{"id":59989,"date":"2020-04-08T01:19:02","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T17:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/iceye-ceo-looks-to-solve-problems-with-sar-data\/"},"modified":"2020-04-08T01:19:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T17:19:02","slug":"iceye-ceo-looks-to-solve-problems-with-sar-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/iceye-ceo-looks-to-solve-problems-with-sar-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceye CEO Looks to Solve Problems with SAR Data"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Finnish startup Iceye<\/strong> has big ambitions \u2014 the smallsat company wants to do for satellite imagery what IBM<\/strong> did for computing in the \u201880s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to democratize the technology, to make it available for everyone,\u201d said Rafal Modrzewski, the company\u2019s co-founder and CEO.<\/p>\n

IBM took computer technology, then available only to large corporations, and \u2014 through the personal computer \u2014 made it affordable for people to have on their desks or at their home. Modrzewski said his goal is for Iceye to do the same with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) capability, which just a few years ago was only available to a handful of years ago.<\/p>\n

Iceye\u2019s SAR satellites can take detailed pictures at night, through cloud cover and under almost any weather conditions. Modrzewski described the images as detailed enough to count the cars in a parking lot, but not to determine their make or model.<\/p>\n

But Modrzewski doesn\u2019t think of Iceye as an imagery company. \u201cWe are really problem solvers, rather than satellite imagery providers. The problems that we\u2019re solving need data. Data which is global and reliable and fast \u2014 and that\u2019s what we get from our network of satellites,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Iceye has three satellites in Low Earth Polar Orbit. Last month, the company announced that its three satellites have 25 cm resolution imaging capability. The company aims to get eight more satellites into orbit this year, in three different launches. Modrzewski said he\u2019s happy with that timetable, and that the company has doubled in size annually.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as an entrepreneur, I would always like to be going faster, but there is a limit to how fast you can go that is actually sustainable and doesn\u2019t generate unnecessary risk for our existing customers and I believe we are probably at that limit,\u201d he said. Since 2015, the company has taken on three rounds of venture capital, raising $65 million overall.<\/p>\n

Launching a further eight satellites into orbit during 2021 will leave Iceye with the capability to revisit any spot on the earth at roughly three-hour intervals. Modrzewski said that revisit rate, which will allow users to capture information on a near-continuous basis, will give Iceye its power as a tool.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s customers include government agencies like the Japanese Coast Guard<\/strong> \u2014 which is accustomed to interpreting SAR imagery and with an in-house analysis capability. But Modrzewski said that Iceye is also going after non-traditional customers, who have \u201cnever thought of using earth observation technologies in order to solve their problems or answer your questions. Whether that\u2019s farmers, energy companies, fire departments, maybe insurance companies \u2026 There\u2019s a whole variety of industries where the data that we provide can \u2026 add value,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To secure non-traditional customers, he avoids showing them the imagery, which does not convey much information to the untrained eye. Instead, the company offers them information that will help them make better decisions \u2014 information generated by Iceye\u2019s automated analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to engage customers with interpretation that happens entirely within Iceye, to make those customers the consumers of the finished information,\u201d rather than getting the raw imagery data and doing their own interpretation and analysis, Modrzewski explained. \u201cOur job will be done when we have users that never see a picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

That in-house information extraction is done by a variety of algorithms, some of which use certain forms of machine learning, including convolutional neural networks. But Modrzewski avoids using the term Artificial Intelligence (AI). \u201cIt\u2019s a very broad term and as engineers, we always want to be specific,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Beyond the immediate applications, Modrzewski said, the God\u2019s eye view that Iceye provides can solve problems in business that arise from a lack of trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always hope that all parties to a transaction are honest, but the question is, are you willing to accept the risk, right? So what we\u2019re really doing is, we\u2019re decreasing that risk. Because if you can\u2019t verify [the other party\u2019s honesty] that risk often is unacceptable to you, but if there is a mechanism that just helps to ensure that [they are keeping up their end of the bargain] then the risk becomes acceptable and a lot of investments or transactions can take place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finnish startup Iceye has big ambitions \u2014 the smallsat company wants to do for satellite imagery what IBM did for computing in the \u201880s. \u201cWe want to democratize the technology, to make it available for everyone,\u201d said Rafal Modrzewski, the company\u2019s co-founder and CEO. IBM took computer technology, then available only to large corporations, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}