Intergeo 2016 host DVW German Society for Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Management gathered together experts from the worlds of business, public authorities and science to talk about this year’s key topic of the show: the “smart city.” Held in April at Hamburg’s Agency for Geoinformation and Surveying, the event focused on what an intelligent, digital city might look like and what role geoinformation would play as cities and metropolitan regions become “smart.”
Intergeo 2016, the leading international event for the geospatial community, will be held Oct. 11-13 in Hamburg, Germany, and also will focus on smart cities as a multi-faceted issue to shape the future.
During the preview, attendees agreed that cities must, and will, become more intelligent because of the benefits it has to society, Intergeo officials say in a May news release.
“They all agreed that the increasing penetration of digital technologies into cities is not an end in itself.” Intergeo says in the news release. “First and foremost is the common good of society and the advantages that digitalization offers inhabitants. This will ensure that cities can be run on a more intelligent basis and thus become a sustainable living space. The preview participants felt that smart geodata was an essential prerequisite in this regard.”
The host city for Intergeo 2016, Hamburg has been quick to position itself with “Hamburg’s Strategy for the Digital City,” which aims to develop a standardized smart city strategy. Key areas include mobility, energy, business and work, accommodation and city life. The city’s residents also will be involved in the strategy.
The roll-out of intelligent solutions for individual segments of the city is done in dialogue with residents, politicians, administrators, business people and scientists. Taking traffic as an example, smart mobility concepts are designed to improve the flow of traffic so as to minimize the delays caused by congestion while also lowering CO2 emissions, Intergeo says. Measures of a smart city include intelligent transport systems, semi-automated vehicle guidance, sharing concepts, intelligent parking facility management, apps for inhabitant participation and city planning processes that help to avoid traffic in the best-case scenario.
Everyone at the preview agreed that a standardized language must be developed and understood if forward-looking, complex processes such as the development of an intelligent digital city are to be successfully rolled out, according to Intergeo.
STMicroelectronics and Israel-based Autotalks have announced their fusion of GNSS technology and V2X ranging.
The new V2X-Enhanced GNSS ensures authenticated and secure vehicle localization for extreme accuracy and reliability of positioning information, especially in urban canyons, tunnels and parking structures, where accurate absolute and relative positioning-to other vehicles and infrastructure-is critical in progress toward semi- and fully-autonomous vehicles.
STMicroelectronics is a semiconductor company, and Israel-based Autotalks is a V2X-chipset market company involved in the first wave of V2X deployments.
Development of V2X-Enhanced GNSS builds on the companies’ successes in co-developing a V2X chipset that connects vehicles to other vehicles and infrastructure within wireless range for safety and mobility applications, the companies said in a press release.
The promise of efficient, coordinated, and safe driving of autonomous cars can result only from the accurate positioning that the fusion of GNSS with V2X technology achieves, the companies said.
“Autotalks fully recognizes that autonomous driving requires equal measures of reliability, accuracy, and security and no driver would sacrifice any of these,” said Hagai Zyss, CEO of Autotalks.
“Our solutions have been architected from the beginning to enable automated driving and because we recognize positioning for autonomous vehicles as critical, Autotalks, with ST, continues to optimize accurate V2X positioning-and we believe that our customers understand the value and potential.”
V2X-Enhanced GNSS technology, when coupled with V2X-enabled infrastructure, can uniquely provide absolute positioning to vehicles to assure lane-level accuracy. This precision improves navigation in urban canyons and tunnels and is also being used to develop myriad new applications, such as autonomous on-street and in-garage parking and available-spot identification.
“To fully realize the safety, convenience and other benefits of autonomous driving, we need confidence in the security, reliability and accuracy of the communications between our vehicle and its surroundings to know precisely how close we are to things, whether — and in what direction — they are moving, and what they are telling us — such as when there are roadworks or an accident ahead,” said Antonio Radaelli, director of Infotainment, Automotive Digital Division, STMicroelectronics.
“Building upon our successful collaboration with Autotalks, we are combining ST’s state-of-the-art positioning technology and roadmap for high-precision Automotive GNSS supporting satellite signal authentication with Autotalks’ expertise in advanced signal-processing algorithms for ranging, to smoothly pave the road to secure, accurate, and reliable V2X-Enhanced GNSS.”
Field trials in an Asian country, monitored by a government agency, are being used to test this technology in 2016.
Colombia – Percent Change in Cumulative Zika Cases by Department, Feb. 13 -March 26, 2016.
Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) is using the Esri platform to track the outbreak of the Zika virus on a global scale. By sharing mapped intelligence with health services and aid responders, PDC is able to provide essential information that defines the characteristics of the virus and its carrier’s breeding grounds.
“Esri provides the backbone for visualizing an event and understanding the locality and context for any disaster, including the Zika virus,” said Ray Shirkhodai, PDC executive director.
The center provides situational awareness information for all manner of disasters. Esri, the world leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, creates technology that generates smart maps derived from a wide variety of data resources and then publishes them across information networks.
PDC uses these capabilities to add different data layers — hospital density, rain, vector programs, and so forth—to maps. Maps make it easier and faster for disaster managers to understand the scope of a region’s vulnerability to disease. The center serves its map products around the world to organizations that depend on it for intelligence about specific regions.
“Esri GIS technology specifically allows us to characterize the Zika virus outbreak and contextualize it for decision makers,” explained Joseph Green, PDC’s health risk specialist. “Our maps describe the distribution of suspected cases at national levels throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.”
PDC gathers Zika virus information from weekly epidemiology updates and bulletins obtained from health organizations worldwide. In return, the center publishes regular updates, including online maps that track the increase and decrease of reported and suspected cases over time.
The solution to containing the Zika virus is to dispose of mosquitos, which carry the disease. Mapping regional vulnerabilities to virus outbreaks highlights the value of mosquito management programs. Learn more about using GIS for vector-borne disease surveillance and control at go.esri.com/vector-ready.
Septentrio has introduced its next-generation high-precision Altus APS3G real-time kinematic (RTK) receiver, which brings technology only previously available in scientific receivers into the field for professional surveyors.
The new multi-constellation APS3G addresses major concerns about compatibility with new satellite constellations, as well as interference and jamming, according to Neil Vancans, vice president of Septentrio Americas.
Built on Septentrio’s AsteRx4 engine, the APS3G tracks all-in-view GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, IRNSS, SBAS, Galileo and QZSS, including E6/L6, and all other signals known to be available in the medium term.
The APS3G incorporates Septentrio’s AIM technology with three notch filters for in-band jamming and chirp jammer resistance, ensuring the highest possible levels of accuracy and resilience under all conditions. This technology is proven in Septentrio’s reference station and scientific products, which are acknowledged as technology leaders and deployed by major research institutions all over the world.
With two hot-swappable batteries, the APS3G provides up to 14 hours of operation without recharging, the longest endurance of any high-precision GNSS receiver in the surveying industry, maximizing uptime in the field.
The APS3G provides optimum GSM signal reception, as well as a built-in advanced UHF receiver for reliable performance on longer baselines, yielding real-time 25 Hz RTK. It also supports TERRASTAR L-band corrections for sub decimeter-level accuracy.
The flexible APS3G receiver can function as either a rover or base station, providing maximum versatility in the field.
“The Altus APS3G with embedded AsteRx4 technology brings what has previously been available only in high-priced scientific GNSS receivers to the workplace of the average surveyor,” said Vancans.
“With 544 channels capable of tracking all known and foreseen satellite signals and bands, the all-in-one unit is future proof, and Septentrio’s open architecture makes the APS3G compatible with most other hardware and software solutions, driving down the lifetime cost of ownership. In addition, with its extremely low power consumption, no other survey receiver on the market gives as much battery life, saving time and money on the job.”
iXBlue, a navigation and positioning company, is providing 70 Marins M7 to equip 35 Royal Navy major surface ships and submarines as part of the Navigation Compass Programme.
The decisions to equip both the Queen Elizabeth-Class Aircraft Carriers and the fourth Astute-Class nuclear-power submarine with iXBlue’s Marins inertial navigation system (INS) were the first steps made by the UK Ministry of Defense toward the adoption of iXBlue fiber-optic gyroscope technology.
The ministry awarded a five-year contract awarded to Lockheed Martin UK, iXBlue’s strategic partner, for iXBlue’s inertial technology.
The 70 Marins M7 INS will replace the obsolete gyro systems on board the Royal Navy ships which include Type 23 Frigates, Hunt and Sandown Class mine countermeasure vessels and submarines. They will be integrated by Lockheed Martin UK within the compass system installed on board.
“We conducted a detailed assessment of all available possible partners along with their proposed technologies,” said Robert Kramer, vice president of Lockheed Martin UK – Integrated Systems. “By precisely understanding the Royal Navy expectations and assessing their views on the industry leading suppliers, it clearly appeared that iXBlue’s solutions best fitted the needs in terms of performance, capability and cost.”
The Marins family of military-grade FOG INS (M3, M5 and M7 models) are the latest additions to iXBlue range of naval products. They offer performances and reliability that meet the requirements of the demanding navies. Marins M7 model offers a drift of less than 1 nautical mile in 72 hours of surface GNSS-denied or submarine-dived navigation.
“We are very grateful to the Royal Navy for such a decision that demonstrates through a fair and open competition iXBlue’s INS excellence in terms of performance, reliability, lifecycle costs and versatility. This success relies on iXBlue core values: innovation, excellence and a strong commitment to the user,” said Olivier Cervantes, iXBlue vice president for sales and marketing.
Such a milestone contract opens up bright prospects for iXBlue in the field of military inertial solutions, Cervantes said.
The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee withheld the full amount requested by the Pentagon for Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 for OCX, the Next-Generation Operational Control System (ground control) for GPS, heretofore deemed necessary to operate the next generation of satellites, GPS III. The Pentagon had asked for $394 million in the upcoming funding cycle, to enable Raytheon to continue work on the program.
If allowed by Congress to continue, OCX may cost as much as $5.3 billion, and there is no certainty that the bill will not rise further.
The Senate committee will not release the $394 million until the Defense Department complies with the requirements of the Nunn-McCurdy Act governing defense programs. Otherwise, Congress could act to terminate OCX.
The terms of the Act now require the Secretary of Defense conduct an in-depth review and then state that the program is essential to the national security, is more important than other programs that will have to be cut to accommodate its cost overruns, and that there are no acceptable alternatives.
From the Defense Department point of view, the new GPS III satellites are essential because of, among other things, their signals’ improved resistance to jamming and cyberattack, an oft-cited peril in the modern global security scenario.
How GPS III could be launched — the first satellite is scheduled for sometime in 2017 — and operated without OCX is not entirely clear, although in February, Lockheed Martin received a $96 million contract to provide contingency control operations for the first GPS III satellites upon launch because OCX won’t be ready.
Raytheon and the U.S. Air Force announced a month ago that OCX “successfully passed the first formal qualification test milestone” needed to check out the system and for the early monitoring of satellites in orbit. That “validates the maturity of the OCX launch and checkout system,” according to a statement by Bill Sullivan, Raytheon’s OCX program director.
Raytheon won the OCX contract in 2010 with a bid somewhat more than $1.5 billion. The Air Force recently made its FY 2017 budget request for $393 million as part of an overall anticipated program cost of $4.82 billion. However, a Bloomberg news report states that the total cost may have risen to $5.3 billion.
The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) today announced the five recipients of its 2016 Awards Program. Winners were recognized on the main stage at USGIF’s GEOINT 2016 Symposium, held May 15-18, at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.
This year’s recipients are The Geospatial Semester at James Madison University; Exemplar City Inc.; the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s iMAP Team; ABACO SpA’s Research & Development Team; and Gunnery Sgt. Jesus M. Bocanegra, Marine Special Operations Company, U.S. Special Operations Command.
The USGIF Awards Program annually recognizes the exceptional work of the geospatial intelligence tradecraft’s brightest minds and organizations pushing the leading edge. The five award categories recognize GEOINT achievements in academia, community support, government, industry, and military. Award winners are nominated by their colleagues and selected by the USGIF Awards Subcommittee.
“The number and diversity of the nominations received for the 2016 USGIF Awards Program was outstanding,” said Kevin Jackson, USGIF Awards Subcommittee chair. “From year to year the quantity of nominations may vary, but the number submitted this year sets an all-time record, and the competition in all the categories was fierce. However, some things do remain constant. Underneath the outstanding achievements of the individuals and teams that we honor each year at the Symposium, are people of great character and commitment, each with a true sense of purpose.”
USGIF also announced at the symposium the Honorable Martin C. Faga, former director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), as the 2016 recipient of the Foundation’s Arthur C. Lundahl-Thomas C. Finnie Lifetime Achievement Award.
Faga is the 12th individual to receive this prestigious award and was recognized during USGIF’s GEOINT 2016 Symposium general session. (Read more about Faga below.)
2016 Winners
Academic Achievement Award
The Geospatial Semester, James Madison University
The Geospatial Semester is a dual enrollment partnership between James Madison University (JMU) and school districts across Virginia. Participating students learn about geospatial technologies and apply them to local and global problems. The class culminates with an extended, in-depth local project. Students can earn up to six credits at JMU, which are transferable to the school of their choice. Since its inception in 2005, nearly 3,000 students have participated and gone on to a variety of careers using geospatial technology, including intelligence. JMU faculty members are regular visitors to the high school classrooms to interact with teachers and students as well as to provide technical and project support.
Community Support Achievement Award
Exemplar City Inc.
Exemplar City, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit established by Huntsville, Ala., Mayor Tommy Battle, assists local governments in preparing, responding, mitigating, and avoiding natural/manmade disasters through planned resilience. Exemplar City’s peer-to-peer collaboration brings municipal stakeholders together to build safe, secure, and sustainable communities. Exemplar City partners with Geo Huntsville, focusing on geospatial technology applications for public safety and homeland security. Together, they use technology instruction and field-based data gathering, and interface with geospatial technology experts to bring geospatial technology advances to governmental officials throughout the nation. In 2014, the Blueprint for Safety (BfS) pilot was launched to increase multi-jurisdictional information sharing and enhance situational awareness among agencies to improve rapid disaster response and sustained recovery. Through BfS, a concept emerged allowing shared lessons, code sets, and case documentation using Exemplar City to create a multi-city collaboration.
Government Achievement Award
iMAP Team, Santa Clara County Fire Department
The Santa Clara County Fire Department’s iMAP Team developed an enterprise GEOINT system used to manage all fire and medical service operations throughout Super Bowl 50. Together with its partner Intterra, the developers were able to integrate 911/computer-aided dispatch information, map special events throughout the region, monitor resource availability, view GIS layers to include near real-time imagery, and analyze data trends. This system provided the Santa Clara County Multi-Agency Coordination Center with a true GEOINT decision and situational awareness platform. It allowed decision-makers to keep informed on current activity and make decisions faster than ever before. The iMAP team created dynamic situational awareness of all Super Bowl 50 events, providing valuable insight for first responders, resulting in a safe environment for fans and players.
Industry Achievement Award
ABACO R&D Team, ABACO SpA
ABACO SpA, based in the United Kingdom and Italy, specializes in advanced geospatial intelligence data processing and portrayal techniques. In 2016, its R&D team designed a new augmented reality (AR) “Farm Visor,” to help the farming community easily access big data. Integrated with an advanced 3D processing server, Farm Visor facilitates location of plots, visualization of attributes, and consumption of services to manage farming activities. The AR solution can further benefit from a new agricultural portal, Project groundSITE, which supports decision-making, farm agenda management, controlled chemicals spraying, and water consumption control. The R&D Team members awarded are: Oreste Tommasi, R&D director; Alberto Bignotti, software factory manager; and Alessandro Zilocchi, product owner.
Military Achievement Award
Gunnery Sgt. Jesus M. Bocanegra, Marine Special Operations Company, U.S. Special Operations Command
Gunnery Sgt. Bocanegra deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve from July 2015 to January 2016. During the deployment, Bocanegra increased operational allocation of ISR assets by more than 300 percent. In total, he acquired more than 3,500 hours of ISR collection supporting six different units spanning an area of more than 200,000 square kilometers. Bocanegra created and disseminated more than 100 specialized imagery and topographic products in support of deliberate targeting efforts. He continually mentored the six units in the utilization of measurement & signature intelligence in order to leverage ongoing national technical means collection efforts in support of intelligence preparation of the environment. As a result, the units struck 25 deliberate targets and created 30 additional developmental targets for follow-on actions, maintaining pressure on ISIL.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Faga was unable to attend the Symposium and accept the award in person, but he instead recorded an on-camera interview about his career and how it feels to receive this recognition.
“It’s hard to express how much the award means to me,” Faga said. “I actually knew Arthur Lundahl—he was retired by the time I knew him but he was very active in mentoring people in the field… To receive an award in his name is a special privilege for me. As exciting as the last almost 50 years has been, I look forward to what’s happening in the future, particularly in the processing of imagery and the ability for anybody on a laptop to do almost anything they want. As the same goes, 20 years from now people will look back and say they haven’t seen anything at that point.”
Faga was the 10th director of NRO, where he most notably led the declassification of NRO’s existence following more than 30 years of secrecy. He revolutionized NRO support to the military, downgraded the classification of NRO products, and appointed a deputy director for military support. Faga also initiated the transition of NRO’s separate Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Air Force, and Navy programs into functional directorates in signals, imagery, and communications.
Faga retired in 2006 as president and chief executive officer of the MITRE Corporation. Prior to his promotion to president and CEO in May 2000, Faga served as executive vice president and senior vice president and general manager of MITRE’s Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems. Since retiring, Faga has been elected to the board of directors for Electronic Data Systems, GeoEye, and Orbital ATK.
Before joining MITRE, Faga served as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space from 1989 to 1993, simultaneously serving as director of NRO. Faga received many awards and distinctions throughout his career, including the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the DoD Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and in 2004 was awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion. President George W. Bush appointed Faga to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2006 to 2009 and to the Public Interest Declassification Board from 2004 to 2009.
“The Honorable Martin C. Faga — patriot, thought leader, visionary, trailblazer — has been at the forefront of the GEOINT tradecraft for five decades,” said The Honorable Jeffrey K. Harris, Chairman of USGIF’s Board of Directors. “Whether serving in government or industry, Marty has always focused first and foremost on the GEOINT mission. We are proud to recognize his leadership, technical acumen, and political savvy.”
The Lundahl-Finnie award recipient is nominated and voted on by the USGIF Board of Directors. This distinguished award is named after Arthur C. Lundahl and Thomas C. Finnie, celebrating their accomplishments — in imagery analysis and mapping, respectively — and their legacies within the GEOINT Community.
Lundahl is known as the father of modern imagery analysis and imagery intelligence for being the founder and first director of the National Photographic Interpretation Center. Finnie was the Defense Mapping Agency’s (DMA) director of management and technology, and was one of the primary architects of DMA’s evolution to the digital era.
To learn more about the USGIF Awards Program and past award recipients, visit USGIF.org.
The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and its government partners are expanding research on ways to detect “rogue” drones around airports. Together, they are evaluating drone detection technology at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York.
Over the last two years, the FAA has received numerous reports from pilots and residents about unmanned aircraft systems — UAS, or “drones” — around some of the nation’s busiest airports, including JFK.
“We face many difficult challenges as we integrate rapidly evolving UAS technology into our complex and highly regulated airspace,” said Marke “Hoot” Gibson, FAA senior advisor on UAS integration. “This effort at JFK reflects everyone’s commitment to safety.”
Terminal 6 at JFK Airport. (Photo: New York Photo Gallery)
Beginning May 2, the FAA conducted evaluations at JFK to study the effectiveness of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) UAS detection system in a commercial airport environment. Five different rotorcraft and fixed-wing UAS participated in the evaluations, and about 40 separate tests took place.
The JFK evaluation involved extensive government inter-agency collaboration, and cooperation from industry and academia. The tests expanded on research performed earlier this year at Atlantic City International Airport.
In addition to the FAA and the FBI, the agencies combining forces in this research included the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice, Queens District Attorney’s Office and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. DHS and the FBI want to identify unauthorized UAS operators for law enforcement purposes, and the FAA’s mission is to provide a safe and efficient airport environment for both manned and unmanned air traffic.
“We applaud the FBI and FAA for their efforts to detect and track unmanned aerial systems (UAS),” said Thomas Bosco, Port Authority aviation director. “We look forward to supporting continued U.S. government efforts to identify and deploy countermeasures to neutralize the threat posed by rogue UASs.”
The team evaluating the FBI’s detection system also included contributions from one of the six FAA-designated UAS test sites. The Griffiss International Airport test site in Rome, New York, provided expertise in planning the individual tests as well as the flight commander for the tests and two of the UAS used.
The FY 2016 Appropriations law mandates that the FAA continue research into detection of UAS in airport environments. The agency is continuing to formulate an inter-agency strategy to evaluate detection systems in a variety of airport environments.
Geointelligence Insider’s Art Kalinski is reporting live from the GEOINT 2016 Symposium, which is being held May 15-18 in Orlando, Fla.
Hosted and produced by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), a non-profit, non-lobbying educational organization, the annual GEOINT Symposium is the nation’s largest gathering of industry, academia and government to include defense, intelligence and Homeland Security Communities as well as commercial, federal/civil, state and local geospatial intelligence stakeholders.
Mayflower Communications Company Inc. will develop a small security-certifiable GPS module for the United States Air Force’s Modernized GPS User Equipment (MGUE) Program.
The Mayflower NavAssure 125a GPS receiver.
Mayflower was awarded a Phase III SGUE (Small GPS User Equipment) contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory sponsored by the Space and Missile Systems Center/GPS Directorate (SMC/GPSD).
Under the contract, the company will develop a small SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power) security certifiable Common GPS Module (CGM).
Mayflowers’ small SWaP GPS receiver technology will allow the Department of Defense (DoD) and its agencies to benefit from increased competition, enhanced capability and reduction in overall program costs to DoD program managers and prime contractors in upgrading their navigation systems to the modernized M-code receiver.
Mayflower’s SGUE program is aimed at the development of advanced GPS receiver technology to support future military GPS requirements. The goal of the program is to develop a NAVWAR (Navigation Warfare) compatible CGM form factor that will support SWaP-constrained military users.
The SGUE CGM development effort will expand Mayflower’s military GPS receiver product line to include modernized NavAssure-M product offerings so that current customers will have a form-fit-function upgrade path from SAASM to MGUE.
“Mayflower is a leader in small SWaP and miniaturized military GPS receiver and anti-jam products,” said Triveni Upadhyay, Mayflower founder and CEO. “I am confident in the quality and innovation expertise of our GPS engineering team to successfully develop the SGUE CGM. The development of small SWaP MGUE form factors, enabled by SGUE CGM, will have a significant impact in the M-Code market, providing secure modernized GPS signals to the warfighters and lowering total ownership costs on many military programs.”
“The Air Force is very pleased to see innovative GPS technology developed under its SBIR Program to find commercialization opportunity in the MGUE market. Mayflower has performed well and we are confident of the SGUE program success,” said Dana Howell, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) program manager.
“The AFRL/GPSD objective in the SGUE Program is to advance MGUE technology and make it affordable to the warfighter,” said Eddy Emile, chief of the Advanced Technology and International Branch, GPS Directorate. ”
The SGUE Program fits the need and will lower the cost to the user by increased competition enabled by the SGUE Program.”
According to Mayflower, the NavAssure-M MGUE receiver form factors, focused toward small SWaP GPS receiver applications, will be backward compatible to SAASM, therefore, lowering the platform integration cost and total life-cycle cost.
GeoMobile Innovations has released GeoBullseye for ArcPad version 2. GeoBullseye is a software extension that turns Esri’s ArcPad mobile GIS software into a high-accuracy GNSS, three dimensional (collecting X, Y and Z) solution supporting Esri workflows.
GeoBullseye supports accurate collection of positions and quality-control GNSS attributes for confident deployment in horizontal XY and vertical Z, including GEOID12 for accurate Mean Sea Level (MSL) elevations.
GeoBullseye displays real-time estimated accuracies on the ArcPad main map screen and supports automated recording of GNSS/GIS metadata, including key horizontal and vertical accuracy metrics and real-time differential correction status results.
Version 2 collects up to 35 configurable “auto” attributes to support confidence in critical field data-collection efforts. GeoBullseye is a XY and Z centimeter accuracy RTK GNSS collection solution that can be tightly integrated in a fully disconnected workflow with ArcGIS as well as connected, real-time synchronization with ArcGIS Online (AGOL) and/or ArcGIS Server including SDE environments.
“The high-accuracy GNSS 3D mobile GIS solution and can be deployed with today’s various Esri workflows,” said Geomobile Innovations President Richard Ash. “We recognize that centimeter-level GNSS data collection is a strong trend in mobile GIS and are excited to bring that capability to the Esri environment.”
Furthermore, GeoBullseye Version 2 implements a rigorous 14-parameter datum transformation to solve a critical horizontal datum shift problem for the specialized positioning needs of North American GPS users mapping in NAD83 (2011 epoch) datum while using satellite-based augmentation service (SBAS) such as WAAS or commercial services like Atlas, OmniSTAR, Terrastar and Starfire. Those services produce coordinates that are referenced to the ITRF08 datum, which is substantially different (greater than 1 meter) from NAD83/2011, the national standard in the U.S.
“Professional groups such as small and large utilities, engineering, land and natural-resource impact consultants and more are seeking confident collection of high-accuracy RTK horizontal and vertical positions and the ability to efficiently cycle this data to and from the field and update their GIS, perhaps when they return to the office or in real-time out in the field,” Ash said. “GeoBullsye for ArcPad is an easy-to-use solution that checks the critical ‘must-have’ boxes for organizations that want to streamline their field collection to GIS back-end workflows. It supports the key data elements necessary for reporting, and defending their horizontal and vertical GNSS data collection efforts.”
GeoBullseye V2 is priced at US$295.00. It is available for purchase through GeoMobile and authorized GeoMobile GNSS reseller specialists.
The sensor offers real-time data, 360-degree scanning, 3D distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements for the mapping, automotive, UAV, security and robotics markets.
