Uzufly, a spin-off company from the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), has developed a virtual-reality technology that allows urban planners to precisely map out their development plans. The system uses drones to take thousands of aerial photographs that are transformed into 3D models through the creation of digital twins or digital replicas of real-world objects such as buildings, writes a statement from the university. The objects can be georeferenced to the centimeter while the 3D models can accommodate any type of architectural design at full scale.
According to Théo Benazzi, Uzufly’s co-founder and CTO, the technology is similar to Google Earth. However, “while Google uses airplanes to take huge numbers of pictures at high altitudes, we use drones that have smaller cameras and capture images much closer to the ground”, he explained in the statement. That is why Uzufly can generate 3D models at the level of a neighborhood or an entire city.
Uzufly’s digital twins can be enhanced with georeferenced data including land plots, zoning areas, urban development structures and underground infrastructure like pipes. The statement writes that data from Switzerland’s Federal Office of Topography can be added so that information on the solar-power generation capacity of individual rooftops is displayed. This allows, for example, an architecture firm to download the area in which they have been commissioned to design a building, without having to send surveyors to the land.
Uzufly is located in Le Garage, a business incubator at EPFL Innovation Park. It also works with EPFL architecture students to improve 3D models of buildings. em
