NASA SBIR 2003 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
TerraMetrics, Inc.
PO Box 270101
Littleton ,CO 80127 - 0002
(303) 979 - 5255

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Gregory   Baxes
gbaxes@terrametrics.com
PO Box 270101
Littleton ,CO  80127 -0002
(303) 979 - 5255
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The TerraBlocks^TM 3D terrain data format and terrain-block-rendering methodology provides an enabling basis for successful commercial deployment of flight-appropriate and certifiable Synthetic Vision (SV) systems. The methodology focuses on mission-critical, real-time, embedded terrain rendering with emphasis on 1) efficient and compact terrain/texture dataset storage, 2) rendering accuracy, 3) rendering determinacy, and 4) a lightweight embedded computer and data storage platform.

The innovation exploits the use of an encoded terrain data storage format coupled with real-time, terrain-block-based 3D rendering. The compact and efficient TerraBlocks encoded terrain data format inherently provides zero-error full-mesh near-field terrain data, powers-of-2 levels of detail, and data compression of full-mesh source terrain datasets. The TerraBlocks terrain block-based rendering provides deterministic render rates bounded by worst-case processing requirements, an on-the-sphere rendering model, and spatially-filtered, smoothly continuous, level-of-detail rendering.

TerraBlocks technology closes the gap between existing visualization/simulation (VisSim) terrain-rendering approaches and the accuracy, performance, and platform demands of flight-deployable SV systems. The Phase I project conclusively showed the technical merit and feasibility of the TerraBlocks methodology.

The Phase II project objective is to provide a flight-appropriate, research SV 3D terrain-rendering toolkit for NASA's Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP) and the solid basis for Phase III, flight-certifiable SV avionics embodiments.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
1) NASA Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP) Synthetic Vision (SV) systems research
2) Out-the-window displays for windowless spacecraft

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
1) Flight-based Synthetic Vision (SV) systems for
a) Military rotorcraft
b) Military fixed-wing aircraft -- transports, tankers, gunships
c) Business jet aircraft
d) General aviation aircraft
e) Commercial air transport
d) Special-purpose applications: Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and search and rescue rotorcraft
2) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) ground control stations
3) Ground-based, high-accuracy, lightweight Visualization/Simulation (VisSim) applications