Startup Angsa Robotics was named the overall winner of the Galileo Masters 2020 competition for its autonomous rubbish robot.
According to Angsa Robotics, “Clive” is Germany’s first autonomous rubbish robot. It can move independently and detect and localize individual objects based on its unique artificial neural network architecture, which enables it to clean grass and gravel areas. In addition, individual objects such as crown caps or cigarette butts are targeted for collection, but insects are spared.
The robot’s target use cases include cleaning festival venues after events and the daily cleaning of parks and other green spaces. It can be used where conventional sweeping machines designed for flat asphalt surfaces cannot be used, Angsa Robotics said.
Precise localization via GNSS is essential to its operation, Angsa Robotics added. With better localization, “Clive” can plan a more efficient path and clean a given area faster.
“Angsa Robotics is another concrete example of the innovation and applications that GNSS is enabling for the benefits of business, society and the environment,” said Rodrigo da Costa, executive director of the European GNSS Agency (GSA). “The combination of precise GNSS localization with further state-of-the art techniques such as artificial intelligence and robotics captures in a nutshell the spirit of the three challenges in this year’s edition of Galileo Masters.”
The Galileo Masters’ network of 101 partners from 18 countries focuses on the regional implementation of the competition to ensure a high level of diversity while enhancing both job growth potential and regional development opportunities. At the 2020 Space Awards, seven challenge winners were honored by representatives of the European Commission, GSA, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure.
The Galileo Masters, founded by AZO, DLR and the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs and Media, Energy and Technology, annually awards the best services, products, and business ideas using satellite navigation in everyday life.
Thorsten Rudolph, Application Center GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (left), and Rolf Densing, DLR (right), award the Airbus team of Jan Wendel and Wolfgang Kogler the EUR 20,000 grand prize. Photo: ESNC
The winner of the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) 2014 is Airbus Defence & Space, which won over the jury of experts from around the world with its ground-breaking and cost-effective receiver for the Galileo Public Regulated Service (PRS).
The award winners were announced October 23 at an awards ceremony held at the Berlin headquarters of Deutsche Telekom. The awards recognize innovations in the commercial use of satellite navigation technology.
“Award winners Wolfgang Kogler and Jan Wendel from Airbus Defence & Space have taken a cutting-edge approach to designing a low-cost receiver that enables police departments, fire brigades, emergency medical services, and other public entities to make use of the Galileo PRS system,” The ESNC said. “Its core innovation involves the development of a special network architecture that combines the receiver with an assistance server. The concept accounts for all the required security aspects and significantly reduces costs and the complexity of user receivers, thus facilitating broader use of PRS in the realm of public security.”
In addition to the EUR 20,000 grand prize, the design took home Bavaria’s regional prize and the ESNC’s special PRS prize, which was awarded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) and Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).
“This special prize reflects our effort to further examine possibilities for the use of PRS applications,” said Tobias Miethaner, Head of the BMVI’s Digital Society, in his opening address at the awards ceremony. “I am delighted to see that the ESNC is already providing an important impetus to the promotion and development of innovative applications of the future Galileo PRS in its first year.”
Over the past decade, the ESNC has brought forth numerous new applications in the field of satellite navigation. The 2014 edition was shaped in particular by the imminent launch of the first Galileo services, with more than 40% of the 434 submissions received from more than 40 countries seeking to employ Galileo/EGNOS in their own products and services.
“Thanks to our international network, we’re in an excellent position to take advantage of Galileo’s operational launch,” said Thorsten Rudolph, managing director of Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen, which initiated and continues to organize the ESNC. “We believe that the ESNC’s function as a leading innovation framework in its field will grant it an equally important role in Europe’s new satellite navigation system.”
Along with the overall winner, 240 experts in the ESNC’s renowned network selected more than 30 other winners in the competition’s regional and special-prize challenges. Under the patronage of Germany’s Federal Minister of Transport, prizes worth a total of EUR 1 million were presented at the awards ceremony. The winners illustrated the fundamental importance of robust, reliable, and secure time and positioning signals for Europe’s digital society through innovations in areas such as transport, health, and the environment.
2014 Special Prize Winners
In addition to selecting its overall winner, the 11th European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) has awarded prizes in six different special categories and to 25 regional winners.
GSA: The most promising application idea for European GNSS
The Galileo for ARA module will use a key feature of Galileo – its E5 broadband signal – to create new possibilities in the development of smartphone applications that require high accuracy. The team thus plans to integrate E5 Galileo receiver modules for enhanced accuracy and develop an antenna interface module to provide better performance. This will offer improved positioning precision with centimetre-level accuracy and a multipath-resistant solution designed for pedestrians and urban environments.
ESA Innovation Prize & Flanders/Belgium — Overall Ranking: 3rd Place
stickNtrack is a disruptive innovation that opens up an abundance of new business opportunities in tracking trailers, containers, machinery, tools, bikes, and more. It functions for up to 10 years without the hassle of charging batteries, managing SIM cards, or any intrusive installations while consuming up to 40 times less power. StickNtrack also lowers life-cycle costs by 50% compared to current compact GPRS/GPS products.
This artificial ground-based solution will significantly boost the coverage of satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS, such as EGNOS) to ensure safe landings on all airport runways. SBAS assistance can be limited due to a lack of signal coverage in the far north, in the mountains, or in highly urbanised areas. By receiving and retransmitting GPS corrections, the proposed system will enable the use of systems like EGNOS in such difficult environments. Thanks to its competitive cost and reliability, this system will be a strong alternative to conventional instrument landing systems (ILS).
Hail Navigator is a novel system designed to reduce damage caused by hail. The formation of hail can be suppressed by injecting silver iodide into clouds. Hail Navigator combines navigation with a precipitation reporting system that can guide pilots to the optimal locations for their hail suppression missions. The system is complemented by weather observations (including precise times and locations) reported by the local population via a smartphone app as a means of validating weather prediction models. These models constitute an important factor in deciding whether a hail suppression flight is necessary.
trakkies has built the world’s first REAL platform for the Internet of Things (IOT). It enables users to keep better track of belongings, events, tasks, appointments, and more. The start-up has developed IOT nodes with ambient intelligence, a smartphone app, and a back-end cloud system for providing helpful, intuitive services and interacting with people, places, and things. Furthermore, trakkies has designed a novel small-data mechanism that identifies individual people, places, and objects and uses EGNOS signals to create smart location references.
Deadline to register for the first Satellite Masters Conference, scheduled for October 23-24 in Berlin, is this Friday, October 10.
The conference is planned as a networking event and a “unique marketplace for sharing innovations based on satellite navigation and Earth observation capabilities and connecting with the world’s leading network for downstream satellite business,” according to conference organizers.
The event will feature conference sessions, workshops, and round-table discussions. Speakers will come from research and industry, as well as award-winning entrepreneurs. See the program here.
The conference features the joint awards ceremony of Europe’s major innovation competitions for space applications — the European Satellite Navigation Competition (Galileo Master) and Copernicus Masters. The Awards Ceremony will be held October 23 at 18:30.
Another event is business matching — individual meetings with other conference participants. All participants are invited to register for business matching, held all day October 23 and 24, to pre-schedule one-on-one meetings with their peers.
Attendees can connect with high-level representatives from leading institutions such as the European Space Agency, European Commission, European GNSS Agency, European Patent Office, EU Committee of the Regions, Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, German Aerospace Center, and NASA, as well as major industry players like Airbus Defence and Space, European Space Imaging, Hisdesat, Garmin, Nokia, Skybox Imaging, TomTom, T-Systems and many more. A multitude of exciting start-up companies from the European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Centres (ESA BICs) and other award-winning entrepreneurs will also be in attendance.
Summer 2014 will be one that the €6.3 billion (US$8.2 billion) Galileo GNSS programme will need to chalk down to experience and hope to move on from. At the time of my last EAGER column, we were starting to get a hint that one of the four in-orbit Galileo IOV satellites was not functioning. We now know that it has suffered a catastrophic power failure.
And in August, celebrations for a successful launch of the first two Galileo FOC satellites, named Doresa and Milena, quickly went sour when it became clear that they had suffered an anomaly during launch. And a very big anomaly at that.
We are still awaiting the preliminary results from the inquiry set up by the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Commission, and the rocket’s operator Arianespace. It is hoped that the results of the inquiry board will be available at the end of September.
ESA spokesperson Franco Bonacina informs me that on the satellite side, ESA’s teams at the ESOC control centre are investigating the possibility of partially raising or modifying the orbit of the two satellites, which are fully under control and in good health. They are also considering performing some software adaptations on board the spacecraft and at ground station level to try and make them “be seen” as operational satellites and able to provide operational services within the Galileo system. All this is still “work in progress” and it will take a few more weeks to be fully evaluated and put into practice.
So, what went wrong?
In the absence of firm conclusions from the inquiry, the rumour mill has been running at full throttle with the wide range of theories from cock-up to conspiracy.
What we do know is that the Galileo craft were supposed to be launched by a Soyuz-Fregat rocket into a circular orbit 23,222 kilometres above the Earth and angled at 56 degrees to the planet’s equator. The initial launch from Kourou, French Guiana, on August 22 seemed to be smooth and nominal, but something went wrong in the final stages of the flight, and the two satellites were placed in an elliptical orbit varying from more than 2,000 kilometres too high to nearly 10,000 kilometres too low and also tilted by about 5 degrees from the intended plane.
Galileo orbits viewed side-on.
Galileo orbits viewed from above.
The most plausible explanation for the anomaly is that the Soyuz – Fregat upper stage suffered a control malfunction at some point before its final orbital injection burn. So although the rocket engine seems to have fired correctly, the craft wasn’t pointing in the right direction.
In fact, I am told that a likely mechanical root cause for the anomaly in the Fregat stage has been identified by the inquiry committee; however, more information is being gathered and further technical analysis is required to verify this.
Can anything be done?
Doresa and Milena do not have enough fuel on board to achieve the correct orbit for full Galileo operations.
Some interesting solutions have been proposed to launch a rescue mission to drag the errant satellites into their correct orbit, but that could be a slow, risky and expensive exercise. So could the satellites be useful in situ?
For most GNSS uses, the answer is probably no. Despite the fact that the satellites themselves are apparently working perfectly, in a safe state, correctly pointing towards the Sun, properly powered and fully under control of the ESA team, their elliptical orbit does not conform with Galileo’s standardized data format. For example, the value that represents the shape of the satellites’ orbit is too big to be expressed within the allotted bit limit for that parameter.
Marco Falcone, ESA’s Galileo system manager, says his team have been working intensely to determine if the satellites can be at least partially recovered. Among the considerations are the flight dynamics of moving the two spacecraft and the impact of the radiation they are experiencing in their current location, which can shorten the satellite’s lifetime. “It’s very dangerous for the satellite,” admits Falcone.
Another unknown is the timing performance of the satellites’ rubidium frequency and hydrogen maser given the relativistic effects of their orbit. Signal issues, such as the navigation message almanac, also must be considered before the FOC satellites can be introduced into operation, Falcone said.
Good for geoscience?
But according to fellow GPS World contributor Richard Langley of the University of New Brunswick, the situation is more hopeful for scientists wanting to use Galileo-derived data in their research. Quoted in an article in leading science journal Nature, Richard says that researchers tracking GNSS satellites via the IGS global network of ground stations combine that information with the timing data transmitted by the satellites themselves and could use it to measure changes in the position of points on the ground much smaller than the one-metre margin of error for standard navigation-system receivers. This level of precision is good enough to detect millimetres of movement in tectonic plates, for example.
This reminded me of a presentation by a team of Italian scientists I saw recently. The VADASE (Variometric Approach for Displacements Analysis Stand-alone Engine) project uses a novel strategy consisting of an algorithm able to perform real-time retrieval and estimation of displacement and waveforms based on high-frequency (1 Hz or more) carrier phase observations collected by a stand-alone GNSS receiver. The algorithm works with broadcast data (satellite clocks and orbits), requires very simple hardware, and has demonstrated potential application in real-world situations such as earthquake risk assessment (and related early-warning systems for tsunamis) and structural monitoring (see citations below). VADASE had already achieved a Galileo-only displacement solution using the four IOV satellites in orbit.
I contacted Gabriele Colosimo at Rome’s “Sapienza” University, and he confirmed that, although the satellites could not be used for direct gravimetric studies that require a very low orbit (below 1,000 km), the data from Doresa and Milena could be used to estimate displacements of GNSS receivers. He and the VADASE team think that a slight adjustment in their algorithm might be needed depending on the exact orbit parameters of the satellites, but the data would be useable without any significant change in orbit being required.
Gabriele also thinks that the data could be used to usefully contribute to studies in fields such as troposphere studies and GNSS reflectometry, as well as for geodynamic and seismic monitoring using GNSS.
Munich Masters
Hopefully the mystery of Doresa and Milena’s anomaly will have been resolved by October 23, when the 2014 European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) awards ceremony takes place in Berlin in conjunction with the two-day Satellite Masters Conference.
But the real prize for the European GNSS community would be a full explanation of the recent Galileo issues, and how they are being resolved, and a clear statement and timeline on the future deployment and implementation of this flagship programme.
A bientôt – as they say in these parts
Citations
G.Colosimo, M. Crespi and A.Mazzoni, “Real-time GPS Seismology with a stand-alone receiver: A preliminary feasibility demonstration,” Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 116, doi: 10.1029/2010JB007941
M. Branzanti, G.Colosimo, M.Crespi and A.Mazzoni, “GPS near-real-time coseismic displacements for the great Tohoku-oki earthquake,” IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, vol 99, doi: 10.1109/LGRS.2012.2207704
The Galileo Masters competition deadline has been extended a week, until July 7. The European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) is looking for services, products, and business innovations that use satellite navigation in everyday life.
“The ESNC submission database was originally scheduled to close this Monday at midnight (CET). As the ESNC has met with considerable interest and plenty of new registrations in the last couple of days, we decided to give participants one week of added time until 11:59 p.m. (CET) on Monday, 7 July 2014 at www.esnc.eu,” said Kathrin Sturm, Project Management (ESNC / Galileo Masters) Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen.
“Don’t miss your chance to win your share of the EUR 1 million prize pool, including cash, business incubation, coaching, patent consulting, prototyping and marketing support, access to customers, and user communities. All winners will be in the running for the grand prize of EUR 20,000 and six months of incubation at a regional centre of their choice.”
Prizes will be awarded by some of the most relevant institutional GNSS stakeholders, such as the European GNSS Agency (GSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). In addition, partner regions from all over the world are hosting regional challenges.
In 2013, 25 partner regions offered prizes, and seven special prizes were provided by leading European industry and research partners. Entries will be assessed by the expert panels of the regions and special prize partners.
The overall winner — the Galileo Master — will be selected from among all regional and special prize winners by an international panel of high-ranking experts. The Galileo Master will be revealed at an awards ceremony in Munich, Germany, in October.
2013 Galileo Master KINEXON offered a precise tracking and monitoring solution for sports and healthcare.
The European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) is looking for services, products, and business innovations that use satellite navigation in everyday life. Prizes will be awarded by some of the most relevant institutional GNSS stakeholders, such as the European GNSS Agency (GSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). In addition, partner regions from all over the world are hosting regional challenges.
The competition officially kicks off at the European Navigation Conference in Rotterdam on April 15, but submissions are being accepted from April 1 to June 30.
The prize pool of ESNC 2014 is expected to value about 1 million euros. Awards include cash prizes, business incubation, business coaching, patent consulting, technical support, access to testing facilities, prototype development, publicity, marketing support, feasibility studies, access to experts and public funding, and more.
In 2013, 25 partner regions offered prizes, and seven special prizes were provided by leading European industry and research partners. Entries will be assessed by the expert panels of the regions and special prize partners.
The overall winner — the Galileo Master — will be selected from among all regional and special prize winners by an international panel of high-ranking experts. The Galileo Master will be revealed at an awards ceremony in Munich, Germany, in October, and will receive an additional cash prize of 20,000 euros as well as the chance to realize the winning idea as part of a six-month incubation program in the region of his or her choice.
The ESNC is hosting a session at the CAPIGI conference in Amsterdam on April 3, jointly with the Copernicus Masters. The conference is dedicated to space technology for agriculture, focusing on the European Flagship programs Galileo and Copernicus. CAPIGI, the Community on Agricultural Policy Implementation and Geo-Information, is a network for geo-information experts active in agriculture.
Online analysis of athletes’ tactical, technical, and physical capability is the focus of this year’s newly named Galileo Master, Kinexon GmbH.
The 10th European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) recognized the best products, services, and innovations that facilitate the use of satellite navigation in everyday life. At the 2013 awards ceremony, prizes worth a total of about EUR 1 million were presented in 32 categories. The ceremony helped kick off the European Space Solutions conference, which is taking place November 5-7 at Alte Kongresshalle München.
ESNC 2013 gave participants from all around the world the chance to vie for any one of 25 regional prizes. In addition, topic-specific special prizes were sponsored by the following partners: the European GNSS Agency (GSA), the European Space Agency (ESA), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and — for the first time this year — the European Patent Office (EPO) and Metaio GmbH. Students and research assistants were also encouraged to submit their ideas to the ESNC University Challenge.
Athletic analysis is playing an increasingly important role in modern sport training. The underlying idea — known as the Hawthorne effect — is simple: if you can measure your performance, you can also improve it. Following this principle, two research assistants from Technische Universität München (Germany) founded the company Kinexon GmbH at the ESA Business Incubation Centre Bavaria and developed a cloud-based solution for analyzing and visualizing training data on mobile devices.
Kinexon’s solution kits athletes out with a small, portable location sensor and feeds the resulting data into the cloud by means of a stationary base antenna. This enables users to track and analyze performance parameters and tactical movements down to the centimeter in real time.
In particular, however, it was the solution’s user-friendliness during training and relatively low cost (compared to the camera-based systems commonly seen today) that won over the international jury of experts in the European Satellite Navigation Competition. So far, the high price of such systems has limited their use to professional sport; Kinexon’s system will now give amateur clubs the chance to benefit from adding online analysis to their training activities, as well.
Along with the sport sector, this flexible satellite-based localization system also exhibits huge potential in tapping into further markets, including healthcare, logistics, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). “We’re pleased to be supporting Kinexon at ESA BIC Bavaria,” affirms Thorsten Rudolph, CEO of Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen. The Kinexon system, the first version of which is set for market launch in November 2013, managed to edge out more than 400 other ESNC entries from nearly 50 countries.
Gerd Gruppe, member of the Executive Board, German Aerospace Center (DLR), conferred the EUR 20,000 grand prize on Kinexon GmbH founders Oliver Trinchera and Alexander Hüttenbrink.
“DLR sets great store in technology transfer,” Gruppe said. “After all, innovations form the basis of economic success and hold considerable potential for society. The ESNC has developed into a driving force behind the innovative use of satellite navigation technologies and a starting point for numerous successful start-ups in Germany, Europe, and the rest of the world.”
Winners of the 10th European Satellite Navigation Competition
In addition to the overall winner, the Galileo Master, the 10th European Satellite Navigation Competition rewarded Special Prizes in seven different categories and 25 prizes to regional winners.
For the tenth time, the annual competition is looking for services, products, or business innovations that use satellite navigation in everyday life. Around EUR 1 million in prizes is up for grabs, including cash prizes, business incubation, coaching, patent consulting, prototyping and marketing support, access to customers and user communities, and publicity in the satellite navigation network.
Individual entrepreneurs or teams from a company, research institute, or any other organization are invited to sign up. To participate, first select the region whose prize would best support the business case from the more than 20 regional partners worldwide in the section Regional Prizes. Then see what this year’s Special Prize partners are offering in the section Special Prizes.
The overall winner — the Galileo Master — will be selected from among all the regional and special-prize winners by a panel of experts. He or she will be granted an additional cash prize of EUR 20,000 and the opportunity to realize the winning idea as part of a six-month incubation program in the region of their choice.
Begun in 2004 with three partner regions, the European Satellite Navigation Competition has grown into a leading global network of innovation and expertise in GNSS, with more than 20 regions and 190 industry and research experts around the world.
The goal is to promote innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit along the GNSS value chain to benefit the citizens of Europe and the rest of the world. Many of the business cases submitted in previous years have been implemented and successfully brought to market, organizers said.
The European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) — also known as the Galileo Masters — is looking for applications based on satellite navigation that use the technology in a new and innovative way. The deadline for entering is June 30.
No matter whether you are an individual or a team from a company, research institute, university, or start-up, what counts is your idea, say organizers.
The competition began in 2004 with three partner regions. Since then, the ESNC has grown into a global network of innovation and expertise, say organizers. In 2010, 23 regions competed against one another, 548 participants registered, and the 357 ideas turned in were evaluated by 186 experts. Many of the ideas submitted in previous years have been implemented and successfully launched into the market, according to the Galileo Masters team: "The key to our success is close collaboration with regional, institutional, and industrial partners with whom we share one common goal: promoting innovation and entrepreneurial spirit on Europe’s GNSS markets."
