CARIS HIPS and SIPS v12

HIPS and SIPS provides a complete toolkit for extracting the most value and quality from hydrographic surveys by leveraging tools for georeferencing and correcting point cloud, quality analysis, data cleaning, sensor fusion, and creating additional products from backscatter and water column data.

CARIS HIPS and SIPS 12, with the introduction of new workflows for multiple frequency datasets and creating/managing vessel files. In addition there are speed improvements and enhancements to automation by adding python support in CARIS process models. 

Vessel Setup Workflow

To better support the increasing variety of sonar installations, HIPS and SIPS 12 introduces a new vessel editor along with a new vessel file format. The new vessel setup workflow includes a setup wizard that will configure the vessel based on make/model of sonar, number of transducers and logging format. Depending on the configuration, fields will be available to define offsets, mounting angles and calibration values to all relevant transducers.

An upgrade feature has also been built to provide an easy workflow for converting previous .hvf files to the new .vessel format. The vessel from data workflow will also continue to be available to build a vessel automatically from the offsets stored in imported sonar files.

Multiple Frequency Workflows

To address the gap of having a single unified workflow for extracting the most from multiple frequency datasets, a new workflow has been introduced to simplify extracting information from multiple frequency surveys. The new workflow supports data collected with R2Sonic, NORBIT, Kongsberg and soon Teledyne RESON. The new functionality allows the frequencies to be separated and creates unique layers per frequency in both the gridded bathymetry as well as the backscatter mosaics. A new multiple frequency backscatter mosaic format is also used which allows an RGB raster to be dynamically adjusted by changing which frequency is assigned to each of the RGB bands. Best of all, this all happens automatically when multiple frequencies are detected on import.

Additional features include adding the frequency as an attribute to each sounding, and in Subset Editor, the ability to color by frequency and turn specific frequencies on/off.

Speed Improvements

Recognizing that processing efficiency and product turnaround time are always at top of mind, HIPS and SIPS 12 introduces several enhancements to improve time for loading and processing datasets. Performance gains will vary depending on the current disk read/write speed of individual environments (disk and network speeds), with slower read/write environments positioned to see the largest performance increase. Testing has shown up to 50% decrease in computational time.

Automation Enhancements

To integrate with third party solutions or to include their own business logic, HIPS and SIPS users can now create custom processes written in python script. These processes can be used within CARIS Process Designer to add flexibility in process model design. Additionally, Carisbatch can now launch process models. With the combination of these different functionalities enhanced CARIS automation tools, it is now possible to execute automated workflows across CARIS applications.

Python Support

Python scripting is a flexible way to put HIPS and SIPS to work in automation workflows, and now, users can enjoy support for version 3.9, 3.10 and 3.11.