Esri supports WeRobotics’ Flying Labs

Drones are enhancing understanding of the world in significant new ways by generating high resolution spatial and temporal data which produce new kinds of digital maps. To make sure that spatial data drives impactful decisions for social good WeRobotics has partnered with Esri, the leading provider of geographic information systems (GIS) software. We’re excited to announce that Esri will be supporting the work of all Flying Labs with donated access to the full suite of Esri’s mapping tools, including the recently released Drone2Map, which streamlines workflows from drone imagery to web services. Likewise Esri CityEngine and GeoPlanner open new possibilities for WeRobotics and each Flying Lab to build rich geodesign environments and applications.

The partnership between WeRobotics and Esri provides an essential element of the shared technical and cognitive tissue linking the Flying Labs into a global learning network. For WeRobotics this means basing the work of the Flying Labs in a rich spatial data infrastructure, where drone-collected data can be pushed to an integrated data framework for analysis, communications, and sharing between local and global actors. Rather than simply collecting and hosting image data, the goal of WeRobotics globally and each Flying Lab locally is to make tangible contributions to high-priority problems.

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to Esri for this donation. We are confident that our Flying Labs will make great use of these tools to further their specific social missions and to develop new ways to deploy aerial robotics for impactful forms of spatial knowledge. We’ll be sure to keep everyone posted with updates.