PETE KELSEY: So once those 2 permits were issued, things actually happened pretty quickly. I knew that there was going to be an airborne component and a terrestrial component, an interior component and an exterior component. The airborne, obviously, it was all drone-based, all LiDAR-based for one particular flavor of LiDAR or another: we had GNSS, we had SLAM. We even had terrestrial laser scanning on the ground for the terrestrial component. We had photogrammetry and we flew multispectral because some of the biologists were interested in the plant life, which is on the island as well. 
The biggest task was the interior spaces because there’s the famous prison, the cell house  – of course widely known around the world – but there’s a hospital, kitchen, cafeteria, and morgue. There’s the powerhouse that generated electricity for the entire island, all that infrastructure, and a lot of it is not accessible to visitors, much less anyone, because it’s in bad shape or it presents risk to life and limb. 
But we had access to it all. I knew right away that the only way to do all these interior spaces in the time we had was going to be with a Hovermap. Just because it’s mobile and can be deployed in a number of different ways.
We were exceptionally lucky because we had two Hovermaps on site for that portion. And without the Hovermaps this project wouldn’t have been successful. We wouldn’t have got it done. We basically had three weeks to do every single space on the island, interior and exterior, and we actually used the Hovermap for both, but mostly for the interior. 
Getting into the workflow a little bit, we had to have a fair amount of the exterior done as well. So we could use that data to match with the airborne drone-based LiDAR. So the Hovermap, both of them fortunately were the newest model the ST-X – with its fabulous range, was the right tool for the right job. This project would not have finished in the time we had been permitted for without the Hovermaps. No way, not a chance. They were a key component to the greater solution. 
JEREMY SOFONIA: The primary objective was to do handheld mapping of the interiors. That was Emesent Hovermap’s role in this case. So just your basic handheld mapping was used most of the time. But because many of the spaces are not well lit –  or even lit at all – we had a special lighting rig that the engineering team had put together that snapped right onto my Hovermap unit and could illuminate the field of view of the GoPro. The GoPro was was there to get RGB true color data. 
Not only were we looking at the LiDAR data, but colorized so that blue rubbish bins are blue and the rust on the wall looks like rust. Adding that element of color to the requirements increased the challenge and the difficulty significantly. One of our issues was, how do you light these large spaces or these small tunnels? This lighting rig that I had on the handheld units worked great. It did its job perfectly.
For those hard-to-reach places I also brought an extension pole and used it a few times. A good example of this was on the top of the lighthouse. I knew that the top of the lighthouse was going to be seen by the drone data, but I wanted a complete Hovermap model for our own purposes as well. So I was able to walk the interior of the lighthouse and we were able to scan the exterior easily enough, but I couldn’t get up to the tip-top of the lighthouse without climbing another small ladder. That just looked like a bad idea. Plus, the lighthouse is an active Coast Guard station. Going on top of that would have required seeking additional approvals. It just wouldn’t have been worthwhile. We didn’t want to bother the Coast Guard with something like that. So, by being able to put the Hovermap on a pole, I could do a walk around the top, along the balustrade of the balcony of the lighthouse. It saved me from having to climb up and accessing a part that would have been potentially dangerous, but also requiring additional levels of approval. 
Lastly, Boston Dynamics. They arrived with Spot, the robotic quadruped dog, and we used that in a building called Building 64. It’s the old accommodation units for the guards and their families. So, think about a massive apartment complex. People don’t realize this, or at least I didn’t, that the guards didn’t live in San Francisco and commute back and forth. Their entire families lived on the island. They had a school. They had everything that they needed, more or less. So, this old housing building, multi-story, large complex space is actually closed with signs on the door that say: Danger Lead, Danger Asbestos. And for those signed levels, we were able to use Hovermap on Spot to go in and capture that data because Spot is not affected by lead or asbestos the way that we would be.
It would have taken us longer to put the PPE on and take it off than it did for us to just do the whole job. It’s a great example of how we can use robotic systems to not just keep ourselves safe, but to minimize the red tape and the time consumption that it does take, not just for us, but even for the health and safety people that have to review these things. It’s a massive time saver all around.