Digitizing the World

Real-time communication and collaboration lie at the heart of a new generation of high-definition (HD) digital maps that react quickly to changes in the real world. Autonomous vehicles and construction-site surveys are among the applications that are driving companies toward high-precision mapping performed almost in real time. James Dean, founder and director of technology applications at London, U.K.-based startup SenSat, says, "Digitizing the world is incredibly important. We can make better, faster decisions from that digitized information than is possible with traditional means" Early adopters of SenSat's mapping technology come from the road-construction industry, a sector that today mainly relies on manual surveys conducted at ground level. Surveys can take as long as six weeks and, as a result, can only be performed infrequently during a project.