SenseTime Launches SenseEarth, Enabling Public To “AI + RS”

Remote Sensing (RS) essentially reduces the difficulty for the human to obtain geography and society information, by leveraging sensors to scan, detect and measure objects and areas. RS has been adopted in numerous fields, including geography, land surveying and most Earth Science disciplines. However, the accuracy of detection and measuring is limited, neither is the frequency of information update.

Technology innovation from scientists and enterprises always leads to solutions for such obstacles. On July 9, Chinese leading AI company SenseTime launched an RS images analysis platform “SenseEarth”, based on the website “rs.sensetime.com” opening to the public. The platform is capable of displaying various information, including roads, transportations and different types of land (farmland, forest, meadow, shrub, wasteland, wetland and so on).

Considering the issue of data privacy and security, SenseEarth updates once a month. Users are accessible for the changeable information by comparing the RS images of the same area by month. So far, SenseEarth only provides the RS images analysis service of Beijing and Shanghai, but it will expand its service to more cities and regions, supporting multiple resolution’s images and updating data more frequently. Besides, SenseEarth will upgrade with more detecting objects, such as buildings, airplanes, water and so on.

SenseEarth is the front-end interface of “SenseRemote”, an RS images analysis algorithm developed by SenseTime. The recognition accuracy of this advanced algorithm surpasses 90% for some objects. On top of that, it only takes 20 seconds for SenseRemote to completely recognize a piece of 5000p*5000p RS image automatically.

Based on SenseRemote, the company rolls out a city management solution, fitting the category of Smart City Construction promoted by the Chinese government. Upgraded by this solution, businesses related to RS – such as city planning, construction and management - can be more efficient and intelligent in terms of the investigation, analysis, making decisions and management.

SenseTime is not the only adventurer sailing into this uncharted water. GagoGroup (佳格), a Chinese big data and machine learning startup, provides intelligent decision services to the agriculture industry by analyzing RS images from over ten satellites of China, the U.S. and some European countries. Yunyoujiuzhou Technology (云游九州科技) is another Chinese startup developing cloud storage system for RS images, participating in National Geographic Information Investigation Project, organized by the Chinese government.

In February of last year, the first Chinese “AI + RS” application research institute was established in Chongqing, jointly founded by Chongqing Geographic Information Center, Chongqing University and Wuhan University. They have advantages in the abundant geographic information, image recognition technology and RS related algorithm respectively.