Thousands of Everyday Drone Pilots Are Making a Google Street View From Above

Spexi, a Canadian startup, has built a crowdsourced network of over 8,000 drone pilots who use the company's software to autonomously fly pre-planned routes and capture high-resolution aerial imagery. The network has mapped more than 5 million acres across 200+ cities in Canada and the US. Consumer drones flying at low altitude produce imagery 30 times sharper than satellites at a fraction of the cost of airplane-based surveys. The resulting data is being used for wildfire risk modeling, insurance underwriting, and building 3D maps for AR and autonomous robotics — a project some compare to a Google Street View from the sky, built via a Waze-style crowdsourced model rather than expensive in-house operations.