aerospace/geospatial
Optech, JALBTCX expanding
Optech, JALBTCX expanding
...KILN, Miss. – The $1.2 million expansion of the technology center at Stennis
International Airport will allow a tenant to begin producing in Mississippi later
this year a new generation of highly advanced lidar systems.
...The expansion adds two wings to the airport’s Stennis Technology Center.
One will provide Optech International with the room for electro-optical
laboratories to begin manufacturing lidar systems and grow from 15 to 20 or
more employees.
...The other wing will be used by the Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical
Center of Expertise, a federal partnership that conducts airborne coastal
mapping and charting. JALBTCX will add four to six new employees to add to
the current 26.
...While the numbers are not particularly startling, it marks the continued growth
and importance of a facility that brings together under one roof federal and
corporate experts in hydrographic surveying, a field likely to grow.
Technology center
...The Stennis Technology Center is used by two separate organizations that are
tied together in their work: Optech International, a company with roots in
Canada, and the federal government’s Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry
Technical Center, a partnership of the Army Corps of Engineers, the Naval
Oceanographic Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
...Formed in 1994, JALBTCX four years later established its office at Stennis
International Airport, not far from Stennis Space Center, in part because of the
wealth of work done in geospatial technologies. JALBTCX supports the Corps’
National Coastal Mapping Program and the Oceanographic Office’s Littoral
Analysis missions. It also does research and development in airborne lidar
bathymetry and related technologies.
...Optech International arrived in 2001 to provide direct support to JALBTCX
and is the first subsidiary of Ontario-based Optech Inc., which develops,
manufactures and supports advanced laser-based surveying, mapping and
imaging instruments. In the 1980s Optech pioneered airborne laser bathymetry
and developed the compact laser rangefinder. It’s the largest manufacturer of
lidar systems in world.
...Optech International is a leader in the evolution of bathymetric lidar
technology, and has handled research projects for JALBTCX and the Office of
Naval Research. Now it’s gearing up to make high-tech lidar products in
Mississippi.
The technology
...LIDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging, an optical remote sensing
system that measures the properties of scattered light to find range and other
information of a distant target. The system is not new to South Mississippi.
...In 2003 the Optech-made CHARTS (Compact Hydrographic Airborne Rapid
Total Survey) aerial surveying equipment was turned over to the Navy. Jointly
developed by the Navy, Canada and Optech, CHARTS lasers fire 1,000 pulses
a second to survey shallow water while lasers firing 9,000 pulses a second do
topographic surveying. It takes one digital image per second. Placed aboard a
Beechcraft, the system looks downward through a port in the fuselage and has
surveyed near-shore areas across the globe for the Navy and other federal
customers.
...But technology doesn’t stand still.
...For the past two years Optech International has been involved in looking at
the potential of bathymetric system to support anti-mine warfare. Optech
International developed an algorithm to do seafloor imaging and classification
that would supply information into an anti-mine warfare system. At a later stage,
they will look at making it smaller for possible use in an unmanned aerial
vehicle. As far back as 2003 during the turnover of CHARTS, a Navy official
said he could envision a day when small lidar devices are placed on UAVs to
survey the littoral coast for warfighters.
...But that project has already had a payoff, with some of the technology finding
its way into a new lidar system that provides a wider range of environmental
parameters and can “see” in turbid waters. Called the Coastal Zone Mapping
and Imaging Lidar (CZMIL), it will be built in Mississippi. It was developed in
partnership with the University of Southern Mississippi to aid in JALBTCX’s
coastal and hydrographic mapping missions.
...Grady Tuell, president of Optech International, expects the first system to be
produced in the fall of 2010. Then, assuming all goes well, sometime in 2011
the production line will begin. - David Tortorano
April 2009
International Airport will allow a tenant to begin producing in Mississippi later
this year a new generation of highly advanced lidar systems.
...The expansion adds two wings to the airport’s Stennis Technology Center.
One will provide Optech International with the room for electro-optical
laboratories to begin manufacturing lidar systems and grow from 15 to 20 or
more employees.
...The other wing will be used by the Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical
Center of Expertise, a federal partnership that conducts airborne coastal
mapping and charting. JALBTCX will add four to six new employees to add to
the current 26.
...While the numbers are not particularly startling, it marks the continued growth
and importance of a facility that brings together under one roof federal and
corporate experts in hydrographic surveying, a field likely to grow.
Technology center
...The Stennis Technology Center is used by two separate organizations that are
tied together in their work: Optech International, a company with roots in
Canada, and the federal government’s Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry
Technical Center, a partnership of the Army Corps of Engineers, the Naval
Oceanographic Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
...Formed in 1994, JALBTCX four years later established its office at Stennis
International Airport, not far from Stennis Space Center, in part because of the
wealth of work done in geospatial technologies. JALBTCX supports the Corps’
National Coastal Mapping Program and the Oceanographic Office’s Littoral
Analysis missions. It also does research and development in airborne lidar
bathymetry and related technologies.
...Optech International arrived in 2001 to provide direct support to JALBTCX
and is the first subsidiary of Ontario-based Optech Inc., which develops,
manufactures and supports advanced laser-based surveying, mapping and
imaging instruments. In the 1980s Optech pioneered airborne laser bathymetry
and developed the compact laser rangefinder. It’s the largest manufacturer of
lidar systems in world.
...Optech International is a leader in the evolution of bathymetric lidar
technology, and has handled research projects for JALBTCX and the Office of
Naval Research. Now it’s gearing up to make high-tech lidar products in
Mississippi.
The technology
...LIDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging, an optical remote sensing
system that measures the properties of scattered light to find range and other
information of a distant target. The system is not new to South Mississippi.
...In 2003 the Optech-made CHARTS (Compact Hydrographic Airborne Rapid
Total Survey) aerial surveying equipment was turned over to the Navy. Jointly
developed by the Navy, Canada and Optech, CHARTS lasers fire 1,000 pulses
a second to survey shallow water while lasers firing 9,000 pulses a second do
topographic surveying. It takes one digital image per second. Placed aboard a
Beechcraft, the system looks downward through a port in the fuselage and has
surveyed near-shore areas across the globe for the Navy and other federal
customers.
...But technology doesn’t stand still.
...For the past two years Optech International has been involved in looking at
the potential of bathymetric system to support anti-mine warfare. Optech
International developed an algorithm to do seafloor imaging and classification
that would supply information into an anti-mine warfare system. At a later stage,
they will look at making it smaller for possible use in an unmanned aerial
vehicle. As far back as 2003 during the turnover of CHARTS, a Navy official
said he could envision a day when small lidar devices are placed on UAVs to
survey the littoral coast for warfighters.
...But that project has already had a payoff, with some of the technology finding
its way into a new lidar system that provides a wider range of environmental
parameters and can “see” in turbid waters. Called the Coastal Zone Mapping
and Imaging Lidar (CZMIL), it will be built in Mississippi. It was developed in
partnership with the University of Southern Mississippi to aid in JALBTCX’s
coastal and hydrographic mapping missions.
...Grady Tuell, president of Optech International, expects the first system to be
produced in the fall of 2010. Then, assuming all goes well, sometime in 2011
the production line will begin. - David Tortorano
April 2009
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