MGT 7-1.indd - KMI Media Group

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through an image generator for for training or mission rehearsal,”
said Vaquerizo.
She expects the company to launch the product toward the
end of the second quarter of 2009. NAVAIR has reviewed but has
not yet fielded the Quantum3D product.
HELICOPTER VISUALIZATION
Another Quantum3D innovation, which proceeded from the
NAVAIR SBIR, is the ability to transfer relatively new LIDAR
data into immediate visualizations, thus enhancing the mission
rehearsal utility of that data. “The beauty of it is that the LIDAR
data could be hours rather than years old,” said Spencer. “We can
capture all the geometry of a building down to its finest detail all
in an automated fashion. This opens up a new level of interest
in mission rehearsal applications. The LIDAR data can be used
to check for changes in the battlefield terrain or the possible
presence of explosives, and it can be converted within hours or
minutes without measuring or hand modeling anything.”
This automatically generated 3-D rendering presentation was done by Tiltan Systems Engineering
using LIDAR data. [Image courtesy of Tiltan Systems Engineering]
This capability is being built upon in yet another Quantum3D
SBIR grant, this one emanating from the Patuxent River Naval
Air Station, Md. “The focus of this project deals with the critical
issue of solving problems of having helicopters land in brownout
conditions in desert situations such as Iraq, and the high mortality
rate associated with this problem,” said Vaquerizo.
This solution involves the use of data generated from LIDAR
sensors to provide helicopter pilots with a visualization of the
terrain after the helicopter pilot loses the ability to see what is
happening outside of the cockpit. “LIDAR penetrates the dust,
and this is helpful to the pilot in successfully landing the helicopter,”
said Vaquerizo. “We are applying LIDAR technology to
produce a database faster, in immediate mode, on the fly.”
To make that happen, LIDAR sensors mounted on the helicopter
are processed in on-board computers to be visualized and
presented to the pilot right then and there. The visualization is
continuously updated during the course of the flight.
The process involved in penetrating brownout conditions is
to figure out which parts of the LIDAR data represent the ground
and which do not, explained Spencer. A traditional visualization
of the terrain is then built off the ground points. The nonground
16 | MGT 7.1
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Each cluster is extracted to develop the geometry of objects,
such as the height and shape of buildings or the elevation of the
foliage canopy. As with the product Quantum3D generated in
its NAVAIR SBIR, the output of the LIDAR data processing is in
Open Flight format, allowing it to be visualized and displayed on
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This scheme represents a dramatic change in the processing
of LIDAR data in that it involves processing of streams of LIDAR
data rather than processing them in batch. That is the traditional
process for data, which is not intended to be displayed in real
time. Streaming data is necessary in this application, Spencer
explained, “because streaming data gets collected incrementally
and all processes are updated incrementally.”
Quantum3D can accomplish the feat by relying on its
expertise in real-time software performance and new hardware
technologies such as graphical processing unit acceleration
and its own high-performance graphics hardware. “There have
been some advances in technologies that fit this application
very well,” said Spencer. “Our expertise in designing real-time
software puts us at the leading edge on how to tackle this
problem.”
Quantum3D has completed the first phase of this project
to rave reviews, according to Vaquerizo. She expects a determination
on whether the Patuxent River Naval Air Station will
proceed with a second phase of the project at some point early
in 2009.
ROADWAY DATA
Another case of the innovative use of LIDAR data is an Army
SBIR grant to TerraSim to improve an existing simulation product
by using BuckEye LIDAR data to enhance information on
roadways.
Until recently, TerraSim’s RoadMAP product used black and
white, panchromatic and color imagery to extract roadway center
lines and topologies. These are incorporated in systems that
are used by the military and other customers to simulate operations
in dense urban areas.
“Roads fall into the category of lines of communications,”
said Dave McKeown, the company’s president. “The military is
interested in simulating how to get in and out of an operational
area. But roads really are the single hardest feature to get out of
LIDAR without a fair amount of manual extraction.”
The TerraSim SBIR takes advantage of the fact that LIDAR
can be used well in conjunction with other spectral imaging
methodologies. This allows LIDAR data to be collected and
simultaneously added to data from other sensors such as hyperspectral,
short wave, infrared and near-infra detectors.
Automated feature extraction is a capability that allows software
to recognize certain specific objects represented in LIDAR
point clouds. Programming the software to be on the lookout
for topographical features such as hills or manmade “cultural”
objects, such as buildings, vehicles or power transmission lines,
allows those features to be separately and distinctly portrayed in
the LIDAR image.
The TerraSim project is particularly challenging because it
seeks to extract data with respect to roads, a feature not charac-
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