From Drone to the Field

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming the go to technology in the mapping business for collecting aerial imagery.

UAVs have quickly become a truly disruptive technology in the geospatial industry. The ability to quickly send an inexpensive and flexible platform of sensors into the air to survey your surroundings, and receive near real time feedback, has opened the door to countless opportunities for data collection and analytics.

We see UAV technology as a major opportunity to enhance both the efficiency and the quality of data collected in the field. In order to keep ahead of this technology, our development team have spent some time over the past few weeks looking into how RouteShoot can support the ever growing file formats produced by UAV's.

The processes are still in development, but we’re making considerable progress in showcasing how readily UAV-based imagery can be deployed on the ground in real-world scenarios for various operations.

Local Road Financing Innovations in the Philippines

Access to global markets can move a new business from a backyard garage to a local warehouse to a global network. In fact, small businesses that export are more productive, have greater job growth and are more likely to stay financially solvent than non-exporters.

In 2014 RouteShoot were contacted by the World Bank who were seeking a collaborative tool that would assist in the monitoring of strategic investments in local roads in the Philippines. The World Bank is a United Nations international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programs, with a membership of 188 countries, 6 official languages and 12,000 plus staff and consultants who work in Washington, DC and in more than 130 countries worldwide.

The Department for Public Works and Highways (DPWH) vowed to further upgrade and fully pave the national network, and finance, implement, and monitor strategic investments in local roads in the Philippines. The current Aquino administration, governing from mid-2010 to 2016, has prioritised over $3billion for Farm to Market Roads (FMRs) and Tourism Road Infrastructure (TRIP) alone.

In August 2014 the World Bank approved the Philippines Rural Development Program (PRDP), of which the majority of the $500million financing is allocated for FMRs. The Rural Development Project for the Philippines aims to increase rural incomes and enhance farm and fishery productivity in targeted areas by supporting smallholders and fishers to increase their marketable surpluses and their access to markets.

The Philippines, and for that matter most local governments, have no comprehensive, open, and validated map to their road network and those levels of government responsible for it. Main road investment programs have historically been both opaque and highly politicised. Project budget credibility has been weak, with roads being apparently funded not getting built. Tracking public roads investments from budgeting, procurement, implementation, audit, and maintenance has more often than not been a broken chain.

In September 2014 RouteShoot partnered with web developers out in the Philippines to create an on-line interactive, Open Government, multi-media platform to digitally map the whole national and local roads network in the Philippines, and track associated priority public investment projects.

The platform called 'Open Roads' captures geo-coded digital images and videos through notably mobile devices to promote better planning, budgeting, procurement, implementation, and participatory audits. More timely and better information across the public investment delivery chain provides the basis for closing feedback and performance monitoring loops. RouteShoot has now become a government mandated tool that must be used as part of the project management process across the the Philippine archipelago comprising 7,107 islands. 

In February 2016, RouteShoot and the World Bank signed a new extension to the contract which saw a couple of our team heading out to visit the guys in the Philippines. A blog post published by the World Bank discussing 'Local road financing innovations in the Philippiness' can be found here:

http://blogs.worldbank.org/governance/no-movie-no-map-no-money-local-road-financing-innovations-philippines

Announcing Expanded Features

RouteShoot sees the release of some brand new features. The entire RouteShoot team has remained focused and operated with purpose over the past year to bring you some highly powerful features!

Route List:

In the top left hand corner of the journal map you will notice there is a 'route list'. By clicking the drop down menu this will allow you to quickly select from a list of routes that have been randomly colour coordinated for visual ease.

Rotate:

When selected, the rotate feature orientates the map so that the direction of travel is always upwards. 

Measuring Tool:
Use the measuring tool to draw a line or polygon on the map to determine the geographic length or area.



We’re blown away by how RouteShoot has grown recently and we’re excited to evolve it even further in the coming year. 

RouteShoot - Geo-referenced Video For Everyone

Video capture has historically been costly, requiring dedicated cameras and hardware. In order to conduct roadway alignment surveys, or construction site reviews using video documentation, it involved loaning out extremely expensive equipment to surveyors, then waiting to pull together the data manually in the back-office for review.

Using consumer-grade hardware (like Android devices or iPhones), teams can use the device they carry everywhere to document quick clips, or mount the device in their vehicle to drive the length of a road widening project, then sync everything they’ve captured up to the centralised cloud account for management and review. RouteShoot even has an option to record the audio track with the video, so an inspector can make voice annotations and comments as they’re walking a construction site or a facility inspection.

Within the RouteShoot iOS and Android apps, you also have total control over video quality, both resolution and frame rate. Based on your needs, being able to adjust quality gives you a way to manage file sizes and storage.

Along with the GPS location track, our video recorder also logs the heading, time, speed, distance, and even the altitude. 

Combined with high-resolution imagery, this allows you to identify buildings, road signs, poles, and lots more right from the imagery as you’re scrubbing through your collected video. 

With high definition video, pausing the clip gives you nice crisp frames for picking out features.

Check out the 'Edition Comparison' page to see which plan is right for you to get started using video capture. Also grab the latest updates to the iOS or Android app to get access from mobile, including a host of other new features.

Stay tuned to the blog and follow us on Twitter for more news on additional announcements.

Creative England 50 2016 - RouteShoot Made the List!

England’s 50 most creative businesses have been showcased in a landmark report by Creative England, and we made the list!

RouteShoot FD Adam May is off to London today to attend the Creative England 50 event, celebrating the most innovative businesses in the creative industry!

We’re very pleased to be included in the list alongside some really big names and the RouteShoot bosses are looking forward to the RouteShoot product being showcased.

The event has also been covered in the Telegraph!

To read more about the report: Click Here

RouteShoot moves to Exeter Science Park

RouteShoot is excited to announce that it will be making it's move this week into the state-of-the-art, UK’s 70th and newest Science Park – following on from their successful Exeter R&D Center set up.

RouteShoot; who were based at the Innovation Centre in Exeter until November 2015, will be moving to the Exeter Science Park on the 1st December. The new Centre has been designed to facilitate ‘open Innovation’ collaborative working to support the growth of R&D-intensive businesses and is one of several elements which make up the Exeter and East Devon Growth Point.

The move comes at an exciting time for RouteShoot; as they are currently moving into new markets.

The company, founded in 2012, offers the latest innovation in Geo-referenced video, route tracking and collaborative working.

Its innovative approach is a combination of the RouteShoot smartphone application and a dedicated website, which allows users to monitor their infrastructure across the world and share their Geo-referenced video with colleagues, customers and other stakeholders.

Exeter and the South West demonstrate a track record in innovation and entrepreneurship, where start-ups have attracted more than $550 million in investment and returned more than $800 million to shareholders.

The South West combines innovation and technology excellence, a great mix of universities with both academic and venture focus and an established reputation in attracting leading tech firms while providing great incubation and support for earlier stage business.

RouteShoot appointed to G-Cloud 7 Framework

What is better than being on cloud nine? Perhaps being on G-Cloud 7...

UK-based Geo-referenced video specialist RouteShoot has been awarded a place on the latest UK Government’s G-Cloud framework, RM1557vii for its market leading Smartphone app and GPS tagged video solution.

Inclusion within the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) framework will allow RouteShoot to offer its pioneering technology to the public sector under the category of Software as a Service (SaaS).

G-Cloud is an innovative framework which offers the most up to date cloud services available for the public sector. Distinctly, instead of paying for services which bind people to inflexible and long-term contracts, subscribers to G-Cloud pay for services as they use them. Such services can be bought through 'Cloud Store' which is now known as the 'Digital Marketplace'.

The key role and the leading purpose of G-Cloud is to encourage and make it much easier for a number of public sector organisations, local authorities, government branches and NHS to call-off different cloud-based services. This framework also aims to provide UK businesses the necessary package of opportunities that will help them win UK Government contracts. By enabling the public sector organisations to access and subscribe to internet-based computing, G-Cloud 7 excludes the need for investing in traditional self delivered IT solutions. The effortless and cost-effective way to access and benefit from computing resources via a framework agreement turns G-Cloud into commodity-based ‘scaffolding’ that covers infrastructure, platform, software and specialist cloud services. The agility and rapid deployment of pay as you go cloud services guarantee's the ultimate value and the quality of service delivery.

Since its conception in 2012 the G-Cloud initiative has made it mandatory for central government to adopt a “cloud first” policy. This policy dictates the consideration of cloud-based IT solutions before other options and encourages the public sector to do this by providing a list of pre-approved suppliers and the ability for consumers to search by various technology attributes.

Gary Wilson Director at RouteShoot said: ‘We are incredibly proud to have been awarded a place on G-Cloud 7. Our services are now in front of the right people in the right organisations, streamlining our service provisions to the public service.’

RouteShoot has an established track record and ongoing pipeline of work to help the public sector manage its risk, reduce costs and save time.

RouteShoot's full offering can be found on the Digital Marketplace G-Cloud framework page.