Zoom in on a picture of a building or monument and you’re likely to see all the nooks and crannies. But what if you could fly around the structure and see it all at once, in 3D?

That’s something Elevated Element took a test drive — well, a test fly — on early last month. The Owings Mills-based husband-and-wife drone outfit met Direct Dimensions CEO Michael Raphael and decided to implement 3D scanning technology on one of Elevated Element’s shoots.

For a proof of concept, they scanned the Francis Scott Key Monument in Bolton Hill.

“We did this really as a first try,” said Elevated Element cofounder Terry Kilby. “[Direct Dimensions] had us over to their facility and showed us how their technology works.”

This video shows the final product:

“I think it ended up being a surprise,” Kilby said. “Everybody’s always talking about the big [applications of drones], agriculture, search and rescue, stuff like that.”

Elevated Element launched in March, a beneficiary of an administrative law judge’s ruling that relaxed restrictions on commercial drones.

Update, 8/12/14: Check out the scan below, via Sketchfab, a platform our colleagues at Technical.ly Brooklyn recently profiled.

Scott Key Monument, Baltimore MD

by Direct Dimensions

on Sketchfab


-30-