GPS World

Tag: TERN

  • Tern IDPS selected to accelerate autonomous satellite-free positioning

    Tern IDPS selected to accelerate autonomous satellite-free positioning

    Tern has been named a winner of the U.S. Army’s xTechOverwatch for Unmanned Systems competition. TERN was selected from morethan 600 companies after hands-on Soldier testing at the Bush Combat Development Complex in Bryan, Texas, Oct. 27-29.

    Tern developed an AI-powered Independently Derived Positioning System (IDPS) for position and navigation.

    xTechOverwatch is the Army’s premiere event for accelerating autonomous systems, giving
    soldiers the opportunity to use emerging technologies in real-world training environments and
    provide critical feedback that drives iterative improvement.

    The system has been tested across multiple tactical platforms in both on- and off-road environments, including active conflict zones.

    Tern will now integrate IDPS directly with Army Transformation in Contact formations, where active-duty units will continue to validate the system in operational scenarios in 2026.

    How IDPS works

    IDPS has been proven to deliver uninterrupted, high-accuracy navigation in environments where GPS fails — tunnels, dense urban canyons, remote terrain, and GPS-denied zones. Tested by the U.S. Department of Transportation, it has sustained ±4-meter accuracy over extended distances without any satellite input, completing more than180 continuous miles GPS-free and performing flawlessly under live GPS spoofing in a conflict zone.

    Tern’s IDPS gives the Army the ability to navigate their vehicles without the use of any
    satellites, signals or infrastructure, using only map data and the sensors already on board.
    Designed by former special operators who spent years navigating contested terrain without
    satellite support, and developed with AI experts behind some of the fastest recognition systems
    in the world, IDPS maintains precise, real-time location even when GNSS is jammed or
    spoofed. The system has been tested across multiple tactical platforms in both on- and off-road environments, including active conflict zones.

    Base maps. IDPS has a clear understanding of the roads ahead using preloaded map data — either publicly available or proprietary. This built-in knowledge means it can follow a logical path, even in places where satellites can’t reach, keeping navigation steady from the first turn to the final destination.

    IDPS can stand alone or be configured to power a location manager and integrate with widely used navigation applications such as Google Maps, Waze, OSM, ESRI, ArcGIS and Apple Maps.

    Sensor data. TERN’s IDPS leverages data from sensors already built into modern vehicles, such as wheel speed, steering angle, and  3D motion data , making these existing sensors smarter. Because this information comes directly from the vehicle, it works anywhere the vehicle can operate, making it a reliable foundation for location tracking in any environment, eliminating the need for additional expensive hardware, such as LEO satellites or terrestrial beacons. With a light computing and processing load, IDPS is can be a hardware or software based solution.

    Artificial intelligence. IDPS uses a proprietary AI engine to fuse map data and sensor inputs into a real-time position. TERN’s  advanced adaptive weighting algorithms measure and interpret the data from vehicle sensors and recalibrates those inputs in real-time, applied against the base maps to increase accuracy.  Constantly self-healing, IDPS predicts, confirms, and refines the vehicle’s location, learning from each movement to maintain pinpoint accuracy without satellites.

  • Lidar data fused for understanding of tropical forests

    A University of Queensland, Australia, environmental project fused data from terrestrial and UAV lidar collections to estimate forest biomass.

    Forest ecosystems contain more biomass than any other ecosystem. Estimating biomass — a critical endeavor to detect the health of ecosystems — can be difficult. Traditional methods can be destructive, such as harvesting trees to measure the weight of the different components.

    “We know that forest ecosystems contain more carbon biomass than any other above-ground ecosystem on the planet,” said Kim Calders, Ghent University, on the TERN website. TERN is Australia’s land ecosystem observatory, under the University of Queensland.

    It’s estimated that Australian forests store about 10 billion tonnes of carbon, but calculating an exact figure without cutting down trees is difficult. “Traditional methods of estimating aboveground biomass are based on volumes calculated from cut trees and expensive field measurements of tree diameter and height,” Calders said.

    Enter 3D-FOREST

    The three-year 3D-FOREST project is funded by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office led by Calders and Hans Verbeeck from Ghent University, partnering with Harm Bartholomeus and Martin Herold from Wageningen University.

    Tracking progress towards meeting major global environmental agreements and targets, such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and The Paris Agreement, require detailed accounts of carbon stocks and how they’re changing over time.

    To meet this need, the 3D-FOREST project is developing new on-ground remote sensing techniques to measure biomass and forest structure and validate global-scale satellite measurements.

    “The concept of the project is to capture data to create ‘virtual forests’ with high level detail,” Calders said. “The combination of ‘bottom-up’ terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and ‘top-down’ UAV lidar data improves biomass estimates and knowledge on how we can upscale plot-based measurements to the landscape level.”

    Harvesting virtual forests

    Representatives of the 3D-FOREST team undertook terrestrial laser scanning and UAV lidar data collection at three TERN sites: the TERN Litchfield Savanna SuperSite in the Northern Territory; the TERN Robson Creek SuperSite and the affiliate TERN Daintree Rainforest SuperSite in Queensland.

    Back in the lab, virtual 3D forests created from the lidar data are then ‘virtually harvested’. Quantitative structure models (QSM) digitally weigh individual trees by calculating their volume and converting this to carbon mass.

    “These 3D structural metrics and biomass estimates allow us to scale-up the spatial patterns of tree structure and evenness from the 1-hectare plot scale to entire forests,” Calders said. “This information is crucial for more efficient forest management, but also for better understanding of the spatial variation of forest structure in ecosystem models.”

    Scaling up to global carbon budgets

    As Europe’s, America’s and India’s space agencies get ready to launch satellites to measure and map the planet’s forests in high-resolution 3D, the value of on-ground and UAV lidar data collected by Calders’ team at TERN sites is even more apparent.

    The data from 3D-FOREST will be used to calibrate, validate and improve the accuracy of global bio-geophysical satellite data delivered by space missions including the European Space Agency’s BIOMASS, NASA’s GEDI, and the joint Indian Space Research Organisation and NASA NISAR.

    “The ability for these space missions to scale-up estimates of forest biomass to the global carbon budget and monitor ecosystem disturbances is dependent on the high-quality ground reference measurements collected at ecosystem research infrastructure sites, including TERN’s,” Calders said. “The emerging methods and technologies for data collection, and the speed of their development, are truly exciting.”

    The field campaign was made possible thanks to collaborations with the CSIRO, James Cook University and the Australian Government Department of Environment and Energy.

    For more information on the TERN Ecosystem Processes platform, its network of 12 open-access SuperSites and eddy covariance flux towers, and the data they collect, click here or explore the open data via TERN’s Data Discovery Portal.

  • DARPA awards Northrop Grumman contract for unmanned system demonstration

    An illustration of Tern, Northrop Grumman's next-generation unmanned system for maritime ISR and strike. (Image: Northrop Grumman)
    An illustration of Tern, Northrop Grumman’s next-generation unmanned system for maritime ISR and strike. (Image: Northrop Grumman)

    The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Office of Naval Research have awarded Northrop Grumman the third phase of the Tern unmanned systems program. Phase three plans include final design, fabrication and a full-scale, at-sea demonstration of the system.

    Tern seeks to develop an autonomous, unmanned, long-range, global, persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and strike system intended to safely and dependably deploy and recover from small-deck naval vessels with minimal ship modifications.

    Designed to operate in harsh maritime environments, Tern aims to enable greater mission capability and flexibility for surface combat vessels without the need for establishing fixed land bases or requiring scarce aircraft carrier resources.

    According to DARPA, Tern would use smaller ships as mobile launch and recovery sites for medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aircraft (UAVs). Named after the family of seabirds known for flight endurance — many species migrate thousands of miles each year — Tern aims to make it much easier, quicker and less expensive for the Department of Defense to deploy persistent airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike capabilities almost anywhere in the world.

    Ideally, Tern would enable on-demand, ship-based unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations without extensive, time-consuming and irreversible ship modifications. It would provide small ships with a “mission truck” that could transport ISR and strike payloads to very long distances from the host vessel. The solution would support field-interchangeable mission packages for both overland and maritime missions. It would operate from multiple ship types and in elevated sea states.

    Northrop Grumman’s Tern solution seeks to provide an innovative system that integrates mature and advanced technologies, including a distinctive propulsion solution designed to help expand global persistent ISR/strike capabilities for small-deck naval surface vessels.

    “We intend to highly leverage our Unmanned Systems Center of Excellence to develop and demonstrate this type of demanding unmanned systems capability to advance the Navy’s mission,” said Chris Hernandez, vice president, research, technology and advanced design, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. “We believe our unique ship-based unmanned systems experience, expertise, and lessons learned from programs including our MQ-8B/C Fire Scout, MQ-4C Triton, X-47A Pegasus and X-47B UCAS, is critical to the success of the Tern.”

    “Using an innovative design that integrates vertical take-off and landing transitioning to an efficient flying-wing for cruise, our team is creating a system that we believe would achieve Tern’s revolutionary performance objectives in support of our combatant commanders,” said Ralph Starace, director, advanced design, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. “Our full-scale demonstrator system is highly traceable to our operational concept to burn down risk, resulting in a compelling step forward for this game-changing, multi-mission capability,” said Bob August, Tern program manager, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems.

    The Northrop Grumman Tern team includes its wholly owned subsidiary Scaled Composites, as well as General Electric (GE) Aviation, AVX Aircraft Company and Moog.