Tag: ION International Technical Meeting

ION announces award winners, fellows

The Institute of Navigation (ION) presented its annual awards during the ION International Technical Meeting (ION ITM) and Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications (PTTI) meeting held Jan. 25-27 at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach in Long Beach, California.

The ION Annual Awards Program recognizes individuals making significant contributions or demonstrating outstanding performance relating to the art and science of navigation.

Jonathan “JR” Ryan received the Per Enge Early Achievement Award for developing vision-based navigation software used operationally on aircraft, UAVs and glide munitions that provides continuous high-accuracy absolute position measurements in GPS-denied environments. The Per Enge Early Achievement Award is presented in recognition of outstanding contributions made early in one’s career.

Major Matthew L. Sutton received the Superior Achievement Award for his ingenuity, dedication and leadership in ensuring critical operational test and tactics improvements for warfighters in a contested electromagnetic environment. The Superior Achievement Award is presented to recognize an individual who has demonstrated outstanding performance as a practicing navigator of any vehicle, in any medium — marine, land, air, undersea and space.

John Fischer received the Distinguished PTTI Service Award for his pioneering research, patents, and leadership that advanced resilient positioning, navigation, and timing technology; and his prominent role in increasing global awareness of PNT. The Distinguished PTTI Service Award is presented to recognize outstanding contributions related to the management of PTTI systems. Fischer is a member of the GPS World Editorial Advisory Board.

Mark L. Psiaki received the Dr. Samuel M. Burka Award for his paper “Navigation Using Carrier Doppler Shift from a LEO Constellation: TRANSIT on Steroids” published in the Fall 2021 issue of NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Vol. 68, No. 3, pp. 621-641. The Dr. Samuel M. Burka Award recognizes outstanding achievement in the preparation of a paper advancing the art and science of positioning, navigation and timing.

Satoshi Kogure received the Captain P. V. H. Weems Award for technical and programmatic leadership in the development of Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System serving the Asia-Pacific region, and for leadership in international GNSS. The Captain P. V. H. Weems Award is presented to individuals for continuing contributions to the art and science of navigation.

Dana A. Goward received the Norman P. Hays Award for inspirational leadership in the pursuit and preservation of navigational excellence, developing international support for protecting, toughening and augmenting GNSS, and for advocating policies and systems to support resilient PNT. The Norman P. Hays Award is given in recognition of outstanding encouragement, inspiration and support contributing to the advancement of navigation. Goward is a frequent contributor to GPS World magazine.

Ignacio Fernández-Hernández received the Thomas L. Thurlow Award for pioneering contributions in the design and development of GNSS authentication and high-accuracy services. The Thomas L. Thurlow Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the science of navigation.

Fellow Members Announced

ION also announced recipients of 2022 Fellow membership during the conference. Election to Fellow membership recognizes sustained professional accomplishments that have significantly contributed to the advancement of the arts and sciences of positioning, navigation and/or timing (PNT) in the areas of technology, management, practice or teaching and a demonstrated and sustained impact on the PNT community. Fellows have maintained an observable presence in the ION community over the long term, including contributions to ION programs and publications.

Dennis M. Akos was elected for fundamental contributions to the design, development and commercialization of GNSS software-defined radio technology.

Charles A. Schue, III, was elected for distinguished and sustained technical and strategic contributions, leadership and guidance in resilient PNT solutions.

Charles K. Toth was elected for significant contributions to the development and implementation of multi-sensor integrated navigation systems, and for demonstrated excellence as an academic mentor and professional leader.

February 4, 2022
Registration opens for ITM/PTTI 2022 in Long Beach, California

ION’s winter meeting, the International Technical Meeting (ITM), is a more intimate conference with a technical program related to positioning, navigation and timing and includes the ION Fellows and Annual Awards presentations.

In 2022, ITM will take place in Long Beach, California, Jan. 25-27, and will be co-located with the Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting. ITM will house more than 150 in-person and virtual technical presentations, two keynote addresses, six tutorials, and an exhibit hall filled with the latest PNT solutions.

A commercial exhibit and pre-conference tutorials are held in conjunction with the conference.

Tutorials will be offered as part of this year’s in-person technical program on January 26 and will be open to all in-person PTTI and ITM attendees. Tutorials cover novel systems for time distribution from space, atomic clocks, Kalman filtering for clock estimation, and specific implementations for time distribution from space.

The ITM/PTTI plenary session will be recorded and uploaded to the website for on-demand viewing. No other ITM/PTTI sessions (including tutorials) will be recorded for on-demand viewing. All presenters are required to provide a video presentation for on-demand viewing. On-demand presentations will be available through the ITM/PTTI meeting portal for 30 days.

To view the ITM/PTTI 2022 technical program and to register, go to https://www.ion.org/itm/registration.cfm.

December 30, 2021
Research Online: Multi-sensor SLAM key to tactical situational awareness

Rescue and military applications require rapid, accurate and reliable information about unknown environments.

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is a key technology for providing an accurate and reliable infrastructure-free solution for indoor situational awareness.

The researchers’ approach is to integrate a monocular camera, multiple inertial measurement units (IMUs), a barometer and a ranging sensor to obtain a solution for SLAM, as well as tactical motion information, such as detecting whether a rescue person or a soldier is running or crawling.
In their paper, the authors discuss a particle filter implementation for integrating measurements from visual perception, a foot-mounted IMU, a barometer and sonar.

The method developed is tested via experiments done in an office environment. Test setup and results are discussed in the paper.
The results obtained using the developed method are anticipated to show improvement on the accuracy and reliability of monocular SLAM compared to previous methods.

The proposed data fusion approach is expected to yield a vertical accuracy sufficient for floor identification in the test environment without utilizing Wi-Fi or other local infrastructure.

The method is anticipated to advance the state of the art in infrastructure-free SLAM solutions based on a monocular camera.

Also, the research will make significant progress towards a functioning infrastructure-free situational awareness system, which is desperately needed in the application areas in question.

By Laura Ruotsalainen, Martti Kirkko-Jaakkola, Liang Chen, Simo Gröhn, Robert Guinness, Heidi Kuusniemi, Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI), National Land Survey of Finland.
Presented at ION International Technical Meeting 2016.

Miniature Atomic Clocks

“Enhanced Quantum Miniature Atomic Clock (MAC) Performance and Applications,” by Paul R. Gerry III, Will Krzewick, John Malcolmson, Microsemi.
Microsemi has been developing small form factor atomic clocks for several years. These products have smaller size, lower power and higher performance than traditional atomic clocks.

The recently enhanced Quantum Miniature Atomic Clock (MAC) is a small-size high-performance atomic clock with low power and low weight enabling a new range of applications previously not possible. The paper discusses the MAC performance, the performance grades and some of the applications that the MAC enables.

Presented at the Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Meeting, co-location with ION-ITM 2016.

February 22, 2016