical company; there were so many opportunities in the market.
I have a pretty strong background in software development and GIS, and at Microdata I had gotten into low-level application development, and that experience transitioned over into doing application development on drones. Christine was the business development, sales and marketing director.
As we were doing research and development, we got involved with photogrammetry (a three-dimensional coordinate measuring system) as a neat tool and application that was available for pretty low cost. For under $1,000 you can get started with mapping photogrammetry.
We use photogrammetry slightly in our operations, but being a software development company, we were always looking for the problem to solve. Photogrammetry is heavily used, but it’s very computer processor-intensive, very slow, and the accuracy is not that great.
So we started building out drones with LIDAR remote sensors in them. There’s a very high level of accuracy with this.
VTD: Why run your company out of the Northeast Kingdom?
MC: We live here, and we really enjoy being here. We have four kids in school in Burke. The quality of life is amazing. And at this point, our biggest customer base is probably forested land — and there’s definitely an abundance of that here.
We had gone from a home office to using some empty space in the base lodge at Burke. It was hard to leave the convenience of Burke, but there is a professional atmosphere at Do North, and we have a private office.
As we all know, trying to find a way to make a living here is hard. Finding people with the skill sets we need in our specific area is the biggest challenge. But being at the co-working space has been phenomenal. The connections we make are great; we connected with Northern Forest Center at Do North and now we’re doing a pilot project with them.
VTD: Who are your competitors?
MC: There are a few companies out there that we would consider competitors for sure. There’s a company called LIDAR USA, and another called Phoenix Aerial, and some companies in Europe. But there’s not a whole lot doing what we are; it’s a pretty small handful.
We’re different in the sense that we’re doing real-time analysis on the information, as opposed to collecting the information and doing it in a post-processing fashion as a value-add.
The ultimate output of the information is common across the board, but we’re also doing specific analysis for specific industries, like the volume metrics in the forestry world. When you fly and you are collecting information with remote sensing and LIDAR, you’re left with these large data files. Our competitors say that is their deliverable. We’re trying to take it to the next level and provide analysis for the customers in the specific industries to make it an easily consumable tool as opposed to needing an analyst to interpret the information.
VTD: What’s next?
MC: We hired our first employee four months ago, and we have a huge number of pilot projects we have been working on this summer.
Our biggest barrier to entry within any of these markets is proving the technology is useful. We have spent two years building it out; we know it’s useful. But the industries that it is most useful for are typically not ones that have used technology like this in the past — like forestry and agriculture.
We’re looking at having white papers and proof of concepts created by the end of this year to start doing commercial applications by the beginning of next year.
Part of our challenge is letting people know there are these amazing technologies and tools that have been used with other industries for a long time.
It’s not easy to explain. In most conversations, you try to stay very monolithic on it, because the more you branch out, if someone doesn’t understand it, the more you lose them. But once they start grasping it they start understanding what the capabilities are.
