Vanguard Magazine

April/May 2015

Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR

Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/507045

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 30 of 51

Augmented reality: Precision in a degraded picture T Technology www.vanguardcanada.com APRIL/MAY 2015 31 When your product is already fi elded in systems such as the Aegis combat system, the U.S. Army's Theater High Altitude Air Defense system or the U.S. Navy's Triton unmanned aerial vehicle ground control station, name recognition shouldn't be a problem. Still, Ranald McGillis, president of Otta- wa-based Kongsberg Gallium, believes his company is "one of Canada's best kept se- crets in terms of defence technology com- panies." A leader in geospatial visualization soft- ware solutions, Kongsberg Gallium has delivered the operator control software for the Sirius long-range infrared search and track sensor onboard the Halifax-class frig- ates and has built the mapping engine for the more than 130,000 vehicles that run the U.S Joint Battle Command-Platform software. With the BCIP, the subsidiary of Nor- way's Kongsberg Defense Systems is seek- ing to highlight the latest version of its InterMAPhics 3D-AR, a commercial off- the-shelf software development toolkit fi rst delivered in the 1990s that has been used in numerous 2D and 3D real-time situational awareness and command and control applications, including air and mis- sile defense systems, unmanned systems, naval C2 systems and land-based systems. "From desktops to handhelds to embed- ded processors, we support them all," says McGillis. "We run on any operating sys- tem including Linux, Windows, Android, and differentiate by supporting a plethora of map, imagery and symbology formats." Version eight of InterMAPhics was re- leased earlier this year and its augmented reality (AR) application has sparked the interest of the Canadian Army's Director General Land Equipment Program Man- agement (DGLEPM) and Director Land Command Systems Program Management (DLCSPM). "AR is essentially the ability to super- impose geo-referenced computer imagery onto an operator's view of the world," McGillis explains, and believes the Inter- MAPhics 3D-AR's powerful capabilities in three dimensional modelling and three di- mensional real-time performance will help address a range of risks associated with degraded visibility due to severe weather, smoke or dust. While the army's two directorates will lead testing of InterMAPhics 3D-AR for their own purposes, Kongsberg Gallium says the technology could be applied in combat vehicles, remote operations cen- ters, "and other instances where providing geo-referenced queues will enhance the operator's effectiveness as the visual pic- ture degrades." The shelters are available for a range of applications from warehousing, to dining facilities for up to 800 personnel, and can be easily assembled without heavy equip- ment – operation of winches and a few de- vices to fi ll the wall with sand are all the training needed. The IBPS has already passed a series of successful tests at Canadian Forces Base Suffi eld and at Tyndal Base in Florida where the U.S. Air Force tested the geo wall both horizontally and vertically. Although the IBPS has not yet been com- mercialized, Dynamic Air Shelters has a wide array of customers for its fi rst response, industrial and promotional shelters in Asia, the Middle East, North America and the Caribbean. Warner says that visibility at a tradeshow in 2014 helped the company "complete major transactions in Qatar" and participation in the International Sympo- sium on Military Aspects of Blast and Shock last year furthered its brand. As of April, IBPS was still waiting for a test- ing partner under the BCIP, but given the global potential for blast-resistant shelters, Warner doesn't expect to wait too long.

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

view archives of Vanguard Magazine - April/May 2015