As the final step in ESA’s Business Incubator (Sweden), I-CONIC delivered a report and a demonstration of the project results.
I-CONIC showed that the company’s software can process satellite video and images into 3D products in (near) real-time, which was the goal. All the steps from data ingest and decoding to the generation of 3D points clouds were implemented on GPU, which is difficult but a necessity to reach such a fast through-put.
I-CONIC is focusing on processing of video, and in this project were mainly Vivid-X2 data from Earth-i used. Vivid-X2 is capable of video recording up to 25 frames per second, and each frame is 5120 by 5120 pixels (=75 Mb/frame which is a lot of data). But these data sets are representative for I-CONIC’s strategy on 3D generation from satellite video and should be applicable to any video recording satellite system.
In parallel to the ESA BIC project, a group of eight students at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm ported I-CONIC’s software to SpaceCloud. This a cloud platform intended to be located on-board satellites, and it is developed by the company Unibap. Hence, I-CONIC’s GPU software for real-time 3D processing has the potential of being implemented on-board future remote sensing satellites, and not only on processing systems on the ground. Unibap’s platform is available for industrial solutions as well, which may open for even further applications for I-CONIC’s software.
I-CONIC’s software also fits very well for platforms on much lower altitude – drones and so-called HAPS (High Altitude Pseudo-Satellites), which can stay over a certain area over a longer time and are more suitable for surveillance than quickly passing satellites.
