Unity Portfolio
My primary role at the Satellite Applications Catapult was as a Geospatial Data Visualisation Engineer, my expertise was with the Unity games engine. This page includes a few examples of the larger projects I worked on and the challenges I overcame to deliver them.
Unity for Robotics
In recent years Unity have moved in to the robotics sector, supporting the Robot Operating System, and a number of other organisations having been working on projects using the engine for even longer. I am currently expanding my knowledge in this area, starting with creating a simulation of my robot, NE-Five, before introducing real time digital twinning of sensor and other data from the real robot. This will enable control and tasking of the robot in an intuitive interface but also the ability to render the environment the robot is operating in 3d in real time.
More information on the capabilities on Unity with ROS can be found here:
Robotics simulation in Unity is as easy as 1, 2, 3! | Unity Blog
I’m currently making exensive use of the Siemens ROS# project which includes a URDF editor built on Unity, more information can be found on their GitHub site here:
GitHub – siemens/ros-sharp: ROS# is a set of open source software libraries and tools in C# for communicating with ROS from .NET applications, in particular Unity3D
Brigital
Brigital was a project in collaboration with NRC Canada to investigate the use of satellite derived data to monitor the structure of bridges. I was the team lead and primary developer on this project, we delivered a system that could render upwards of 25,000 interactive points of data overlaying 3d models of the bridges.
More information can be found at the Satellite Applications Catapult project site.
Hephaestus
Hephaestus was a project that developed a proof of concept system to enable novice users with no remote sensing expertise to navigate complex datasets. One of the uses would be for local residents and the mining companies the ability to transparently share data regarding the operations of the sites. It would also allow for remote prospecting for new mine sites and for areas that would be suitable for renewable energy systems to be installed alongside such as solar and wind power.
Eyes on the Seas
This was the first Unity project I worked on back in 2014 and it had the aim to monitor the state of illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing. This used satellite derived AIS data, combined with a number of supporting vessel registry databases, that provided information for around 500,000 vessels at the time. This data could be rendered in fast than real time so that fisheries analysts could see how vessels were moving relative to, or in conjunction with, each other.
This project really challenge my skills and pushed me to develop new mechanisms in Unity to handle the vast quantities of data.
This project was a proof of concept that lead to the creation of a non-profit organisation called Oceanmind, they have considerably developed the systems involved and have made great progress in helping fisheries become more sustainable.
More information, and a video, can be found on Pew’s site at the link below.
Project Eyes on the Seas | The Pew Charitable Trusts (pewtrusts.org)
This is just a small set of examples of projects I’m working or have worked on, please get in touch if you have projects that you feel I could assist with and I’d be happy to discuss your requirements further.
