A plateform for extracting crucial information from satellite images

EPFL start-up Picterra has devised a smart system that allows users to analyze drone or satellite images of a given territory: in a few clicks, they can extract information, statistics and representations of changes that have taken place in the area. The startup, which is based at EPFL Innovation Park, will present its system to sector professionals and the public tomorrow at GEOSummit, the Swiss geoinformation trade fair in Bern. What do monitoring a national park, identifying suitable building locations and managing a vineyard have in common? All these activities, and a wide range of others, can be carried out more quickly and comprehensively by using aerial and satellite images. The artificial intelligence platform developed by startup Picterra allows anyone to extract crucial information from drone or satellite images - many of which are in the public domain - in a few clicks. It will be presented to the public and sector professionals tomorrow at GEOSummit in Bern. The system's basic algorithms were developed by Picterra's CTO Frank de Morsier. It can locate and count user-selected elements and spatio-temporal changes after quickly learning which objects to recognize. The machine interactively and rapidly compares the object's characteristics with the other elements of the image, or compares the basic image with other images of the location, in order to detect changes. "Although artificial intelligence (AI) has made huge strides in the fields of 'natural' language and text analysis, using AI specifically to analyze terrestrial imaging is almost virgin territory," said de Morsier, also lecturer at Geographic Information Systems Laboratory. Human expertise at the heart of artificial intelligence