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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HERMES (High Efficiency Real-Time Multithreading Engine for Space applications)

Teaser

Summary

Access to data from satellites, particularly Earth Observation (EO) data impacts everyday lives for billions of people across the world. Earth observation is the collection of information about planet Earth\'s physical, chemical and biological systems via remote sensing technologies, integrated by surveying techniques, collection, analysis and presentation of data. It is used to monitor and to assess the status and the changes in the natural and the man-made environment. Some of the Earth observation applications are: Land use classification; Natural resource management; Agriculture; Forestry management; Security and Surveillance; Maritime services; Disaster Monitoring; Earth Intelligence and analysis; Global science and environmental monitoring.
Whatever the final application is, the truth is that the complexity of obtaining a proper stream of data (usually coming from different satellites/organizations) valid for any of the described applications is overwhelming. Space involved companies, and especially SMEs, need accurate models of all elements involved, deep experience of Earth observation and, most importantly, the right technology to use or build the software they need.
HERMES is a software development ecosystem (HERMES SDK plus applications, plugins and services) that allows building quickly and efficiently software systems for the space industry. It proposes a complete renewal of the core software used to manage satellite data acquisition functions through innovative methods of general purpose GPU processing, incorporating much of the latest innovations in hardware and software, in particular regarding visualization and processing with graphics hardware.
We want to transform Taitus Software from a regular software factory producing solutions upon customer requests, to a product-based company offering an advanced, competitive and evolving portfolio of products with intellectual property owned by Taitus.
This strategy is much more scalable and long-term, and is also realistic thanks to the consolidated experience gained in the past years with our products baseline and user-base.
To achieve HERMES project goals, the following actions are implemented:
- Porting our current codebase to make it multiplatform covering all operating systems (Windows, Linux and OS/X in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors) to increase our potential.
- Executing an ambitious international commercialization plan where we need to rebrand our company from a bespoken software development services provider to a vertical specific cloud-solutions provider for our current customers and position ourselves as the leading provider of these services to private companies that are about to consume satellite data to perform their business actions. To maximize penetration of HERMES, we will work with our current client network, extending the portfolio of services already offered to the entire aerospace industry, at very competitive prices (at least 50% of current market prices for equivalent services).

Work performed

HERMES dissemination and communication activities (WP2) carried out can be grouped into three clusters of actions:
1. HERMES identity: visual identity and website development to communicate the aim of the project, its results and progress: http://www.HERMES-taitus.eu. The website includes links to and from the TAITUS website (http://www.taitussoftware.com) and is regularly updated with relevant news an events on the project. Internet presence has been created through specific blogs and groups in main social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Facebook).
2. HERMES support material: dissemination is crucial for the successful uptake of the project and for the sustainability of outputs in the long term. Physical and electronic marketing material for press releases has been created, such as posters, editing of promotional docs, mailing and dissemination pack for widespread use, online communication tools, brochures in different versions to address key target groups and presentations for conferences and forums/round tables.
3. Marketing Campaigns and Showcases for end users: to successfully exploit the results of our innovation the following actions are developed:
- Before the Commercial roll-out activities are focused on reaching target end-users with marketing campaigns and commercial presentations at trade shows.
- Establishing business relationships and partnerships with potential customers;
- Populating a CRM to manage, update, sort and report marketing / commercial information efficiently.
The porting activity (WP3) carried out in the first phase of the project can be grouped in 2 main areas:
1. Substitution of Windows proprietary foundation classes with multi-platform equivalents in the whole Core libraries baseline. Our Core libraries baseline has been reengineered to remove any reference to the Windows platform specific code and to substitute it with the cross-platform equivalent. We used as much as possible the C++ standard libraries as well as the Boost libraries to avoid dependencies from 3rd party cross-platform frameworks. The ported Core libraries have been integrated into our main product, SaVoir, and they have been delivered to our clients across the world.
2. Transition from vector to raster technology to perform geometrical calculations. The most complex activity we carried out was the introduction of the GPU processing in our geometrical engine of the satellite planning system. We passed from a vector representation of the GIS elements to a raster representation that allowed us to significantly improve the performance of the computation engine. We also increased the robustness of the acquisition plan generation engine which has been made independent from the complexity of the input areas of interest.

Final results

HERMES aims to incorporate into the space & satellite industries the latest technological innovations, in hardware and software, in particular the use of GPUs to process visualization, simulation and similar data commonly used in space applications. It is based on careful optimization of data analysis according to its type, which determines if it will be best processed either by the CPU or the GPU. The main strengths are:
- HERMES is 10-100x faster than our competitors. HERMES is GPGPU computing powered. Mathematical and physical models, as well as algorithms have been architected to exploit parallelism, boosting processing time.
- Cost reduction in operation. This time saving translates to strong reduction in processing time (hence also producing savings both in power consumption and personnel salaries).
- 50% Software development and maintenance costs reduction. HERMES is the only COTS solution available to develop in-house development software projects. A unique platform that provides the most advanced software tools to manage the core functions needed in all actions related to satellite planning, cutting down development and maintenance costs but also reducing time to market, saving our clients hundreds of thousands of euros annually.
- Timeliness. Since the work plan for data acquisition can be done in near real-time, it can also be easily changed and improved, reducing the response time needed to cope with unforeseen or uncontrollable events and boosting planning capacity. Opportunities that would otherwise be lost due to slow data processing can now be taken into consideration, which can be critical in sectors such as early disaster warning systems.