Provisioning, Styling and Deploying Maps for IRIS GCS

One of the necessary steps in deploying any kind of navigation system is provisioning and styling maps of the mission area.

Our IRIS GCS airspace situational awareness system for UAS can be deployed with a configured map set for a particular mission area, but some clients prefer to be able to provide and style their own maps – especially if they will be conducting flight missions in a variety of different areas.

Kongsberg Geospatial has created a map packaging, styling, and deployment tool as a companion to the TerraLens SDK, called TerraLens Creator. We have found this to be a useful tool for IRIS GCS as well.

TerraLens Creator allows for custom map styling to be deployed in IRIS GCS. The Creator program reads the individual data sets within the map files for high levels of customization.

TerraLens Creator is able to create styling for 3D maps, through elevation data styling, and for 2D maps, through map subsets (such as forests, borders, city names, and waterways). These customized maps can then be easily exported for use in IRIS GCS.

TerraLens Creator is also able to show styling previews, reducing the time required to test the maps prior to deployment.

In a recent project, TerraLens Creator was used to create custom styling for a series of maps used in IRIS GCS by Skyports, for a series of beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) missions they conducted with the NHS, delivering medical specimens in northern Scotland.

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