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The UK Royal Navy's Merlin Mark III Helicopter will Employ Tactical Displays Based On Quantum3D IData 178
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San Jose, CA - April 5, 2006 - Quantum3D®, Inc., a leading provider of open architecture, realtime 3D visual computing solutions for the Visual and Sensor Simulation and Training (VSST) and Embedded Visual Computing (EVC) markets, today announced that Lockheed Martin has selected the Quantum3D IData 178 DO-178B Level A Certifiable Human Machine Interface (HMI) development tool to develop and deploy the main tactical display graphics for the recently awarded Merlin Capability Sustainment Program (MCSP). The award is a major embedded avionics software design win for Quantum3D and for the IData product family, which will be featured in the LynuxWorks Booth (No. 830) at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, CA, April 4 - 6, 2006.
The MCSP is a multiyear, $1.3B USD contract to upgrade the Royal Navy's Merlin Helicopter fleet with an open architecture system implementation that provides substantial improvements to the helicopter's mission system processing capability by adding large area flat panel displays and new radar and sonar capabilities. Merlin Mission Specialists will benefit from the intuitive and powerful Human Machine Interface powered by IData 178 technology that will allow them to take full advantage of the improved platform and mission system capabilities of the MCSP equipped helicopters.
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Merlin Mark III Tactical Operators will benefit from large-screen tactical digital map displays driven by IData
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IData, with its patent pending Dynamic Bytecode™ technology, allows developers to rapidly and easily create optimized, executable models of sophisticated graphics, text, and visual images that are directly portable to embedded systems without code generation. Lockheed Martin selected IData because of its ability to support advanced embedded cursor control, complex widgets, moving map symbology, and dynamic data displays in a single DO-178B Level A certifiable package that supports Ada95 as well as other programming environments. Under the Lockheed Martin MCSP development effort, IData's DO-178B Level A Certifiable Render Engine and Widget Library will run under Green Hills Integrity atop an advanced graphics module powered by Seaweed System's DO-178B Level A certifiable OpenGL SC Drivers.
As part of the MCSP development, Quantum3D is supporting Lockheed Martin by extending its powerful modeling environment to include a complete set of reusable user interface widgets that are key building blocks of the MCSP's demanding HMI. These widgets and IData's powerful control system provide the necessary features to manage the display and user interaction with the large amount of data available to the Merlin crew, without requiring the use of large, un-certifiable "windowing" libraries such as X-Windows and Motif. Equally important to the mission is IData's ability to efficiently handle large numbers of complex, user-selectable moving map layers and other dynamic display elements while maintaining realtime performance levels far in excess of competing technologies.
IData's unique HMI database technology is a key component of each part of the lifecycle for MCSP. Using IData, Lockheed Martin was able to develop high-fidelity prototypes early in the program to solicit feed-back and get early buy-in from operators and subject matter experts from the Royal Navy. Lockheed Martin's requirements to write its system application to drive the HMI in Ada95 is well supported by IData's technology, which eliminates code generation and supports development in any programming paradigm. IData's DO-178B Level A certifiable Render Engine will use the unchanged HMI databases from the development to present the realtime graphics in the operational system in the RTOS environment. Finally, Lockheed Martin's ability to reuse IData content without change in its operator training systems will result in significant savings to the MSCP development program. Throughout the process, IData's open XML capabilities allow Lockheed Martin to customize the development process to their own needs.
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Lockheed Martin Merlin Mark III MCSP Main Tactical Display
Screenshot Courtesy Lockheed Martin UK
Lockheed Martin UK engineers have designed an intuitive HMI that leverages IData's powerful user interaction, widgets, and moving map symbol generation capabilities.
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"Lockheed Martin UK's stringent requirements for the Merlin MCSP and their resulting selection of IData 178 for this program is a tremendous validation of everything about IData, including IData's unique solution to certifiable software and content lifecycle management, as well as its features, performance, portability, rapid prototyping, and compatibility with important standards," said Ross Q. Smith, Quantum3D co-founder and president. "All of us at Quantum3D are elated about this crucial win with Lockheed Martin UK and we are committed to supporting Lockheed Martin and the Royal Navy on this vital program with our nation's most trusted ally."
About Quantum3D
Quantum3D develops and markets COTS, realtime, open-architecture IG solutions, embedded visual computing systems and subsystems, development software and support services for the VSST and EVC markets and is the exclusive supplier of NVIDIA® graphics technology for the embedded military and aerospace visual computing market. Quantum3D is a privately held company headquartered in San Jose, California, with development centers located in Phoenix, AZ, Huntsville, AL, and Orlando, FL. For more information about Quantum3D and the Quantum3D family of open architecture visual computing solutions, please see www.quantum3d.com.
Quantum3D is a registered trademark and Bytecode is a trademark of Quantum3D, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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