In many cases, technology developed for, and used by, the military crosses over successfully into the commercial sector. This month on the Dawn of Drones podcast, we focus on such crossover tech, thanks to our sponsor, Kongsberg Geospatial. In this interview, the Kongsberg Geospatial’s Director of Business Development, Adam Robinson, explains the company’s niche in crafting precision software tailored for mapping,  geospatial visualization, command and control and situational awareness for robust, real-time solutions. Robinson specifically spotlights Kongsberg Geospatial’s battle proven TerraLens® geospatial platform for defense-oriented applications.. Read on to learn more about the confluence of Kongsberg Geospatial’s precision software and the wide variety of its dual-use applications. 

Dawn Zoldi: Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Adam Robinson: I graduated from the United States Naval Academy as a Naval aviator. I flew P-3s for the Navy for a little over nine years before I left active duty and went into oil and gas for a few years. I then obtained my master’s degree in Technology Commercialization at UT Austin, after which I went back into the defense world as a program manager, and then as a business developer, for a large defense company. I left there for Kongsberg Geospatial and have been with them for a little over 10 years now. 

Dawn Zoldi: What is your role with Kongsberg Geospatial? 

Adam Robinson: I lead all of our business development efforts in the United States, with a primary focus on the defense side of the house. 

Dawn Zoldi: Tell us about your company, Kongsberg Geospatial and its relationship to its parent company, Kongsberg. 

Adam Robinson: Kongsberg is a very large International defense company based out of Norway. Kongsberg Geospatial is a wholly owned subsidiary, headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. Kongsberg Geospatial is a little over 30 years old, but was a startup with a primary focus on geospatial visualization. In 2006, Kongsberg acquired the company because they had been using our TerraLens (at the time, called InterMAPhics) product for some time. They decided to acquire the company, standardize the product and help it grow. That’s how we got to where we are today. 

Dawn Zoldi: Talk to us about the TerraLens product. 

Adam Robinson: TerraLens has been around for a while. We just had our official release date of version 9.4. It is a high performance software development kit (SDK) with lots of different types of capabilities that software developers use to develop real time situational awareness (SA) and command and control (C2) applications. It’s the baseline for a wide variety of multi-domain defense products. On the commercial side, it’s the building block for our IRIS Terminal. 

Dawn Zoldi: The human-machine interface (HMI) is so critical for the operator controlling assets or using them for SA. How does TerraLens contribute to a positive HMI, one that does not overwhelm the operator with information? 

Adam Robinson: TerraLens provides the building blocks for what the HMI is going to look like. We send our engineers through human factors training, to dive deep into different user stories. They know how to sit down with the customer and, together, figure out the best approach to present multiple data streams in the most efficient, fast and safe way to make mission critical decisions in any given scenario. 

Dawn Zoldi: Le’s talk about some of the real world applications of TerraLens. Can you give us an example of a maritime integration? 

Adam Robinson: We are part of the US Navy’s Aegis weapon system. When a Navy operator is sitting in the Combat Information Center (CIC) and they’re looking at the display that’s showing the ship’s location and all the tracks around it on a map, that application was developed using TerraLens. We’ve been part of that program for a little over 15 years, which is a nice feather in our cap and illustrates the pedigree of our software. 

Dawn Zoldi: Lets talk about ground robots or vehicles. Can you give an example of TerraLens there? 

Adam Robinson: We are also a part of the US Army’s Joint Battle Command platform program. I believe at last count there are over 110,000 of those systems fielded today. Pretty much any army vehicle that has a mounted display in it, runs the TerraLens application. 

Dawn Zoldi: What about its use in air applications, on the defense side? 

Adam Robinson: We are in the NATO AWACS program. When a NATO airplane receives data on tracks all over Europe, that’s us. We are also part of the UK and Australian Wedgetail program. 

Dawn Zoldi: It sounds like joint and coalition forces have used TerraLens on multi-domain platforms, separately. Has anyone used it for C2 of air, land and sea assets simultaneously? 

Adam Robinson: There was a program we did in Canada where we developed an application using TerraLens to control an airborne uncrewed platform, a surface uncrewed platform and subsurface uncrewed platform all at the same time. Some of the main systems were underwater and the others C2 relays, but also needed the ability to perform their own tasks. We had tons of lessons learned with regard to the best way to display all that different information to control three vehicles at the same time without overwhelming the operator. We look forward to doing this on a much larger scale. 

Dawn Zoldi: I imagine many of these defense use cases for TerraLens translate well into homeland security applications also? 

Adam Robinson: Absolutely. One example is a coastal defense and maritime awareness application that was developed using the TerraLens SDK. It fuses a bunch of different data from sensors, such as radar, with video feeds. In this case, our client wanted to keep an eye on all the ports in the area to identify ships that were either at anchor or coming into port. We helped them develop an interface that shows boxes around the ship to detect movement or drifting. This particular application also alerted the operator when the position of a ship moved. We also layered in data about buoys, depths of the 

water and the location of shipwrecks in a form that allowed the operator to process the data quickly. 

Dawn Zoldi: These examples illustrate the diversity of the hardware and multi-domain systems that integrate with TerraLens. What about software integrations? 

Adam Robinson: The majority of our customers today are either operating on Windows or on Linux, and we work with both. We have the ability to deploy in a web environment or on an Android environment, if needed. We still support some customers that are operating on Solaris. Some of our clients operate on real time operating systems (OS). TerraLens really shines in terms of true real time performance.The good thing about TerraLens and the length of time that we have been using it and developing with it, is that if there’s an OS that people are using, we can support it. 

Dawn Zoldi: Do you also plug-and-play with the various tools people use to develop software? 

Adam Robinson: Whatever a customer’s environment is, whatever tools they are using, generally we are able to support it. If they stay with us as a maintenance and support customer, we ensure that as we develop new versions of TerraLens, we test in their environment to make sure that nothing in our technology stack has been disrupted by any external future developments. We maintain that backwards compatibility for our customers. 

Dawn Zoldi: Going back to what you said about how TerraLens shines when it comes to real time performance, can you give us some insight into the timing of the data that flows across TerraLens? 

Adam Robinson: It really depends on the different systems from which we are getting feeds. I can’t get into a lot of the details, but suffice it to say, there are a lot of different defense contractors who do an analysis of alternatives when they start a new program that’s going to require software like ours – and we consistently come out on top. They take the software, build some sample code and then throw data through it to see how fast it gets through the code to load up different types of map data or imagery to the screen. Simultaneously, they slam it with tracks, sometimes up to 100,000 of them. In the 10 year I’ve been with Kongsberg Geospatial, I am not aware of any such study where we have not come out first in the performance category. 

Dawn Zoldi: What other differentiators would you say sets you apart from the competition? 

Adam Robinson: I would say the other area where we really stand out is in our world class customer support. I consistently get feedback from my customers about how happy they are with our customer support. When they send an email or place a call, they instantly get a response from our team. Even people that have not chosen to use our product have raved about the amazing responses they get from our engineering team during the evaluation phase. That sticks with developers and so, in many cases, down the line, they will turn into customers. 

Dawn Zoldi: So, what’s next on the Kongsberg Geospatial road map? 

Adam Robinson: We will continue maintaining our strength in real time SA and C2. As far as TerraLens, we are going to continue adding capabilities. We will continue to focus on maintaining our high performance while adding capabilities that our customers need. Our product road maps are customer driven. Counter-uas is another natural area for us to deploy IRIS, powered by TerraLens. We can already bring those sensors in and display the type of information needed for counter-UAS today. 

Dawn Zoldi: How can people reach you, Adam, or learn more about Kongsberg Geospatial? 

Adam Robinson: You can find me on LinkedIn as Adam Robinson or you can email me at adam.robinson@kongsberggeospatial.com. 

 

Learn more about Kongsberg Geospatial: https://www.kongsberggeospatial.com/ 

Watch Adam Robinson on the Dawn of Drones podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQJT0mZTbQA