IkeGPS

ikeGPS is a handheld integrated computer, GPS, 3D compass, camera and laser range finder developed and manufactured by technology company Surveylab Limited. ikeGPS is the first device that can provide verified geotagged data of any distant target: recording a photo with its GPS coordinates. That is, the image is recorded with the geodata not of where the person doing the recording is, who may be up to a kilometer away, but of where the target of interest is located.

The Company
Surveylab was founded in 2002 by Leon Toorenburg. The company was established to design and commercialize a product that enabled the capture of verifiable geodata of offset targets for use in GIS. Surveylab is headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand, with offices in Washington, D.C., United States.

The technology
IkeGPS allows a user to quickly record the geodata of multiple targets together with their photographs. ikeGPS lets the user do this from a distance, which is helpful if the user is dealing with any hard to reach or dangerous target. In 2008, GPS World reviewed ikeGPS as the best GPS device in the world for its purpose because of its unique capability. However ikeGPS is not as accurate as some other GPS survey products. While precise enough for many applications, ikeGPS is not centimeter accurate.

Applications
ikeGPS is used around the world by organisations for emergency management and enterprise asset management. A major user of the ikeGPS is the United States Army Corps of Engineers who have deployed the ikeGPS across a range of applications, for example after the 2005 levee failures in Greater New Orleans – so that engineers could send back information about the scale of problems to be dealt with at different sites, and in Afghanistan and Iraq – for rapid mapping of infrastructure. Organisations are also using ikeGPS for humanatarian demining. Surveylab's partners include Science Applications International Corporation.