Meet you.
Thank you. I’m from Axelspace. Axelspace is based in Tokyo. We established our company out of Tokyo University lab back in 2008. Why? Because we felt the space technology should be available for more people.
At that time, almost 13 years ago. It was not available for most people. It was the elite’s technology. You need to be a scientist or from the specific meaning. We thought that’s wrong because space technology can bring a lot of things, positive things for our society.
We decided, OK, we’ll just do it because no one else was doing it. We decided to start a company to make microsatellites and using microsatellites to visualize the planet on a daily basis, so we can read clarity on what’s going on here. I showed you…
…Yes. What changed is that now we have four strong leadership including myself and most almost 90 people. When I came to you, it was probably around 30 to 40 people, very small compared to now. Now, we have almost 90 people from almost 30 different countries all gathered in the heart of Tokyo…
…with the mission to bring space within everyone’s reach. Last week, we successfully launched our new satellite into orbit. It’s a 100 kilogram size and this is actually a clean room we’re very proud of, and we take images of the planet.
Why am I here? Very, very simple reason. I have this radical idea called AxelTaiwan and let me explain what it is. Axel Taiwan is an idea to create open data for all Taiwan.
Now, what I mean by this is we believe that satellite data has influential power to bring clarity and change people’s cognitive perspective on how we view our planet. It’s the overview effect.
We want to try to deliver as much as possible to people, but there’s a problem because our project is very expensive, so we end up having to charge the people a fair amount in order for us to sustain. We are a private company.
Exactly.
Exactly. I think you’re thinking hard. I came up with this idea called AxelTaiwan. This shows the entirety. It is a true open data concept where people in Taiwan can get access to the satellite imagery data of Taiwan through open data API for free.
The community in Taiwan, which I define it, like entrepreneurship, and all these people, and maybe you, can get access to our data of satellite imagery of Taiwan so that they can focus on creating box.
Now, here’s a catch. There’s something wrong with this picture because I’m saying I want to provide for free. Somebody has to sponsor this.
Why am I here today is because I want to seek your help to promote this idea so that we can find a sponsor who will embrace this idea so that people in Taiwan can get free access to our open data and create a product which can be potentially utilized here. What I’m more excited is this could be another export product for Taiwan.
First, we can do a product and services for the local market. Once it’s matured, this could be another source of export product service that Taiwan can potentially nurture. This project will cost me roughly $2.8 million per annum.
The data.
For producing the data.
To capture entire Taiwan?
I calculate it and it will come down to…
Exactly. We do fast prototyping, of course. That is the entirety of the project. If somebody is interested in exploring the idea, we can start prototyping by focusing on specific area.
[laughs] Let’s say we can do the City of Taipei. I’m more interested in contributing to agriculture here. Maybe find an agricultural area where it makes sense — I’m not an expert — and where is the best place.
We may be able to identify an agricultural area, which I see taking our HSR down to Tienen all the time, beautiful rice paddy. Maybe we can identify one of those as a target area. Start from there if that’s a good option, and then if it works out and people are happy, we can fast prototype.
That’s one idea, by the way.
Exactly. Maybe we can start mosaicing and then finally become AxelTaiwan. Basically, I borrowed your time today to share my idea for this and to seek your blessing so that I can find an opportunity to talk to people and maybe seek your help to talk to the right people who can help drive us forward.
I just — I say, “I just.” because in our space industry, this is very low price comparatively. — I just need $2.8 million per annum to drive this forward. If I can find a proper resource, we can do this right away.
Yes. Today, I’m going to be showing you some stuff as well. Our satellite imagery…I’m going to remind you that we take from 600 kilometer altitude at roughly 11:30 AM every day.
Right now, the frequency is 12 days, but because we launched four additional satellites, it’s going to be three days in June. We also have attitude control system which allows us to do this kind of maneuver to take a 3D image. In urban setting — this is Tokyo — it’s quite useful to have first of the beautiful image.
Stereoscopic. It’s cool. We’re just playing around.
The other thing is that this is a proud image for us. Our satellite is 100 kilogram size, not so big, but because of our relatively big CubeSat arena, it allows us to capture 50 kilometer with 500 kilometer length in one capture.
In the context of Taiwan, as you can see, it makes it very easy for us to cover the entirety. Now, this is a stark contrast, for example, from aerial or maybe drone. Yes, you have other options, but to do this, not so easy. That’s one.
The other thing is even though we are getting this big image, each of the image itself you get is 2.5 meter per pixel, which is another fascinating thing for me because you have a useful image. I’m just skipping. We have basically six spectral buttons. We are proud of what we call reddish brown, very good for vegetation monitoring.
Again, what I want to start off with here is agriculture because I heard that there are more and more imports into Taiwan for rice, for example. I went to some of the organic shop here. It’s exciting that you see organically grown rice.
If we are able to bring some technology, maybe we can help identify a way to make it more efficient and environmentally friendly. I’m very passionate about sustainable business since 20 years.
One other thing we can do with our satellite is identify the vegetation. This is just nothing but using an IRR to do this and giving you an example on the rice paddy. This is time series of rice paddies being captured.
The other thing that we do is, because we have a lot of data, we do parcel delineation, training the computer to do this automatically, and visualizing so that anyone can understand difficult numbers, just pictures.
What we also are passionate is trying to convert difficult concepts into an intuitive visual so that people with no background can just get it. This is from Taiwan, in one of the farm in Taiwan. We played around. We didn’t have enough data because we don’t continue to take Taiwan yet.
I just did it. Nobody paid for me. This is very expensive. Every time I do this, I invest my money.
Exactly. I love talking to you because you get it. When I share this to people, they’re like, “OK. Yeah.” This is expensive. I just did it because I wanted to see how it works, and it actually works.
What I want to do is I want to do this for a bigger area. If you can tell me or some of our friends can tell me the right area to monitor the agricultural studies here, that’ll be great.
The other thing we’re passionate is in the urban setting, identify greenery and also find anomaly that’s happening in the city. I’m wearing this, but I’m not wearing this because I know there’s a thing up. That’s not true. [laughs] That’s not the reason.
I have some discussions with the SDG director in Rwanda. I’m trying to help them visualize their reports because they have no way to validate what people are sharing with them. I’m trying to bring facts for them by using satellite.
Anyway, I’m very passionate about this. Using satellite, basically, I’m highlighting that this area, for some reason, we don’t know why, but somehow the vegetation just dropped. If we continue to monitor the urban settings on a continued basis, potentially we can highlight some anomalies.
I don’t know what this is because we tried, but we don’t understand what it is. Let’s say this is like hail or something. If the vegetation is dropping, it could lead to a landslide potentially. This could be a disaster management product as well.
The other thing that we were monitoring is your reservoirs because island of Taiwan, very important to keep the water. I surf, so I know different islands. Water is very important.
What we notice accidentally is that suddenly, last year and this year, same season, water is dropping significantly. Now, what this made me realize is that if you monitor the entire reservoir with satellite, maybe you can use a computer to help identify the changes in the water level.
We don’t know the actual water level. Not easy, but at least by identifying the land and sea area coming up, we can see the changes. For example, not just here but the side is receding as well. Simply using the NDVI, by checking the vegetation, the water is negative reflection. By seeing that, we can see the water increasing and decreasing. Not a perfect measurement but a useful measurement.
Just wanted to end by showing you some beautiful images taken by our satellite of our Taiwan. This is Taipei. Another image, as you can see, we like to take natural beauties because I think one of the advantage of our satellite data is obviously taking large area. Also, because we have the sensors, we can do vegetation monitoring.
Urban setting is cool, like this, but I want to do meaningful stuff. Monitoring like forest trees for disaster management, or at least seeing the healthiness of it, could be interesting.
The other thing I’m thinking is the reservoir, maybe monitor the entire reservoir on a frequent basis. See what’s going on, making sure everything’s OK.
The other thing is, we noticed that there is a lot of power plans along your coasts. It’s necessary because you need energy, but then that’s also usually in a very beautiful place. My proposal is, why don’t we monitor all the power plants to make sure there’s no destruction in the neighboring environment.
