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ms-maj · 4 years

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For @theheavycrown on her birthday. Sarah, thank you for all the laughter, support and friendship and for being an all around awesome human being. xoxo

It’s not that he doesn’t like mornings, he does, it’s just that Jughead Jones has come to learn that few good things happen before nine a.m. Yet here he sits at seven, a fine layer of silt covering his beloved Honda, his leather jacket, his helmet (next time he’ll make sure the route he takes avoids as many of those dirt roads as humanly possible; he really wishes he’d stuffed his backpack in the saddlebag instead of wearing it on his back.) The goggles he’s pulled down rest under his chin as he slides his helmet off, his hair feeling heavy and hot in the already building humidity. The helmet clanks against the steel frame as it hangs from the handlebars, dust kicking off in a little cloud as it sways.

He sighs, peeling the filthy eyewear off his head and wipes the lens across his dirty jeans before hanging them on the opposite handlebar. This is not his scene. Well, it’s not not his scene, Jughead is pretty well known as the patron saint of all things forgotten and bygone, so the flea market isn’t too out of turn but taking time off his life to pursue nothing but leisure? Not so much. So when he heard tell of the best collection of antique cast iron this side of the Mississippi he knew he’d be remiss if his cross-country culinary trek didn’t at least find him some new pieces to add to his ever-growing collection. The one that personally threatened to take over another corner of his small house, and the one he’s building a culinary empire on. He exhales forcefully, lifting his coffee from the holder, thankful he opted for the tall, solid cupholder as it somehow managed to save his necessary caffeine from the horrors of the open country road.

Finish below or on AO3

Sipping on his "coffee" he watches as the vendors turn into the old yet still operating drive-in, the name Sunset peeling off the ancient sign. This weekend’s fare, Jaws and Jurassic Park, piecemeal spelled out in crumbling letters on the old marquee. Truck after truck, some with trailers and others just loaded to the brim, turn in a steady stream and supposedly have been doing so for the last hour. There’s a strange excitement that simmers just under the surface, it’s as if he knows he’s going to find exactly what he wants today, maybe even if it’s not at all what he’s been looking for.

Jughead likes to think he’s lived. In his—some glorious and others very much not—thirty-four years on this earth he’s eaten, what he thinks, is the finest food on every continent. He’s trained under classic French chefs in Michelin starred restaurants and with street vendors from Thailand to Peru. His own restaurant, a quaint throwback bistro in the heart of upstate New York is the culmination of those years and years and years of hard work. His passions, he’s come to find, cannot be confined, nor defined, simply by the walls of a kitchen. They’re in the pages of his acclaimed cookbooks and the mystery series he’s been stringing together since high school that he was sure would never amount to anything.

But it did, and here he is. The very definition of latchkey, Jughead Jones grew up the poor son of a couple of addicts and con artists. The ones he hasn’t seen since he got his high school diploma. The moment that piece of paper was in his hands, he loaded his rucksack onto his rusted out Kawasaki and never looked back.

He’s lived in trailers and dorms, in cramped studios and lavish flats, and once, in the projection booth of a drive-in theater. Very much like the one he assumes is in the middle of this one. He sighs, leaning back against his bike, forgetting the heat from the muffler until it starts burning beneath the heavy denim of his jeans.

“Shit,” he mumbles as he shifts uncomfortably away, dislodging his near burnt calf but manages to spill the bitter, gas-station coffee he’d been absently cradling down the front of his white t-shirt. The next expletive out of his mouth is not so quiet. “Fuck me!”

The cup drops to the ground as he wipes at the seeping stain barehanded. “I might have a tissue,” he hears. Instantly he stops the futile attempt to clean himself, looking up when the laughter reaches his ears. “Though I can’t imagine it would be much help.”

The corner of his lip pulls up despite this recent bout of bad luck. She’s in a bold, floral print sundress with the kind of soft hem that dances with the breeze as it blows across the nearly empty lot. The sunhat is floppy, almost too big over the cascade of soft waves that hit her shoulders, she smiles, warm and amused before she takes her lower lip between her teeth, eyes darting from his to the growing spot of wet fabric sticking to his chest.

“I would say I’m well prepared,” he gestures back toward his bike with its ample enclosed storage, and his dust-covered backpack draped over the rear seat. “But apparently I wasn’t thinking this morning. This is also my last clean shirt, so, really batting a thousand today.”

Pink tongue peeking between her teeth as she laughs her eyes narrow as her head dips to the side. “Hmm,” she runs that tongue over her lower lip, looking at him with hooded eyes before seemingly catching herself; clearing her throat she starts again. ”I just pulled my car out of storage, I might have something in the trunk if you want me to take a look?” She half turns to follow where she’s absentmindedly pointing, and he sees the very moment her left foot doesn’t seem to get the memo. If he waits another second she’ll be in the dirt and without even consciously thinking about it, his arms wrap around her waist and keep her from toppling.

She lets out a shaky breath, fingers digging into the leather that encases his bicep. “Sorry, I, uh,” her head darts from side to side before she rights herself and extricates herself from his grip. “I wish I could say I wasn’t normally this klutzy but that would be a lie.” She sweeps the dirt and imaginary wrinkles from her dress and adjusts the hat that now sits just askew on her head.

“Glad I could be of assistance,” he drawls, watching as pink colors her cheeks. “So, a shirt? Maybe?”

Nodding, she turns (with a skosh more grace than before) and walks to the end of the makeshift aisle. “Right this way.”

“You’re not trying to lure me behind an abandoned building so that you can murder me, right?” He thinks it sounds playful, flirtatious even, though both things are patently out of his wheelhouse, but he can’t help but wonder why this gorgeous woman even stopped and looked in his direction.

“Oh, no, see this building might be abandoned, but these grounds aren’t going to be for too much longer. And I have a feeling you might be a screamer.”

Choking a little on his own spit, he slows, swallows, and drags his eyes back up to find hers looking back over her shoulder. She winks, then stops between the fins of some powder blue oddity Jughead has never seen the likes of before.

“I don’t usually find myself at a loss for words but you seem to have found my weakness.”

“And what is that exactly?” She questions as he moves next to her, almost too close, he can feel her breath shuddering against his skin as she places an oddly shaped key into the opening on the trunk.

“Klutzy green-eyed blondes,” he can tell he’s caught her off guard when she gasps as the latch lets go on the trunk lock.

“Okay then,” she’s smiling back at him, that lip caught between her teeth again when he realizes he’s already mapping out their future and he doesn’t even know her name.

“Jughead. Jones.” he supplies, voice cracking like he’s all of sixteen again. He wasn’t nervous, not before this simple moment in which he provides his chosen name and she either laughs or…

Her dainty hand hangs between them. “Pleasure to meet you Jughead, I’m Betty Cooper."

His large, calloused hand engulfs hers, happy to find the spark he thought he felt before was very real, and much, much more than a spark.

Their clasped hands hang between them, neither too eager to drop. Betty finally pulls away with another one of those flustered head shakes, before she starts to rummage through the cavernous trunk. It’s fairly empty, save for whatever Betty is looking for, and it's clearly all the way in the back.

“Okay, but really, you can’t tell me that you haven’t thought, you know hypothetically of course, about how many bodies you could actually fit in this trunk,” he’s taken a step back to get the full picture, which is mostly just Betty stretching the entirety of her gorgeous frame into the depths of the unknown to find him a shirt, but his writers’ mind can’t help but wonder.

She stops her scavenging and with a triumphant grunt, she’s righting herself, the strap of a black duffle bag between her fingers. “Aha! And honestly, who hasn’t seen an old car and thought about the sheer amount of fuckery one could get away with simply based on interior cargo space.”

He knows he’s staring, gaping really, but he can’t seem to help himself. Betty shrugs, unphased, and goes to open the bag. She rummages around for a few seconds then pulls out a Johnny Cash t-shirt.

“I know it’s a little wrinkled but it doesn’t seem to smell,” she pulls the aforementioned garment from her face and hands it to him.

“Even if it did it—anything is an improvement over,” he waves his hand over his sticky shirt and worries she can tell his heart straight-up skips a beat when she laughs.

Jughead takes off his leather jacket, passes it wordlessly to Betty who tries to clean it as best she can with a small rag from her car. He slips his arms inside of his soiled shirt and pushes it up around his shoulders, sliding it off as he pulls on the clean one. When he looks back at Betty she looks a little perplexed.

“What?”

“Just wondering what prompted the middle-school locker room style shirt change. If my seeing you topless would’ve been too much for your delicate sensibilities than perhaps I’ve misjudged—”

“That is quite enough out of you,” he points a menacing finger in her direction but is laughed down. His glare breaks quickly and the smile that takes over almost hurts. Has he been that out of practice with even smiling that the muscles in his face don’t know what to do about it? It’s a definite possibility. It just seems to come so naturally around Betty that he doesn’t want to question, and subsequently, jinx it.

“Oh yeah, and what are you gonna do about it?" Eyebrow raised, she leans closer, arm outstretched with his coat.

He reaches to grab it but he misses the jacket altogether and brushes his fingers against hers. "Sounds like you'd love to find out, " it's from who winks this time. Betty's grip falters and the leather falls into his hand. Words form on his tongue but before he can get them out a shrill ring cuts through the ambiance of the morning.

The trunk is slammed close; the moment is gone. “Shit, it’s a client, and a big one so I have to take this. I, um, I’ll see you in there? Hopefully?” He knows the disappointment is etched on his face, but he tamps it down and nods in her direction. Her smile back is enthusiastic, she looks sanguine; before he turns around he hears, what he assumes, is a happy lilt as she greets whoever is on the line.

He stuffs the jacket and his soiled shirt into one of the saddlebags, slides on his trusty (and dusty) grey beanie, grabs a few canvas tote bags, and heads into the flea market. There’s a moment he thinks he hears her voice but when he turns he's met with the endless drone of tires as the lot begins to fill.

It seems silly—feels silly—to be missing someone after such a short time. Not only just since you’ve seen them but also because you’ve only exchanged a handful of words in the entire five minutes that you’ve known one another.

There’s a small line at the gate. As he waits to pay his admission, he runs a hand over the back of his neck and tugs at the edge of his hat, trying to keep this weird, swirly sensation inside instead of letting it bubble out lest he ends up skipping through the lanes.

He lets out a mirthless laugh, the kind he finds usually echo throughout his empty home only this time it's met with the hustle and bustle of the early-bird crowd. There's no time to dwell, no reason to wait; just the time (and patience) to find himself that thirteen-inch Spider skillet, and maybe a new Dutch oven...or two.

Or, he remembers after he's grabbed new forty-fives for the jukebox, old carnival prints for Toni, a snake ashtray for Sweet Pea that he knows Val will hate but it's so ugly he can't help himself, that while he may be able to mail himself whatever he can't carry across the states...he still has to get it there in the first place.

It's why he talks himself out of the awful Rocky poster. It's not for him, of course, but rest assured it would be most appreciated by Archie and Reggie. Jughead can actually picture exactly where in their apartment where they'd hang it. Their housewarming present would have to wait until the next flea market.

He hasn't even made it to the small cluster of more upscale dealers before he's at the snack stand, walking away with a blue icee and cotton candy like the grown man he is. While enjoying his treats he's only half paying attention to the stalls and tables that line each of drive-in’s aisles, surely missing out on some choice vintage toys and housewares that he has no use (or room) for.

Mostly, his mind wanders as he weaves through the ever-growing throng. He’s been looking for a floppy sun hat but, unfortunately, many, many people seem to be concerned about the adverse effects of UV rays. Not that that in and of itself is not unfortunate, it’s just not helping him at the moment. If he couldn’t look down and see the physical evidence of their interaction, he’d believe he hallucinated the whole thing. The universe doesn’t just drop his idyllic dream girl into his path, well, it absolutely would allow him to see her once and then never again. But he doesn’t want that…

He wants to know what it feels like to have her legs wrapped around his waist, on the bike, in their bed. He wants to see her tangled in their bedsheets or sitting at the counter as he feeds her his latest culinary creation. Not that he’s ever been one to live inside the delusions, his upbringing has forced his ‘manifest your own destiny’ lifestyle to never rely on the dreams, just use them as touchstones for achieving said ruminations. But these, the daydreams are so vivid, so real that he almost walks right past the intended object of his affection.

And it’s only the melodious cant of saccharine condescension that brings him back to the moment.

“I realize that I’m here later than we discussed, but that shouldn’t affect the price we agreed upon, right?”

Betty’s arms were crossed over her chest, head cocked to the side, the sunhat effectively obscuring her beautiful face, which by her tone, Jughead assumes is sporting a proper scowl.

“It shouldn’t, no,” the vendor starts. He stands a good foot and a half taller than Betty, broad-chested and fully bearded, he runs a calloused hand over the gray whiskers. “It’s just that this is a highly collectible item—”

“Which you are being more than fairly compensated for! You acquired it for me, I don’t understand why you’re being so obstinate now.”

“C’mon Betty Boop, you know exactly why. You’re looking so pretty today, go on a date with me and I’ll throw in that Griswold trivet I’ve seen you eyeing up,” Jughead sees the man's hands come down on the table as he leans closer to Betty. He watches her body swell with a deep inhalation that releases as her hands hit the table to mimic his pose.

“Not if you were the last man on Earth, Andrew. Just sell me the damn dutch oven and I’ll be on my merry little way.”

The vendor sucks air through his teeth so loudly it whistles. “Doesn’t sound like I’m getting anything out of this…”

Jughead is practically standing over Betty’s shoulder now, the tension and frustration rolling off her like waves. “Andrew, I swear to all the gods in existence, if you don’t take the agreed price and put my dutch oven in this fancy bag here I’m calling your Gran.”

Jughead isn’t sure he’s ever seen anyone deflate so quickly. The man grunts holds out his hand and in it, Betty presses a neat stack of cash. The large, lidded pot makes its way to the table and from his vantage point can tell it’s a Wapak and in pristine condition.

“Nice looking piece of cookware you got there,” he says loudly behind her. She startles straight, turns slowly, and greets him with the brightest smile he thinks he’s ever seen.

“Jughead!” Her arms are around his neck and face pressed against the planes of his chest before he can blink. She seems to realize herself and is out of his arms and standing in front of him within the second it takes to realize how much he misses her warmth.

“What, did you think you could get rid of me that easily? I still have your shirt,” his hands rest on her waist, he hasn’t dropped them, and she hasn’t moved further away so he’s going to assume it’s not unwelcome.

She hums.”Well, it looks much better on you than in did crumpled up in my trunk

“Everything okay here?”

“We’re just peachy, right Andrew?” Betty questions, turning away from him and out of his grasp. She grabs the bag he’s placed on the table and with a most unrefined grunt, hoists it over her shoulder.

“We’re good, Coop. Just try to be on time from now on, it’s not very,” he pauses. Jughead can feel the man’s eyes slide from Betty to him, looking him up and down with a displeased expression. “Professional.”

“Oh, Andrew. Green is not your color. If you weren’t the only person in the tri-state area who could get me this stuff then I would never give you my business, ever again. But since I clearly work for sadists who love forcing me to interact with you, we’re at an impasse,” she shifts the bag on her shoulder and continues. “However, you make any more assumptions about my professionalism or personal life, then they’re going to have to find a new liaison.”

Andrew groans. “Don’t be like that, Betty! You know it all comes from the heart,” he crosses a hand to his and pats, and then he’s reaching under the table. “Here’s that trivet you had your eye on.”

Jughead moves up next to her and takes the trivet before it reaches her hand. “Is this a 1739? I’ve only been able to find pictures of these!”

He holds the metal piece reverently between his hands, long fingers tracing the intricate lace pattern, running over the feet, brushing against the logo that was stamped into the bottom some seventy years ago. “You know Griswold?” Betty’s tone is more than just surprised, there’s a slight breathlessness he can’t quite place as he places the trivet into her hands.

“Oh, uh,” his head shakes a little with the chuckle. “Yeah, cast iron is pretty much why I’m even here. My best friend told me that if I was looking for something special, this would be the place to find it.” Suddenly feeling very shy, he rubs nervously at the back of his neck.

“Interesting,” Betty’s eyes narrow and fix on him, but it doesn’t make him feel as uncomfortable as he thought it would. Maybe it’s because an hour ago he was flirting like a lovesick teenager and he’s merely happy to be the object of her attention. He hears her bag hit the ground with a heavy thud. “If you’re looking for something in particular, this is your guy. I wasn’t being hyperbolic when I said he had the best. And if he doesn’t have it on-site, he’s usually able to procure it in a very short time.”

Andrew smiles at her praise and nods along. “Yeah, man, if you’re a friend of Betty’s you must be in the know. What tickles your fancy?”

Not really sure how to process, or address, any of what the man in front of him has just said, he locks eyes with Betty and lets out a sharp breath. She’s got the kind of smile that they used to write poetry about and he knows he’s done for. He’s smiling himself now and with a quick turn of his head he’s looking at Andrew again. “What do you know about Spiders?”

They’ve managed to walk the rest of the flea market, Betty picking up a few random items along with the (many) client requests. He learns she owns a small but successful antique shop in western Mass but she's rarely there. Mostly, she travels and he wonders what she's running from. She says it's to procure the things people want versus the things she thinks they would want to buy. It's not about the money, although it seems to pay well, she insists it's the history, the adventure, the joy it brings when she tracks down a vase-like what was on Grandma's table or an album that your grandfather taught you to dance to. She talks about antiques like he talks sous vide, the process, the art, how when it all comes together...life is magic.

"I can’t believe he’s going to find me a thirteen Spider! Do you have any idea how rare…oh, well, I suppose you do being an antique dealer and all that,” he bumps his shoulder (the one not carrying her stupidly heavy dutch oven) against hers, her head ducks in response but he can see the rosy hue on her cheeks.

“If you’ve known each other for so long why all the shit for being late? And if I’m what made you late I apologize—”

“No, Jughead! Not even a little,” she grabs his shoulder and pulls him to stop beside her. “Andrew was just being a dick because that’s who he is as a person. Yes, I was late to meet him but that was because I was having a little car trouble this morning.”

“What, the marvel of modern engineering you’re tooling around in is finicky? Who’d have thunk?” He holds out his (second) icee, offering Betty the last sip but she politely declines. He shrugs as best he can and finishes the cold red syrup in a quick gulp. The sun is blazing, scorching them from on high before he knows it. Jughead feels the sweat beading on his brow, threatening to drip down his face in the most unbecoming of ways. He's thankful they're heading back toward their respective vehicles. It's not that he wants this day to end, in fact, he's kind of hoping he can repeat it forever, but he really would like to get out of the sun.

She smacks his arm playfully. “Don’t talk about Edie that way!”

“Edie? She’s even got an old ladies' name, Betts,” they finally reach said car and Jughead heaves the bags from his shoulder and drops them in the dirt.

Betty sighs as the lock clicks, trunk springing open. "She's an Edsel. You're not wrong about her being an old lady but trust me when it comes to classic cars Edsels are…"

Jughead scoffs. "I might have a proclivity for two-wheeled machines but I do know a thing or two about the four-wheeled varieties as well. The Ford Edsel, only produced between 1958 and 1960, was an ode to Henry's wife but was too modern and impractical to gain popularity. What?"

Jughead Jones knows a thing or two about food, and how people look when they're truly enjoying something. At this moment he'll tell you he feels like braised short ribs or a perfectly cooked steak or a decadent slice of dacquoise, with the way Betty is looking at him.

She swallows, audibly. "No one knows Edsels. No one knows they exist let alone know actual details about their launch, and subsequent failure."

"Hmm, sounds to me you just haven't been meeting the right people," he hoists her heavy bags off the ground and puts them in the trunk.

Betty's hand reaches for the lid and lingers for a moment before she gently closes it. "You might be onto something, Jones.”

He steps forward, careful not to invade her space too badly but unable to resist the urge to be closer. “Do you maybe want to grab a bite to eat?”

The diner is nice, albeit the interior leaves a little something to be desired. It’s cliche in the way you want a retro establishment to be; walls lined in old adverts, gas and oil cans on shelves, kitschy to a fault. They're tucked in the corner, in a red, squeaky vinyl booth and had to cross a very large expanse of cheap, sticky linoleum. He just hopes the food makes up for the fact he had to peel his feet up with every step. That’s not a sound one wants to hear in the place where they’re going to eat.

He explains as much to Betty, how atmosphere can change and engage perception, how the menu is designed to make you want the items that make them the most money, and not necessarily the ones that they cook well. After their food comes and he samples the fare he raves about the milkshakes but is unimpressed with everything else.

“This is farmland, Betty. I passed not two, but three farms coming back. And at least one of them had Angus! Why are we being served frozen burgers?”

Betty eats a fry and pretends to look thoughtful.“I guess it never crossed my mind, Jug. You certainly have strong feelings about food.”

“Yeah, and that’s about the only thing,” he leans back in the booth and lays his arm across the back. “It might align very closely with what I do for a living.”

“You’re a chef,” Betty says matter-of-factly. “That explains your love of cast iron cookware and,” she vaguely gestures around the room. “How you know so much about the business. Still doesn’t answer how you know about Edsels.”

Jughead chuckles in response. “Misspent youth” When she shoots him a questioning look he sighs. "There may be some less than savory characters in my past. I wasn't one of them per se but I could have been described as gang adjacent."

Nodding, Betty takes a sip of the cold confection in front of her. She starts to speak and pauses like she's rolling something around before she says it. Next, she's looking at him as though a lightbulb has gone off. "Wait, wait, you're not a chef you're the chef! The author," Betty’s eyes narrow ever so slightly before going wide, her mouth gapes a bit before she produces words. "You're Forsythe."

How the fuck? "How the fuck?"

"My client from earlier was looking for a dutch oven for her partner's friend, a chef, whose niche is cast iron cookware. This same friend has also authored a series of cookbooks and a youth mystery."

“And what about any of that makes you say my name is Forsythe?” His voice comes out lower than he expects, a harsh timbre colors his words. "And it was not a youth mystery. It sounds like some Tracy True or Baxter Brothers nonsense when you say it like that."

“You are. Holy shit! And they set this up! Oh, those sneaky, brilliant, beautiful women,” Betty buries her face in her hands and groans.

“Would you please fill me in because I am feeling ten ways of lost and, if I’m being honest, a little creeped out.”

Betty looks up, soft eyes, and smiling. “Oh, Jug. Apparently, our friends have finally gotten sick of our wallowing.”

“What friends? Who has friends?”

She rolls her eyes. “It would seem we do. You see, Cheryl is my cousin and Veronica is my best friend from high school."

"Wait, Cheryl, as in Blossom? And Veronica Lodge?"

Betty nods in affirmation. "They were oil and water through most of our formative years and then after their first year at Sarah Lawrence, well, they came back together. Fast forward two years and enter Toni Topaz, who I'm assuming is the missing link here, yeah?"

"Toni would be one of the three people on this planet I consider family, " he's leaning across the table, elbows making divots in the surface when suddenly he has his own lightbulb moment. "Elizabeth? The itinerant eccentric antiquarian?"

“Wow, is that a Cheryl or Veronica description?" She rubs the bridge of her nose, head shaking as she takes it in. "Doesn't matter, but with a title like that, it's no wonder that you were never around when I was. Oh, and surprise! It would appear your pseudo-sister and her girlfriends are giving you a dutch oven for your next birthday. Congrats.”

Jughead is trying to process, though it feels an awful lot like failing. Until suddenly, it all makes sense. “She's the one who told me I needed to stop here and check out the cast iron. Insisted there was something I needed, something she was certain I would find."

"Well, " Betty looks up at him from under the thick veil of her lashes. "Was she wrong?"

For years he’s traveled from place to place; running from anything and everything. Even when he decided to put down roots it was relatively far from even the best of his friends. No one could just ‘drop by’, it’s not like he’d have been home anyway. He’s buried his loneliness in new recipes; it’s scratched into the margins of his favorite books, in the words poured from his own hand. He looks at the woman sitting across from him, strawberry milkshake in front of her, glowing under the harsh neon lights that contrast so glaringly will all her soft edges.

The realization comes easily. He doesn’t have to think about anything more than ‘do I take this risk’ and he’s never been one to say no to risks before.

He drops his arm, reaching across the table, and before it can rest on the Formica Betty slots her fingers between his. “She has never been more right in her life, but please don’t tell her that."

Betty’s laughter peals through the restaurant. He smiles despite himself. For the first time that he can recall, something good came before nine am. As a matter of fact, when her thumb traces the back of his hand, he’ll even go as far as to say it's something great.

#bughead #bughead fanfiction #there's some fluff #and lots of cheese #and I'm not sorry #it's for Sarah #can't blame me

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robotvacuumsreviews-blog · 5 years

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The Best Robot Vacuums for 2019

The Best Robot Vacuums

Whether you’re replacing an early generation robot vacuum or looking to purchase your first, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the abundance of options and prices, ranging from fairly cheap to fairly steep. We tracked down reliable bots for every home and budget, from simple robots that dust hardwood to mightier models capable of pulling pet hair out of thick rugs. Then we put them to the test to see which ones could pick up dirt while navigating an obstacle course of furniture.

How We Chose the Best Robot Vacuums

We started by researching the entire robot vacuum market, scouring reports and customer reviews, to see which ones really worked best for most types of homes. Research told us to settle for nothing less than the combined action of brushes and suction — and to be competitive in today’s market, these robovacs should be able to integrate nicely into your home and daily life.

Your robot should have a suite of reliable sensors to avoid crashing into everything around it; cliff-detection is also absolutely necessary, because no robot today should take a tumble down the staircase. To make the fairest comparison possible, we excluded robots with dual vacuuming and mopping functions. After compiling our criteria, we further analyzed our list and arrived at nine seemingly top-notch robot vacuums to test.

The robot vacuums we tested this round

Eufy 30C

Roomba i7+

Roomba e

Roomba 690

Roomba 960

EcoVacs Deebot 900

Ecovacs Deebot 601

Neato Botvac D4

Neato Botvac D6

What we’ve tested in the past:

Bissell SmartClean 1974

Ecovacs Deebot N79

Eufy RoboVac 11

bObSweep Bob Pethair Plus

iClebo Arte

iRobot Roomba 690

iRobot Roomba 960

Neato BotVac 80 Connected

Samsung Powerbot

Our 2017 lineup

Terrain handling

We brought all nine robots home to let them run their full courses to see how these bots moved and whether they would roam in circles for several minutes, avoiding actual problem areas, or jammed themselves between chair legs and tight corners. If you aren’t home to rescue a stuck bot, it’s probably spending its cleaning cycle jailed between furniture legs, which means you’re not getting a good clean. However, just because a robovac gets stuck doesn’t mean it’s poorly wired — you might just need to move your stuff out of the way. Regardless of how advanced they are, these machines are generally prone to gobbling scarves and thin curtains, and ambitiously climbing thicker rugs only to get stuck and beep plaintively for help.

Navigation skills

We tested each in a small apartment (1,000 square feet) and a three-story home to see how well each robovac could manage different room sizes and topographies. We aligned the bots with their advertised strengths (carpet, hardwood, etc), and found most bots (in general) clean until the job is done — or until they think they’ve covered the area — rather than continuously operating until their battery runs out. This is especially true for the mapping bots — they typically won’t linger in a certain space for longer than they have to, unless you prompt them to complete a second pass (either manually or via the app). Instead, they’ll seek out new areas to clean and cover more ground.

The majority of the bots were able to work around shifted furniture; the basic bots “forget” the previously-made floor plan and assume everything has changed for the next cleaning cycle — it’s like starting with a blank canvas. More advanced robots can create maps of your home that you can then manipulate and customize for future runs — which is useful but sometimes tricky, especially when the technology doesn’t cooperate (for example: forgetting floor plans or failing to deal with minor shifts of the furniture or charging base).

Cleaning power

Because robot vacuums are designed to deal with everyday dust and debris in the house, and not necessarily heavy-duty pickups, we used finer materials in our controlled test to gauge relative suction powers. We sprinkled 100 grams of flour and 50 grams of coffee grounds onto the apartment living room floor and gave each bot 30 minutes to clean it up. While this debris only comprises a fraction of what most of these robovacs can hold in their dustbins, we found that none of our bots picked up more than 71% (led by the Roomba 960).

Testing limitations: Time

The 30-minute timeframe doesn’t set the stage for a total clean, since this is only a portion of an average run time (60-120 minutes), and the robovacs that operate in more random movements generally perform better when totally unbridled.

Testing limitations: Navigational abilities

We can’t attribute the scant pickup to suction power alone, though — some bots preferred cleaning an entire floor and running on their own terms, whereas others clung to the edges of the walls (Neatos) or enjoyed gliding under furniture (Ecovacs and Eufy). The way a bot is designed to move, along with certain cleaning settings, greatly affects the volume and type of debris a robovac collects.

Ease of use

To really maximize the efficiency of a robot vacuum, you should be able to control it from anywhere — this is why we stuck to Wi-Fi compatible bots. Since connectivity is becoming a standard feature for even entry-level bots, we made distinctions based on how well each synced to our home’s system and whether the corresponding apps communicated reliably with the machines.

This stage also allowed us to see how well these robovacs lived up to their marketing claims. We tested whether these bots could return to their home bases and tried out all the hyped bells and whistles (“no-go lines,” virtual wall hubs, boundary strips, and smart home tools). For the more advanced models, we asked: Can we really draw virtual lines on the app to keep our bots from roaming into certain rooms or areas? How well do these robots actually adapt to changes in the home? No bot is “easy” to use if it can’t adjust to your busy lifestyle (or newly-furnished family room) and leaves obvious dirt on the floor for you to manually vacuum later.

The 5 Best Robot Vacuums

iRobot Roomba 960 -

Eufy RoboVac 30C -

iRobot Roomba 690 -

EcoVacs Deebot 900 -

Roomba i7+ -

Best Navigation and Cleaning Combo

Best for Tight Spaces

Best Basic Model

Best Map Customization

Best High-Tech Model

The Best Navigation and Cleaning Combo

Roomba 960

Thorough cleaning with “recharge and resume” technology.

Pros Methodical cleaning pattern Reliable suite of sensors “Recharge and resume” technology Advanced app

Cons Price

Why we chose it Methodical cleaning pattern

All Roombas boast iRobot’s patented three-stage cleaning system (agitate, brush, suction) and dirt-detection sensors, enabling them to identify high-soil areas and target their cleaning efforts. What really sets this robot apart, though, is its smooth, s-shaped cleaning pattern that actually seeks dirt. In all of our in-home test runs, the Roomba 960 would start at one end of the room, zoom to the other end, and snake its way back, repeating this pattern until it covered the entire area. This motion likely helped it outpace the other bots in our controlled test by picking up 71% of the mixture without pausing or “thinking” it was done halfway through the allotted time. The 960 also has impressive suction power — five times that of the 600-series — making it particularly good for cleaning up after shed-prone pets.

Reliable suite of sensors

The 960 uses odometry (similar to the system that measures the tires on your car) to build a map of the area and help calculate how far it’s traveled. As an added feature not found in its entry-level siblings, the camera on the top of the 960 helps it recognize certain spaces via different patterns of light in order to determine its position on the map.

“To build the map of the floor it is cleaning, the robot — in its brain — draws an imaginary box and then tries to travel and color in that box. As it moves through the home, it discovers walls and other obstacles that help form a map... Once it’s colored in that box, it draws another one and so forth.”

“Recharge and resume” technology

One of the biggest concerns when it comes to even the best robot vacuum is battery life. Poor battery performance can lead to half-cleaned floors and extra legwork on your end. Fortunately, the Roomba 960 (along with other advanced models) has “recharge and resume” technology. This means that when its battery runs low, the 960 will travel to its dock to power up so it can finish the cleaning job. We found this is especially useful for larger homes with more rooms that require extra vacuuming.

Advanced app

The easy-to-use interface of the iRobot app makes setting up your Roomba an absolute breeze — very seldom did we encounter connectivity issues during testing. The app will send you real-time updates of the robot’s status, and if you feel like your floor needs an extra cleaning pass or you need to focus on dust along the baseboards, the app also lets you enable specific cleaning functions.

Both the 690 and 960 let you schedule cleaning times and start a cycle while away, but the 960 goes a step further by sending you a detailed report of where and for how long it cleaned. Although you can still use the virtual wall barrier, you won’t be able to customize or draw virtual boundaries on a map like you can with the i7 — but if you’re indifferent about those high-tech features, the 960 will provide you with just enough post-cleaning data to confirm it’s done its job.

Points to consider Price

This is a drawback for many robot vacuums on the market today — but you do typically get what you pay for. The Roomba 960’s hefty price tag isn’t even one of the most daunting ones. (Just look at the i7+, for example. At $1,000, you’re upgrading to detailed mapping and automated dustbin emptying). But if the price tag is a dealbreaker, check out the newer Roomba e5. It retails for about $100 less but still has the same impressive suction power as the 960. The e5 comes with a washable bin and is designed specifically to deal with pet hair, so if you don’t care about the 960’s meticulous mapping feature or s-shaped cleaning pattern it’s a good option.

The Best for Tight Spaces

RoboVac 30C

A no-fuss, sleek design that kicks dirt lingering beneath low-clearance furniture.

Pros Diligent cleaner Smart, sleek design Easy to use Price

Cons Random motions

Why we chose it Diligent cleaner

The Eufy impressed us with how smoothly it cleaned and transitioned from hardwood to carpet. During our controlled testing, the Eufy 30C unleashed its suction power, sought the mess, and consumed just as much as the Roomba 690 (about 64% of the mixture). Plus, if you’re at home and watching the robot work, you can customize how you want it to clean with spot and edge cleaning functions — the former boosts suction power to target tougher areas on carpet.

The no-frills design didn’t hinder this bot’s cleaning longevity — it outpaced some of our other models when cleaning by consistently running its full 100 minutes. Others sometimes considered the areas clean and called it quits after 10-45 minutes. You’re definitely maximizing cleaning capacity with this bot, because the Eufy didn’t waste time circling one particular corner of the room or halfway cleaning another.

Smart, sleek design

The Eufy 30C glides around and under furniture with ease, making it able to venture into places your handheld and other robots physically can’t. It’s almost an inch shorter than the other vacs we tested, standing at 2.85”. The Eufy was the only robot that “thought” it could manage cleaning under the leather couch in the testing room of the apartment. Granted, it didn’t account for the additional low-hanging beams in the middle of the couch and cried for help when it got stuck, but the fact that it tried and could fit under such a low clearance for even a small amount of time serves as a testament to its slim yet powerful design.

Easy to use

Transitioning the robovac between our two testing homes was a cinch: The robot quickly adapted to the systems of each and responded well to specific cleaning commands on the app (spot and edge cleaning, directional shifts, and premade scheduling prompts). And if you want to keep your robot out of a certain area, Eufy gives you three different ways to do this: virtual controls, physical remote controls, and boundary strips (these look like thin magnets).

We also receive real-time updates on the Eufy’s progress, so if it were to get stuck under a piece of furniture or scoop up a napkin in its left wheel on the way out of the kitchen — we knew immediately. These push notifications are common to almost all robot vacuums today, but Eufy gave especially deliberate, clear, and accurate updates, which made fixing the problem that much easier. After pulling the robot out from under the couch or plucking the forgotten napkin from its wheel, the bot continued its route as if nothing had happened.

Price

While this is a pretty basic bot when compared to the market at large, the Eufy 30C is reliable, provides a powerful clean, and still gives you the freedom to forget about vacuuming, for hundreds of dollars less than some others. It isn’t one of the cheapest, but for its price ($300), it optimizes its capabilities and meets marketing claims.

If you want something even cheaper

We picked the Eufy 30C because of the convenient mobile control and powerful suction, but if you don’t care about , scheduling cleans from your from your phone, or mind giving up a little bit of suction power, the Eufy 11s has great reviews and retails for about $80 cheaper than its newer sister. The Eufy 30 is basically our pick without — again, if you don’t mind giving that up, this is another sound option.

Points to consider Random motions

The Eufy 30C absolutely gets the job done and typically uses its full battery life before returning to the home base. But if you want a detailed map or report of exactly where your bot cleaned while you were gone, you’ll need to look elsewhere. The lack of advanced navigation can actually be an advantage in some situations — just because a bot maps the area, doesn’t mean it’ll automatically give your home a better clean. If you don’t mind moving your robot between floors, the Eufy will clean without the sensitivity or (potential) predetermined restrictions of a stored floor plan — it starts with a clean slate every time like the Roomba 690. While this might mean it bumps into the same bar stool every round until you move it elsewhere, this isn’t necessarily a negative, since the landscape of your home is prone to change over time, too.

The Best Basic Model

Roomba 690

A persistent, diligent, and cost-effective robot that won’t stop until the dirt is gone.

Pros Cleaning power Cost-effectiveness

Cons Shorter battery life Not as easy to clean

Why we chose it Cleaning power

This robot is tenacious. In fact, it might even be a more diligent cleaner than the 960 (although not as powerful). We were impressed with the Roomba 690’s decisive motion — rather than languishing in tight spots, it either powered through or powered back out. The Roomba 690 also picked up almost two whole cups of cheerios — when it noticed a pile in the middle of the floor, it used its “dirt detection” power and circled the mess until it was gone.

The Roomba 690 makes its way around by bumping into things, because it doesn’t have the same sensor makeup as the 960 or i7 and lacks the light-detecting camera. But it does do its job. This was even reflected in our controlled tests, where the 690 wasn’t too far behind the 960 in overall dirt pickup (64% compared to 71%).

Cost-effectiveness

One of the main reasons we kept this robot in our lineup was because of its reliable, basic functionality at a fair price. It retails for around $300 on Amazon, which is an entry-level price tag in the robot vacuum market. Not everyone is going to want or need an advanced robot vacuum that maps and methodically travels throughout their home — if you’re looking for a robot to do the bare minimum and give one or two rooms an effective clean, this is a safe bet.

Points to consider Shorter battery

The Roomba 690’s battery doesn’t last as long as those of pricier models. Although the 690 technically runs for 15 more minutes than the 960, the Roomba 960 can extend its battery life for a certain run by recharging and resuming without any prompting. That said, there’s no need for an upgrade if you have a small home or apartment — the 690 has you covered. For few rooms and thin to normal carpeting, the 690 allows you to give your manual vacuum a much longer down time.

Not as easy to clean

The Roomba 690’s brushes are easy to pop in and out — but pulling long hair strands entwined within the bristled brush can be a chore, especially when compared to the dual rubber-brushed design of the newer i and e Series Roombas. Unlike the newer iRobot models, the 690 and 960 dustbins can’t be washed because of their proximity to the motor (the company fixed this problem by moving the motors farther away).

The Best for Map Customization

ECOVAVCS

This robot builds a detailed blueprint of your floor plan in no time, and its mapping customization features let you target contained messes with ease.

Pros Navigation and advanced mapping Slim design Continuous cleaning

Cons Weaker suction Glitchy app

Why we chose it Navigation and advanced mapping

When we let this EcoVacs robot roam the family and guest bedroom of our apartment (about 400 square feet total), it created a detailed map and accurately segmented the rooms in less than 40 minutes. The EcoVacs app lets you send the robot to clean a specific zone on your floor plan. We tested this from our office 19 miles away — we drew a box around a small portion of the living room in the apartment and watched the little blue dot on the app (which represents the robot) travel to that box and clean for three or four minutes before returning to its home base. If you want to clean a contained spill without having to wait 30 minutes for your robot vacuum to bump around and figure out where the mess is, you can just tell this bot exactly where to go.

Slim design

Despite being a tad taller than our Roombas (3.74”), this robot makes a point to travel under under low-clearance furniture. The knob at the top (which is the hub that emits the laser — or lidar — technology that makes mapping so easy) makes it a little thicker and less able to crawl under certain places than the Eufy, but this didn’t necessarily hinder its performance in slipping under those dressers and low coffee tables.

Continuous cleaning

Like the higher-grade Roomba models (i7 and 960), you can set the EcoVacs Deebot 900 to a “continuous cleaning” mode. This means if your robot runs out of battery halfway through the cleaning run, it’ll scoot back to its charging base for an extra boost before continuing the round. Combined with the easy and efficient mapping functionality, this makes running this robot relatively low-touch.

Points to consider Weaker suction

If you want a robot vacuum to pick up loose, light debris, this EcoVacs will get the job done, but it isn’t as powerful as others. It only brought in about 43% of our test mixture after 30 minutes. That’s not to say it wouldn’t have collected it all eventually, but we chose it more for its easy-to-manage, strong mapping technology than pure cleaning power. You can also select “max” vacuum power in the app to amp suction for any and all cleaning passes, if you choose. You will be forfeiting a quieter clean, but that’s only a problem if you’re around to hear it.

Scott Ledterman, general manager of EcoVacs, says that noise and suction power go hand-in-hand. Ledterman says the team at Ecovacs tries to strike the right balance between delivering effective cleaning and tolerable noise, even if this means slightly slowing fan motor speeds (which weakens suction) to drive the noise down.

“At the end of the day, it needs to have enough power to pick up dirt and grime reliably to where it doesn’t leave stuff on the floor… but combine that with a product that’s quieter than a dishwasher, so it can run in your home while you and your family or friends are actually hanging out in the home.”

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kurttheintrovert · 6 years

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sunny

It was a small, yellow pot on a shelf by the far corner of the hardware store. I came in to get a light bulb for my bathroom and batteries, rechargeable ones this time, for my controller. It never really made sense to me why I went on purchasing disposable batteries when I would eventually come in month by month to acquire new ones. The light bulb was an inevitable transaction, though. It was bound to die out at any minute after almost being lit every day for two years. I wanted to stop visiting the hardware store as often, so I decided to minimize the time I wasted driving out there to acquire temporary things.

On my way to the counter where I was to pay for the bulb and the rechargeable double A’s, I saw the flower pot. It was a mellowed-out yellow that seemed so calming to me. This was intriguing because I had never really appreciated the color. It was always either too intense or bright or happy for my taste, and every time I saw yellow, my eyes grew tired of looking at it. Looking at the pot, on the other hand, was relaxing.

I grabbed it, took a few minutes to stare at it mindlessly, and then I decided to put it in my shopping cart together with my other purchases. It was peculiar, how there was only one yellow pot left, but there were a decent number of red tomato pots or pink tulip pots. Maybe a lot of people wanted to grow sunflowers. Allie would have wanted one. Even when she knew it was bound to die eventually, she would have worked her ass off to make sure it grew for even the finite amount of time it had in this world. If she were here.

At first I doubted if a sunflower could grow inside my apartment. The small booklet that came with the pot said that it was guaranteed to grow in the summer, and the only problem was that I had a measly month left of it. I did, however, have a spot on my office table by the enormous window in my bedroom. It had decent sun exposure at noon, if piercing hot sunlight was what sunflowers needed to grow. I had no expectations though. If it didn’t grow, I would have wasted the money I worked hard for, but I still wanted to see how things were going to play out.

Every morning when I woke up, I would hear her voice saying, “water the plant. It won’t grow if you leave it there to shrivel under the heat. You bought those seeds not to leave them in such a poor state, so water the damn plant, Oliver.”

And I would tell my imaginary her, “Okay. This plant is going to grow because of you, much less than me, honestly.”

I would wipe the exhaustion out of my eyes, make the best effort I could to roll out of bed, and then grab the watering can under my bedside table to grow the sunflower. I knew it was unhealthy to do this, but I decided to call it Allie. “Soak it all up, Allie,” I always told the soil in the yellow pot. Like a madman. “I can’t wait to see you bloom.”

Weeks passed with the sunflower already a part of my daily routine. I would shuffle my way out of a terrible night’s sleep as the sunlight lay gently on my skin, and I would drizzle water on the pot, thinking the sun and my labor could bring a flower to life. I would continue with breakfast and a shower, followed by a goodbye to the sunflower I named after my dead girlfriend. After I hailed a cab to work, the day carried on the way it usually did: I sat behind a mundane desk, answered mundane phone calls, and attended mundane meetings on a mundane job.

The loss was still a fresh cut. A whole year had passed, yet I bled like I was sliced open yesterday. I would always see Allie beside me when I woke up to what really was an empty bed in the morning. She would sing with me in the thick mist of my hot morning showers, be beside me on the long cab rides to work, sit in front of me as I presented my work in conference rooms, and then she would kiss me good night right before I slept. And she would always only say, “Suck it up, Oliver. Your life is waiting for you, and you will get to live it after all this is done,” like she used to.

We were both stuck in menial jobs living on pathetic wages. We were both too good for it, both too wasted by the society. That was why it was the worst thing: her leaving me to fight my way out of this trap alone. I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t live without the love of my life, but I tried. For her. It was what she would have wanted for me. It wasn’t her fault her cab got hit by a bus on the way home. It wasn’t her fault she had to die such a horrible death. It wasn’t her fault that I latched myself onto her and allowed her absence to break me. Nobody wanted any of that.

The hardest parts were when the sun was down. I would drag my feet into my apartment, use the last bit of my strength to fight off the exhaustion, all so I could do it for her. I always fell face first on my bed, groaning like a baby in the dark, but I would crawl to my bedside for the watering can, and I would wearily raise my arms up to allow small sprinkles on the pot. She needed it.

And when the sun came up on weekends, and I saw the sprout starting to rise, that was when I felt more alive. Through cigarettes and coffee, I spent my mornings with her, reading my comic books aloud to a flower that got me out of being stuck. Barely. She was probably the ethereal force that drove me to purchase the pot in the first place. Allie would not have wanted me to be stuck, so I lived. As painfully difficult as it was to go on without her, I lived. I went on with bacon and eggs for one, listened to music in bed alone, and I had two controllers only to be a player two-less player one.

The sprout grew leaves, and what plant anatomy would call its green head where I envisioned the flower would emerge. I was ecstatic, and it drove me to water the pot more as each day passed. Soon, I knew the petals would form and she would fulfill her purpose. Whatever that may be. Allie still visited from time to time, but I was starting to get busy. I was starting to talk to other women, starting to live the way I should have been. The way she would have probably urged me to. Even though I did not want to.

I went on a first date with a girl named Emma. She caught my attention after I saw her in one of my coffee breaks. Interesting enough to convince me that she was worth my time. On the morning of that date, as I opened my eyes from a relieving, dreamless sleep, I saw Allie’s petals for the first time. The booklet in the packaging did not lie. A sunflower was bound to grow from that pot, and I did it.

Her growth made my heart sink. Like sailors from a deadly voyage finally decided to drop the anchors and dock the ship. The expedition was over. Although I could have chosen to reminisce, to mentally transport myself back in that ship and be there with her, I declined. Perhaps the dreamer in me grew seasick, and it was finally time to retire a hopeless voyage for something that was already gone. It was not worth the pain anymore. Allie would have understood. Hell, she would have given me a map for a brand new journey. She would have.

So I went on that date with Emma, and it was amazing. Her father left her a coffee shop to manage, and it just so happened that she, too, also grew sunflowers on her windowsills. She said that it attracted hipsters like me. We had coffee after midnight in the same shop that had closed three hours prior, and then I decided to introduce her to Allie. She cried when I told her the story, and then she slept beside me.

As soon as Allie bloomed, summer ended. I watched as I awoke to new mornings beside Emma. I watched as the rain clouded the sunlight, as the shadows killed the flower I slaved over to grow. It was inevitable. From the beginning I knew that I only had a limited amount of time with her, yet all I could ever be was thankful for what she had taught me. The past had killed my heart enough. I could not have held on any longer. Allie, until her final reign on my heart, reminded me to keep moving forward. I was finally doing good.

It was a small, yellow pot on a shelf by the far corner of the hardware store, and although it was another temporary thing, it was hope that I was going to be okay.

#inkling

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theresawelchy · 5 years

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Deep learning in Satellite imagery

In this article, I hope to inspire you to start exploring satellite imagery datasets. Recently, this technology has gained huge momentum, and we are finding that new possibilities arise when we use satellite image analysis. Satellite data changes the game because it allows us to gather new information that is not readily available to businesses.

Why are satellite images a unique data source? What is currently available, and what properties do you have to take into account when choosing which images to use?

Satellite images allow you to view Earth from a broader perspective. You can point to any location on Earth and get the latest satellite images of that area. Also, this information is easy to access. There are free sources that allow you to download the mapped image onto your computer, and then, you can play with it locally.

One of the most important aspects of using satellite images is that you can also browse past images of certain locations. This means that you can track how the area changed over time and predict how it will change in the future. All you have to do is define the properties that are relevant to your use case.

To give you an idea of how satellites track our progress on Earth, we have to take a look at what is above us.

Source: European Space Agency

There are currently over 45 hundred satellites orbiting the Earth. Some are used for communication or GPS, but over 600 of them are regularly taking pictures of the Earth’s surface. Currently (as of end of 2018), the best available resolution is 25cm per pixel, which means that 1 pixel covers a square of 25cm x 25cm. This translates to a person taking about 3 pixels on an image.

The current technology we have actually allows us to get an even better resolution, but it is not available, as many governments don’t allow us to take more detailed images due to security reasons. Meaning, you won’t be able to access better quality unless you have security clearance.

Available sources of satellite images

The first group is free public images. Amongst them are American Landsat and European Sentinel, which are the most popular free images. Landsat will provide you images with a resolution of 30m per pixel every 14 days for any location. Sentinel will provide images with a resolution of 10m per pixel every 7 days.

There are also commercial providers, like DigitalGlobe, that can provide you with images with a resolution up to 25cm per pixel where images are available twice a day. It is important to strike a balance between the different properties that you need, as the best resolution doesn’t always mean that you get the most frequent images.

Also, cost is an important factor. The best images can cost up to a couple hundred dollars so it is wise to start building your solution with lower quality images. Just make sure you use the best ones for your particular use cases. Of course, commercial sources offer subscriptions, which will reduce the images’ cost.

Properties of satellite images

Let’s go through the properties that you have to balance out when choosing an image source. First is spatial resolution. As you can see, technology has been rapidly advancing, and there is more and more money being invested into launching better satellites and making them available.

The second factor is temporal resolution. This is how often you get a picture of a given place. This is an important aspect because of how clouds may block your point of interest. For example, if you only get 1 image every 7 days, and your location is in a cloudy area, then it is likely all your images in a month might be blocked by clouds, which stops you from collecting data in your area. There are some algorithms being created to mitigate this issue, however, it is still a big problem when browsing images. For the most part, it is better to get the highest possible frequency to improve your chances of getting a clean shot of the given area in the selected time frame.

Now, the third factor is interesting. It is spectral resolution. When you think about an image, you usually think of three layers: red, green, and blue; these layers compose a visual image of the area. This is because our human eye has three color-sensitive cones, which react to red, green, and blue.

Satellites offer more than RGB photos

However, satellites can have many more sensors that allow them to record spectrums that our human eyes cannot see. An image taken by the satellite can have 12 or more layers, and each layer brings more information. By combining the layers, you can create indicators that will give you additional insight about what is happening on the ground.

One fascinating indicator is the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which can be used to estimate the condition of the plants. When you look at a normal picture of a field, you see different shades of green, but it doesn’t tell you how healthy the vegetation is.

We can measure vegetation health by looking at the near-infrared light that gets reflected from flora in different ways depending on the amount of chlorophyll. This allows us to see how healthy the plants in our observation area are, which is not possible to derive from an RGB image.

Another example is soil moisture, meaning how wet the land is. During droughts, like in LA, authorities introduced water restrictions. It turned out that wealthier individuals didn’t follow these restrictions and continued to use large amounts of water. Thanks to satellite images, the government could see which fields had high soil moisture, helping them to better enforce these water restriction laws.

It is, also, worth mentioning that there is radar technology that allows you to see through the clouds, but it won’t fit every use case you may want to apply it to.

The current, state-of-the-art satellites have 25cm resolution or images twice a day. This is an example of a standard image.

Sydney Beach by DigitalGlobe

Clearly, you can see people, and you can even count the number of tables outside the restaurant.

As I said before, you have to strike a good balance between these properties to serve your problem. Spatial resolution may not be the most important factor in your research. You also need to consider the temporal and spectral resolutions, cost, availability, and ease of processing.

How can we leverage this data source in our R projects?

Let’s start with what shouldn’t be done in R. There are two main categories: data pre-processing and resource intensive operations. One image will weigh around 1GB and will cover a large area, like half of the state of Washington.

Downloading 100 images and cutting them on your computer is very resource intensive and shouldn’t be done locally in R. There are platforms available that will do the pre-processing and send you the small cut outs of the shapefile that you want. Amongst them, there is Google Earth Engine and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which allow you to simply query the API. They already have public image sets available, and you can upload your own image sets. All of this is available at your fingertips. You just say, “Google, I want a set of dates for Sentinel images that cover small square containing Loews Hotel,” and you are set. From there, you choose one or more dates and ask the API to send you already cropped images, reducing the image size by hundreds of kilobytes.

This all happens quite quickly, as you’re using huge distributed infrastructure to do the calculations. In addition, you can actually conduct computations there and receive indicators. For example, you can receive the NDVI indicator, which is a simple, mathematical combination of the near-infrared and red channels.

R Shiny dashboards for satellite imaginary

Now, R shines when you build dashboards to present the data. You can analyze and forecast the indicators that you’ve built. Operating on small images allows you to leverage many useful R packages to experiment with this data and gain valuable insight. Of course, you can also build neural networks that will help you indicate objects on these images.

Here is an example of a dashboard that you could build with R.

By combining publicly available geospatial data for parcel shapefiles, you can draw any parcel on a map and request available dates of images for that parcel. Then, you can analyze the image, indicate where crops are destroyed, or where they are unhealthy.

This is an example of visualizing an NDVI indicator.

As seen above, there are sub-areas with healthy crops, while there are others with unhealthy plants. Also, the clouds here are distorting the results, which should be accounted for.

One example of applying deep learning to the pre-processed images that I can share is one where we used Kaggle data to indicate if there was a ship located in an image. If you don’t have such a data set available, you have to combine other data sources.

We can use a system called AIS, it requires ships to report their positions on a regular basis. From there, we got a satellite image of the sea, combined that with the ship positions at that time, and cut out the images to prepare the data set.

In the maritime industry, it is important to know where ships are, as there are some restricted areas. For example, there are areas where it is forbidden for fisherman to catch fish. Some of them would turn their AIS off and go there to catch fish. Scanning the satellite images allows us to identify some of these illegal acts.

Also, R is great to augment your data set and produce even more examples.

Here is the network that we used to identify these ships.

It consists of two convolution layers, one max pooling, two convolution layers, max pooling again, and then a softmax function. We also use a dropout to avoid overfitting. Using Keras simplifies the process of defining a network like this.

In this problem, we achieved 98% accuracy, and if you’re interested in the details, you can check out this article on our blog by Michał Maj.

The architecture of complete satellite imagery solution

Now, let’s break down a full architecture of a solution that you could build to analyze satellite images and present the results.

First of all, you need a data source. It can be either a platform or you can get them from providers.

You have to pre-process them, and you need large resources here so it is useful to either build your own solution in cloud or leverage existing platforms. You can batch process many images at once and store them. You can also use an API to get the pre-processed images on demand.

With the prepared images, you can train your network and save the model. Then, you can run a batch process to label your images and store them. Finally, you can build a dashboard that will use them or use the API to request an image, run the model on it, and present results.

Although presented architecture is based on R & Shiny, Python is suited for this job as well and we tested it in our commercial projects.

Business applications of satellite imagery

Let’s look at some emerging applications in different business areas. These are just some examples, but we are seeing more and more different use cases each day.

First is agriculture. Farmers can have a live overview of their crops that show their crops’ health and damages. Using this technology, they can quickly estimate their losses after drought, flood or hurricane. Recently is also used in fertilizing process.

Second is real estate. For example, construction companies can use this technology to see what their competition is doing and benchmark their performance comparatively. Further, they can see which areas are expanding to know what locations might be good to invest in. Also, rooftops themselves provide information about the state of a given building, which is valuable to builders.

The third is finance and insurance. Traders can forecast the supply of goods based on the number of containers being delivered from particular areas. This gives them a huge advantage. For example, they can predict that the price of the given goods will rise in the future if there is a supply shortage. With better spatial and temporal resolutions, you can learn more details about an area. For example, you can use this technology to identify cars in different neighborhoods and assess if an area is wealthy. There were even use cases where the companies count the number of cars in a parking lot to see how well a given supermarket was doing. Note that for this type of work, you need to use much more frequent data.

Summary

The technology is getting better and better. If you start experimenting with these images now, you will be on top of this wave soon. It is important to realize that these techniques are technology agnostic, meaning they don’t only apply to satellite pictures.

In the future, it might be possible to even apply these techniques to live drones or airships. The industry is on the rise, and if you start soon, you can get big returns in the future. Use images, share your results with the community, and, most importantly, have fun. Playing with these images, while valuable, is also very exciting.

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