Find UAV — terms of use
Find UAV estimates where a drone flew from its own video, by matching the pictures against satellite imagery. These terms cover the service, credits and payments, and what happens to the videos you upload.
Who provides the service
Find UAV on theacademia.cloud is provided by Academia Tech. Contact: support@theacademia.tech.
What the service does — and does not
You upload a video recorded by a drone's camera and mark an area where the flight took place. The service estimates the track and the last position of the drone from the images alone, and shows how confident it is.
Results are estimates. Accuracy depends on the footage. The service takes day colour video from a downward-facing (nadir) camera, such as the video from a .stabx record, or from FPV goggles (a forward-facing camera; in beta, with fewer placed moments and a lower accuracy). Thermal footage is not supported yet and is declined before any credits are spent. When the service cannot place a flight with confidence it says so and returns the credits rather than guess.
Find UAV is not a navigation, safety or emergency system. Do not rely on a result where an error could put people or property at risk.
Acceptable use
Upload only footage you recorded or are entitled to use, of flights you operated or are authorised to analyse.
Do not use the service to locate, track or identify people, to surveil anyone unlawfully, or for any purpose that breaks the law where you are or where the footage was taken. You are responsible for complying with the laws, export rules and sanctions that apply to you.
The service is not offered to persons or in places subject to sanctions that prohibit it. We may refuse or suspend an account used against these terms.
Credits
An analysis is priced in credits before you start it. The price depends on the size of the search area and the length of the video; the Fast lane costs three times the Standard lane for the same analysis. The page shows the exact number before you confirm.
Every account receives 100 free credits each month. They refresh on the first day of the month, do not carry over, and have no cash value.
Purchased credits do not expire and are used after the monthly ones. Credits are not transferable between accounts.
If an analysis fails, or the flight cannot be placed in the search area, its credits are returned automatically.
Payments and refunds
Buying credits is not open yet: for now every account uses its free monthly credits, and nothing can be bought. Before buying opens, this section will set out how payments and refunds work.
Your videos and results
Your uploaded video is used only to run the analyses you request. The local copy on our processing server is deleted within 3 days, and the stored upload within 14 days.
Results — the estimated track, the last position and small preview frames — stay in your History so you can come back to them. Delete one there at any time and its video goes with it at once; or ask support@theacademia.tech to delete your whole Find UAV history.
To match your video we send small image crops to our GPU processing provider and request satellite imagery for the search area from an imagery provider; the latter learns which area was searched, not your video. Storage runs on Amazon Web Services. None of them receive your account details.
API keys are stored only as a one-way hash; the key itself is shown to you once.
The privacy policy describes in full what data the service keeps and why: theacademia.cloud/en/find-uav/privacy/
API
API keys give the same access as your account and spend the same credits. Keep them secret; revoke a key you no longer trust on the API tab. Use the API within reasonable limits — we may slow down or block traffic that harms the service for others.
Warranty and liability
The service is provided as it is, during its beta in particular. We do not warrant that results are accurate or that the service is uninterrupted. To the extent the law allows, our liability for anything arising from the service is limited to the amount you paid for credits in the twelve months before the claim.
Changes
These terms can change; the date at the top says when they last did. A material change will be shown on the Find UAV page before it applies to new purchases.
Questions go to support@theacademia.tech.