The force of mapping was punctuated this month when Uber, the juggernaut taxi service, acquired long-time mapping and navigation company deCarta. Uber and its competitor, Lyft, redefined taxi service with a smartphone app that connects users and drivers. These services have exceled by offering reliable low-cost rides and quick pick-ups, functionality that is enabled by seamless mapping and navigation technologies. Acquisition of a mapping company serves Uber’s high ambitions.
Following introduction in San Francisco and New York, Uber just rolled out its ride sharing service, UberPool, in my city, Los Angeles. The service allows multiple individual customers going in the same direction to share a ride and lower their fare by as much as half. The potential for reducing traffic in congested cities is large, but how likely is it that UberPool can find matches and people willing to ride with strangers?
Effective vehicle routing, navigation and traffic prediction is critical to making UberPool work. First, Uber must find pairs of trips that are similar enough in their timing and pathways to make a pairing attractive to the riders. Then, Uber needs to execute quickly and on time, given the unpredictability of whether the other rider is ready when expected. Coping with these uncertainties will be a huge challenge for Uber. Just 10 percent of work trips in America are by carpool. Can Uber develop the algorithm to make ride sharing attractive? Let’s wait and see.
It is no surprise that Uber has announced that it will be developing self-driving car technology with the goal of self-driving Uber taxis. This puts it in direct competition with Google, one of Uber’s largest investors. Uber has partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to create a research center for mapping, vehicle safety and autonomy technology. If Uber can someday build cars that drive themselves, they can eliminate the need for a driver. The question for 2015 may well be, who is not pursuing driverless cars? Maybe Macy’s and Martha Stewart will partner on a particularly tasteful automated vehicle? Do you think you’d still have to tip?
In other news, two former leading location competitors, LocationSmart and Locaid, have merged. Together they have the largest location-as-a-service platform for enterprise location for mission-critical applications in a number of industries including service assistance, proximity marketing, workforce management, emergency alerting, mobile gaming and transaction verification. As far as I know, they are not developing a self-driving vehicle.
25 years ago, while the Soviet Union still existed, I began efforts that led me to become the first to combine United States’ GPS and Russia’s GLONASS satellites. Later I hosted many GPS and GLONASS authorities, fostered friendships among them, and promoted concepts such as “compatibility” and “interoperability” of satellite systems. See the details in the GPS World article, “How GPS and GLONASS Got Together.” The whole world now benefits from the combined GPS and GLONASS system.
As with GPS and GLONASS, we need to get together again. Just because I am passionate about technical issues does not mean that I ignore human issues. This time it is not about technology. This time it is about We the People.
For citizens of the United States, founded on this concept, it is inconceivable that we might one day wake up and learn that one of our States had been “gifted” to a neighboring country. But this is exactly what happened to the people of Crimea. Since 1784, Crimea was part of Russia and its people lived peacefully and happily as part of Russian culture and heritage. In 1954, approximately 75 % of the Crimea population were ethnic Russians. One day they woke up and learned that Nikita Khrushchev, the successor to Stalin, had “gifted” their land to Ukraine (reportedly for his own political gain).
Anyone familiar with the history of the Soviet Union knows that the people of Crimea were not able to raise objections. They were ruled under the dictatorship of Khrushchev who is known in the West for pounding his shoes on the table in the United Nations and threatening the United States. Those who claim Crimea does not belong as part of Russia give credence to the action of Khrushchev.
Should people have a ‘say’ or ‘voice’ in their future? Contrast the actions of Khrushchev in 1954 with that of Scotland and Quebec in more recent years. Crimeans had no choice about their fate, it was decided by the unilateral action of one man. Whereas, when some people in Scotland and Quebec wanted to secede, all people were allowed to vote to determine their fate.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of better relations between Russia and the Western world, East and West Germany rightfully reunified after an imposed ‘wrong’ of separation, but at no time did anyone come to the aid of the Crimean people to correct their ‘wrong’. Even worse, when the current issue surfaced, the US and Europe stood opposed to them.
It is not only my personal observation that Crimeans love their motherland of Russia. Forbes magazine contributor, Kenneth Rapoza, in his March 20, 2015 article writes that: “[…] poll after poll shows that the locals […] are all in agreement: life with Russia is better than life with Ukraine.”
The position of the West regarding Crimea has exacerbated the problem of Ukraine, and despite financial hardship in Russia, Putin’s popularity has skyrocketed while the United States’ standing has plummeted among the Russian people.
One can argue that President Putin and Russia could have used a better approach to help the people of Crimea achieve their goals and aspirations, but many believe that the West did not leave him a better choice. I don’t agree with many of President Putin decisions, but on this issue Vladimir Vladimirovich is exactly right.
I once worked to bring together GPS and GLONASS; I wish I had the opportunity to invite Presidents Obama and Putin to my California or my Moscow facilities to see if we could put an end to this situation.
Dr. Javad Ashjaee
JAVAD GNSS
March 21, 2015, San Jose, California
For the story of how Ashjaee “hosted many GPS and GLONASS authorities, fostered friendships among them, and promoted concepts such as compatibility and interoperability of satellite systems,” see the cover story of GPS World’s June 2011 issue, “How GPS and GLONASS Got Together.”
That means you can’t fly drones if it’s related to business, no matter if you charge a fee or not. But, you can fly drones in the United States as a “hobbyist” as long as you adhere to certain rules (such as flying lower than 400 feet above the ground).
In a new twist, the FAA has cracked down on at least one person who posted a drone video on YouTube because YouTube generates revenue, reports the website Motherboard. Even though it appears the drone was being flown by a hobbyist for recreational purposes, it smells to the FAA like a commercial use of drone. Even though the hobbyist isn’t generating revenue from it, Google is.
Jason Hanes’ YouTube channel.
While it appears the U.S. drone community is going nuts using drones for all kinds of non-commercial and commercial purposes, despite the FAA rules, it appears there are too many violators for the FAA to chase after since enforcement notices sent by the FAA have been few and far between. In this case, safety concerns may have been the prompt. The FAA says it’s now looking further into how its safety inspectors send letters like this. Read more about the case at the Motherboard website.
Geospatial Data Interest Crosses Political Party Lines
Senator’s Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced the Geospatial Reform Act, targeted at leveraging geospatial data acquired by the U.S. federal government. This bill argues that the federal government is the largest purchaser of geospatial data, yet agencies aren’t required to report details of geospatial data purchased. The bill aims to change that.
“Geospatial data has endless possibilities for transforming both the private and public sectors — from helping local governments develop emergency preparedness plans to fueling the creation of apps that let you find parking spots, restaurants, and even homes for sale based on where you’re standing,” said Sen. Warner. “The federal government is the largest purchaser of geospatial data but some very basic questions about how and where agencies are already investing in this data can’t be answered. Our bill would bring transparency and accountability to the collection of this data and ensure that taxpayer dollars are not being wasted on duplicative efforts.”
In what DigitalGlobe claims is a world’s first, the company began offering commercial 30-cm satellite imagery via its WorldView-3 satellite, which was launched August 13, 2014. DigitalGlobe announced that the imagery is available worldwide (with some restrictions). As part of its press release, DigitalGlobe offered the following quote from PhotoSat, a consumer of imagery.
“DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 satellite data is the highest quality satellite photo data that PhotoSat has ever processed,” said Gerry Mitchell, President of PhotoSat, a leading satellite elevation mapping provider for energy, mining, and engineering firms. “In one test, an elevation mapping grid extracted from stereo WorldView-3 satellite photos matched a highly accurate LiDAR elevation grid to better than 15 cm in elevation. This result takes satellite elevation mapping into the engineering design and construction markets and directly competes with LiDAR and high resolution air photo mapping for applications like flood plain monitoring.”
According to DigitalGlobe, WorldView-3 is the first and only commercial imaging satellite capable of collecting imagery with 30-cm ground sample distance, and claims it is five times the detail of the company’s nearest competitor. See a sample by clicking here.
Satellite imagery is approaching aerial photogrammetry quality. I recall Lawrie Jordan, founder of ERDAS (sold to Leica) and now director of imagery at Esri, saying that eventually every square inch of the earth will be imaged constantly by satellite.
Esri and Drone Data Up until now, you haven’t heard the words “Esri” and “drone” mentioned in the same sentence very often. Last week at the Esri Developer Summit in Palm Springs, Esri provided a live map-creation demo using a small quadcopter.
Look for a follow-up article, data example and possibly a video of the event.
GPS World will host a webinar this Thursday, March 19, on the merits of using simulated jamming, spoofing and interference scenarios to prepare GNSS receivers for the brave new world of coping with adverse signal effects. It’s clear that users need to still operate commercially and individually, even when they get hit by extraneous interference — intended or otherwise — in a world where cigarette-lighter jammers, engineering “lash-up” spoofers, and badly designed commercial gear can ruin a person’s day.
Recently, I had a conversation with Guy Buesnel, market segment manager, GNSS Vulnerabilities, at Spirent Communications. He wanted to alert me to the concept that jamming and spoofing is at a stage where Internet hacking was many years ago. Hacking has progressed from the typical loan student in his bedsit or studio apartment pounding on a keyboard to break down banking or other institutional firewalls, to nowadays, where focused groups mount hacking attacks on targeted agencies or companies lasting days, weeks, even months. Huge effort is currently being applied to defending against these and future focused attacks.
Buesnel’s point is that organized attacks on GNSS may be coming, and coming soon. Individuals and groups are already self-jamming to prevent detection — organized car and truck thieves wanting to avoid location of stolen assets, or truck drivers wanting to prevent their employers knowing their whereabouts — using easily obtained “personal cigarette lighter” or even professional-looking jammers (see figure below). Jamming GPS L3 at 1381.05MHz might awaken U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) interest as it’s used by the Nuclear Detonation (NUDET) Detection System Payload (NDS), and L4 at 1379.913 MHz is currently only used for studies on additional ionospheric corrections.
But Buesnel warns that organized spoofing could soon start to happen, and happen frequently. And it could be argued that spoofing is more dangerous than jamming, because a user or someone monitoring a user might not know for some time that their position information has been compromised. Long enough, perhaps, for an unwary user to get into potentially serious trouble, especially in a higher speed, fuel-restricted application like an aircraft or a small boat running some distance offshore.
GNSS is already embedded into the critical infrastructure of utility providers, and also telecoms, financial and transport sectors for timing/synchronization or positional data, and the growth in vehicle automation will soon see GNSS being used for even more safety-critical applications. The security of GNSS is already of huge importance and a “GNSS hacking attack,” like those experienced by Internet users, could achieve significant disruption across a host of operational segments. Precise GNSS timing is already essential for time stamping some transactions and used extensively for cell-site synchronization, so significant damage could occur if timing information were to be compromised.
While an intentional spoofing attack has yet to be confirmed — except under conditions such as that drone spoofing demonstration and then the White Rose luxury yacht spoofing trials, both by University of Texas/Cockrell School of Engineering graduate students — unintentional spoofing has indeed been reported. GNSS repeaters radiating at higher power levels than actual GNSS signals can be the source of such spurious signals. The result can be that GNSS receivers may acquire and track the higher power repeater signals, and the receiver position becomes that of the repeater. Use of GPS repeaters in unsuitable locations, such as for production tests in an open workshop, have been reported. The risk is that GNSS signals could extend outside the building and affect users, so GPS receivers could be spoofed and tricked into reporting an incorrect position.
White Rose 213-foot luxury yacht. Photo: Tony Murfin
For more than 20 years, the information security community has debated publishing the methods used by hackers and others to expose and attack vulnerabilities within products. Initially, things were kept hidden and were only shared between groups of hackers or IT administrators. However, online hacker forums quickly distributed knowledge — often including sample code. This allowed everyone from security researchers and IT administrators to hackers to learn about the vulnerabilities of applications and critical systems. It would seem that both researchers and hackers alike have broken the spell, and now it’s easy to spread the word about backdoors and weaknesses in firewalls, critical applications and the like.
Fast forward, and we are now in the age of mass-market access to jammers of all kinds through offshore websites — even if it’s illegal to operate such devices. However, it’s also illegal to hack the Department of Defense, but that has not prevented hackers in the past from assaulting and penetrating all sorts of secure DoD computing facilities. So, let’s just assume that the individuals who get a kick out of creating mayhem may eventually turn to something new — and the age of jamming and spoofing for fun may be upon us.
All is not lost, however. Just as applications for finding and killing viruses have become more robust, and new “antidotes” and warnings are now automatically downloaded to your PC even as they are created, and huge amounts of effort are now being applied to creating the most robust firewalls, so the designers of GNSS receivers are working hard to immunize their systems against anticipated attacks. And simulator/replay manufacturers such as Spirent Communications, IFEN, Spectracom and Racelogic are developing and fielding ready-made spoofing and jamming capabilities and scenarios with which manufacturers can test and qualify their receivers — which you may well hear about during the coming GPS World webinar on March 19.
Nevertheless, some people in the industry are urging members of the GNSS community to act more cooperatively and report spoofing and jamming incidents/attacks for their own good. It seems that the industry only collaborates in the face of a major common threat — take the ultra wideband and LightSquared episodes where the response was virtually unanimous. While most GNSS manufacturers in the meantime tend to maintain a very proprietary cover to their field experience and technological solutions, this still leaves customers exposed to product vulnerabilities. The GNSS community now has the advantage that the information security community has been working through these hurdles for the past two decades. Lessons learned include the following:
Controlled, responsible disclosure and cooperation allows everyone to monitor the threat and how it is being dealt with.
Without restricted disclosure and preventive solutions, attacks will always take advantage of weaknesses.
Eventually, disclosure of product vulnerabilities will result in more respect and confidence in manufacturers by users.
Rapid resolution of issues is essential.
The GNSS community has an opportunity to come together, learn from the information security community, and adopt best practices to secure and protect its customers.
(With grateful thanks to Guy Buesnel and David DeSanto of Spirent Communications!)
Editor’s Note: Don Jewell, GPS World’s Defense PNT newsletter editor, served 30 years in the United States Air Force as an aviator and a space subject-matter expert. The views expressed are his own.
It was a dark and stormy night, followed by an even more challenging predawn in the far North. Clouds and blowing snow mixed with stinging ice crystals scudded over the ocean and the hills of southwest Iceland. I knew from personal experience that the crew inside the Airborne Warning and Control Aircraft (AWAC) E3, especially the cockpit crew, were watching the weather closely as they listened to tiny ice pellets pinging off the aircraft. The winds gusted at 20-30 knots from the east, and the Keflavik tower was in the midst of turning the airport around, which meant that all aircraft would depart to the east over land, versus the normal departure SID (Standard Instrument Departure) to the west over water.
(I must interrupt my tale briefly to tell you that GPS plays no role in the 1978 drama that is about to unfold. At its conclusion, I will describe the differences GPS has made in the operation of strategic military aircraft, and why a recent book is one of the best arguments for GPS/PNT systems I have ever read.)
I was stationed as a permanent party USAF officer in Iceland assigned to Detachment One of the 552d Airborne Warning and Control Wing which flew the latest AWACs out of Iceland to help defend the GI-UK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) gap. Russian TU-95 four-engine turbo-prop Bear bombers flew non-stop over the GI-UK gap, at jet speeds (550-575 mph) from Murmansk in what was then the Soviet Union, on a regular basis, en route to visually and electronically surveilling and reconnoitering — spying on — the East Coast of the United States, and then landing in communist-controlled Cuba.
Russian TU-95 “Bear” Bomber (courtesy of Wikipedia and RAF).
That memorable morning just before Christmas in 1978, I was the Supervisor of Flying (SOF) for all USAF military aircraft at Keflavik AB, which was both an Icelandic commercial airport and U.S. military installation. As SOF, I double-checked all the flight information for the AWACS aircraft, visually checked that the aircraft were ready for take off and flight, and surveyed the airport and runway environment to make sure there were no hazards to the aircraft or crew. Because the weather was rapidly deteriorating that morning, I also checked all the alternates for the AWACS in England and Scotland.
Supervisor of Flying (SOF)
AWACS (Photo courtesy of the USAF).
I was comfortable in my Command Vehicle, a new British Range Rover, vintage 1978, equipped with a plethora of radios that connected me to everyone on the airfield, including the control tower and the U.S. military Command Post. Externally, the vehicle had a constantly flashing yellow light so that I could be easily seen and identified by the tower and the aircraft I inspected. There were external blue and red lights and sirens, which came into play when we launched the alert E3 aircraft or there was an emergency. All in all it was a very comfortable and functional mobile airfield office. But this morning I had a welcome addition. My boss, Major General-selectee John L. (Pete) Piotrowski, the 552nd Wing Commander, had stopped by on his way from Japan, en route the long way home to the AWACS base, Tinker AFB in Oklahoma.
For many officers (I was just a major at the time), having your General Officer boss onboard might have been intimidating, but not for me. General Piotrowski was a valued mentor and friend as well as a true gentleman and professional USAF officer of the highest caliber, and frankly, I welcomed his presence and experience. I was happy he had come to personally check out the very first AWACS detachment. Little did I know how pivotal his presence would be that cold, dark and blustery Icelandic morning.
There were two full crews aboard the AWACS aircraft I had just checked and cleared for departure, a senior crew in the cockpit and two mission crews that would get some much needed training on the way back to Tinker, so they would not go “non-current” over the Christmas holidays. Crews typically deployed to Iceland from Tinker AFB for a 10-day tour and then rotated back to CONUS and then to other disparate operation locations around the globe.
(Courtesy of the USAF).
Weather and planning-wise, Iceland was the most challenging for the E3 aircrews because of the annual snowfall of 311 inches and the siren call of suitable and weather-wise more hospitable alternates, with proper facilities and security arrangements, which were more than a hour away in England and Scotland, so planning was key. However, that morning all the crew was thinking about was getting home and enjoying the holidays (we called it “gethomeitis”) and, unfortunately, it played a key role in that mornings near catastrophe. I, of course, wanted to impress my boss with my thoroughness and professionalism, so I was double- and triple-checking every little detail.
Remember, 1978 was the same year the first fully operational, non-test, GPS satellite was launched into MEO orbit, so there were no GPS receivers on the AWACS aircraft. Instead, at that time the prevailing technology called for precisely surveyed aircraft parking spots on the ramp. The coordinates of these spots were typically entered into the E3’s INSs (inertial navigation systems) before they taxied for takeoff. Because the departing AWACs were nominally always parked in the same spots near the prevailing runway for a quick reaction or alert takeoff, the procedure quickly became routine for the AWACs flight crews. This routine also contributed to the nearly catastrophic incident that blustery and memorable morning.
Even with the deteriorating weather and the gusty winds, there appeared to be no reason why the E3 should not depart on schedule. Then, just five minutes before scheduled take off, the wind shifted dramatically and suddenly to an easterly direction. The tower immediately “turned the airfield around” and cleared the E3 for a takeoff to the east – the only problem was the aircraft was already lined up on the prevailing runway ready for a routine westerly departure. So the Icelandic controllers in the Keflavik tower promptly cleared the E3 for a rapid taxi down the active runway, so they could turn around (180 degrees) on the other end and still make an on-time takeoff. This was actually rather a common occurrence for those of us who were permanent party, so no one was concerned.
The E3 Aircraft Commander (AC) was a senior 06 — an USAF full Colonel. (Note: The subsequent safety investigation proved the AC’s rank and seniority, plus the crew’s reluctance to question his decisions, were a contributing factor in the incident.) The colonel responded to the tower, “Roger, understand, cleared for takeoff” and the aircraft began to roll down the runway in what General Pete, the tower personnel and I all initially assumed would be a fast taxi to the other end of the runway. At the time, I remember thinking, “I wonder why he did not respond correctly with the complete clearance, which was to taxi to the other end of the runway and then be cleared for takeoff to the East?” However, since it was 0500 and no other aircraft were in the area, no one was too concerned — until we saw that the E3 aircraft was continuing to accelerate to the point that the spray caused by the tires and the blowing snow thrown up by the four big jet engines nearly obliterated the aircraft from our vantage point.
General Piotrowski (Photo Courtesy of the USAF).
I think General Pete and I realized at the same moment that the EA was making a dangerous downwind departure. However, we realized it too late, as did the tower. General Pete and I simultaneously reached for the radio microphone, connecting us to the departing E3 aircraft at the same moment, but then neither of us made the radio call to the aircraft because we realized the pilot in command would have his hands full. At this point, the aircraft was going much too fast to stop on the wet and icy runway available, plus the AC did not need the distraction of a radio call in the middle of what was rapidly becoming a possible emergency situation. I do vaguely remember turning on my red and blue lights and my siren and accelerating down the active runway, in pursuit of the E3, and making the radio call “SOF on the Active” to the tower, as I wanted to be as close to the aircraft as possible if it stopped with hot brakes, or crashed into the barrier or the water. E3 (707 320B) aircraft are notoriously susceptible to control and start issues with tailwinds, and I must admit that I did not think for a moment the aircraft stood a chance of actually getting airborne. Miraculously, the E3 managed to lift off in the overrun at the far end of the runway and grudgingly managed what appeared to be about a five to ten feet per minute positive climb rate out over the water, before it rapidly disappeared into the lowering cloud deck.
General Pete and I sat there in shock and disbelief for a full five minutes before we heard the tower give the aircraft a new departure heading and frequency. We waited to be sure the aircraft replied, and since no emergency was declared, we knew they were finally safely on their way home.
Needless to say, incident and safety reports were filed, audiotapes from the tower were copied and forwarded to the 552nd Wing Safety Office, and I filed my SOF report. Normally, I would have called the 552d Wing Commander as well, but of course he was seated right there beside me. Long story short, the rest of the flight went without a hitch, and the crew landed safely at Tinker AFB 14 hours later after a successful mission that included two aerial refuelings. The flight crew was immediately suspended pending an investigation and the aircraft was impounded and inspected.
AWACS refueling (Photo courtesy of the USAF).
Two months later, I attended the safety inquiry at Tinker AFB into the incident in question. At the time of the incident, only the Keflavik tower, General Pete, myself and the cockpit crew knew what had happened. The 20+ mission crew members had no idea their lives had been in peril. There were reportedly comments among the mission crew about an extremely long takeoff run, but beyond that, there were no crew concerns.
During the hearing, the AC admitted that once he realized his mistake and calculated he could not stop the aircraft on the wet and slippery runway, he asked for full military power (military-rated thrust) on all four engines, which means the throttles were pushed to the stops and every ounce of power the engines had was engaged. It was a matter of life and death, and yet at the inquiry, when General Piotrowski fired most of the flight crew and told them to find jobs elsewhere, there were no raised voices or angry words, no shouting or swearing. General Piotrowski handled it like the true gentlemen he still is today. Later that same day over lunch, I asked him how he could remain so calm. He replied, “Don, always remember, when you are in the right and you have the power to make the right decision, there is never a need for shouting or cursing or loud voices. Do what is right and do it quickly and firmly but calmly. Emotions have no place in these types of decisions.”
This was merely one of the leadership lessons I learned from this great man, wonderful leader, mentor and friend. I have known General “P” for over 38 years now, and have never seen him lose his cool. He is the consummate professional and, frankly, I could tell General Pete stories all day long, but fortunately I don’t have to because he wrote a wonderful can’t-put-it-down book — The Secret War and Other Conflicts — about his life and the lessons he learned during his almost 40-year career in the USAF. There are many more stories like the one you just read, and at the end of each chapter in his book are the lessons he learned and that he hopes we all learn as well.
GPS Connection
There is, of course, a definite GPS/PNT connection, even though I am reasonably sanguine General Piotrowski did not have that in mind when he penned this 715-page tome of military life and knowledge. Every scenario in this very educational book that relates to military operations and/or training has the same theme for aviators everywhere.
There I was trying to figure out where I was, where the target or destination was, and how I could get there, and once there how I could deliver my ordnance, my passenger(s) and/or just get the aircraft safely back on terra firma.
In this regard, and so many others, General Pete is right on the money, and he should know. Like many of us, including General Curtis LeMay, he trained as a navigator and an aviator.
Take the AWAC E3 aircraft and the whole support system that surrounds it. How did the introduction and integration of GPS change those operations and procedures? To say the least, the changes GPS enabled were drastic — revolutionary versus evolutionary — to those of us who have experienced pre- and post-GPS AWAC flights.
The most obvious change both to the AWAC organization and to the USAF, as it pertains to the rated career field, is that the navigator position was eliminated on the E3 and several other large flight-crew-type aircraft. The navigator planned all the missions for the aircrew, including the flight route (on the ground and inflight), planned and ran the rendezvous for the air refuelings (typical AWAC sorties average 14 hours), and trained with and used a sextant (sun, moon and stars) for navigation in case in war time the electronic navigation aids were unavailable. The navigation system supplied the position, time and velocity references to the mission end of the operation. That crew position and all the manual functions associated with it were eliminated when GPS was installed on the aircraft. The operations still had to be performed and the mission successfully completed, but GPS proved to be so accurate and provided such reliable information that the navigator position was no longer necessary. The position and timing accuracy sent from the navigation hardware and software to the mission computers improved to the point it was accurate to the centimeter level — versus thousands of feet with the old system.
In the old, pre-GPS days, the navigator or pilot would initialize a time hack for all crew members and members of a flight so that everyone had the same time reference as the lead pilot or aircraft. That timing was — five, four, three, two, one hack! — accurate to a whole second and no more. Today, GPS provides continuous atomic-clock-level global timing for everyone. All systems onboard the aircraft, as well as the ground interfaces and communications systems, are accurate to over a millionth of a second and no time hacks are necessary.
Additionally, in the pre-GPS days, aircraft — even the versatile E3, which is capable of and has historically fulfilled the functions of an FAA Control facility for aircraft — mostly flew airways over CONUS and used Federal Aviation Administration radio-based navigation aides such as TACAN (Tactical Air Navigation), VORs (VHF-Very High Frequency Omni Directional Radio Range systems), VORTACS and DMEs (Distance Measuring Equipment) to determine their position while the navigator practiced his craft. However, go feet wet — that is, strike out over water where none of those navigation aides exist, en route to Hickam AFB, Hawaii, for instance — and all of a sudden the navigator became the most important member of the crew. Today’s AWAC aircraft and most modern GPS-equipped military aircraft are able to fly direct to any point in CONUS or anywhere on the globe, saving thousands of hours of flying time, wear and tear on the aircraft and crew, and of course fuel and money. The savings are practically incalculable, but certainly run into the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars a year. Plus, from a military point of view, the safety factor of putting bombs on target the very first time, day or night, from any location on the Earth cannot be accurately calculated, especially when you consider the number of lives saved.
In WW II, in Vietnam and even in Korea the U.S. Army Air Corps and USAF would fly hundreds and then tens of sorties, endangering thousands of lives, just to take out a single bridge that a single JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) or any GPS-guided weapon today can take out from such a distance that the aircrew may never actually see the bridge, but be certain to a high degree that it was destroyed with a single weapon and a single sortie.
Ask any pre-GPS navigator or aviator, and they will tell you that the biggest error in any bombing mission was always target error. This error extended to exactly where the target was located, how it was defended and how it could be destroyed. With modern GPS weapons, all those variable target errors are greatly minimized. Human lives may not be involved as GPS is capable of providing the PNT information necessary for a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) to perform the mission, sans any threat to the pilot or weapons systems officer, who may well be thousands of miles away from the fight.
So, back to General Pete’s book. As you read this wonderful compendium of Air Force lore and knowledge and become involved in the scenarios of just getting to and from the targets in war time, to airfields in bad weather and home again through the clouds, think from time to time about how GPS has greatly simplified all those tasks and made them infinitely doable. Indeed, this 715-page aeronautical volume is one of the best arguments for GPS/PNT systems I have ever read.
Basic Airman to General: The Secret War and Other Conflicts – Lessons in Leadership and Life
This remarkable manuscript is so much more than the biography of a two-striper airman that retired as a four-star general. Amazing as that accomplishment is, the true value of the book is in the journey it took to get there — the life lived and lessons learned.
True to form, General Pete pulls no punches in his biography – in print as in life what you see with General Pete is what you get. He is honest to a fault, and is as critical of himself as he is the United States Air Force he loves and served in uniform for almost 40 years. I recommend this book as an Air Force primer to anyone thinking of joining the military and to members of Congress who never served in the military, and unfortunately that number stands at 80% today, because truly they (Congress) don’t have a clue what putting your life on the line to defend your country means. They have no idea what flying, fighting and dying for your country means. They have no idea of the sacrifices made by USAF military forces on a daily basis.
Treachery
Unfortunately, during the Vietnam War there was a very revealing event that highlights a major failing of civilian leadership that cannot be reconciled or apologized for but is still a major lesson that must be learned by everyone in the U.S. military and in the U.S. government. General Piotrowski reveals treacherous acts by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that literally took my breath away. It made me physically ill. I have to admit I was gasping for breath after I read it and I had to sit down. I was so shocked that I read it several times and still had trouble believing what was revealed. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly never doubted General Piotrowski’s veracity concerning the politician’s confession; I was and am still just amazed that anyone in the U.S. government in any position of power could be so ignorant and criminally naive. General Piotrowski reveals stunning facts about the Vietnam War on pages 246-247 of his 715 page-turner of a book that shook me to my core. General Piotrowski writes:
“Nearly twenty years later, [ed. after the Vietnam War ended] I saw former Secretary of State Dean Rusk being interviewed by Peter Arnett on a CBS [ed. CBC] documentary called “The Ten Thousand Day War.” Mr. Arnett asked, “It has been rumored that the United States provided the North Vietnamese government the names of the targets that would be bombed the following day. Is there any truth to that allegation?”
To my astonishment and absolute disgust, the former Secretary responded, “Yes. We didn’t want to harm the North Vietnamese people, so we passed the targets to the Swiss embassy in Washington with instructions to pass them to the NVN government through their embassy in Hanoi.” As I watched in horror, Secretary Rusk went on to say, “All we wanted to do is demonstrate to the North Vietnamese leadership that we could strike targets at will, but we didn’t want to kill innocent people. By giving the North Vietnamese advanced warning of the targets to be attacked, we thought they would tell the workers to stay home.”
No wonder all the targets were so heavily defended day after day! The NVN obviously moved as many guns as they could overnight to better defend each target they knew was going to be attacked. Clearly, many brave American Air Force and Navy fliers died or spent years in NVN prison camps as a direct result of being intentionally betrayed by Secretary Rusk and Secretary McNamara, and perhaps, President Johnson himself. I cannot think of a more duplicitous and treacherous act of American government officials. Dean Rusk served as Secretary of State from January 21, 1961, through to January 20, 1969, under President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Perhaps Senator John McCain, POW for five years and presidential candidate in 2008, was one of the many victims of this utter stupidity and flawed policy flowing from President Lyndon B. Johnson. Mr. Peter Arnett opined that this would be a treasonous act by anyone else.”
After reading this horrendous revelation, I was so shocked I couldn’t function properly for the rest of the day. I am still aghast and incredulous that government officials could be so deceitful. I lost so many friends, aviator comrades and loved ones in that terrible war, including my father who was literally eaten from the inside out by parasites and the drugs and alcohol he used to try and dull the physical and mental pain and anguish. There are still tens of thousands of veterans suffering today from the effects (such as PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder) of that war, and to think that our government leaders at the highest levels told our enemy what our targets would be on a daily basis because they cared about Vietnamese civilian casualties. Seriously, we were at war. Obviously the administrations, especially the SECDEFs and Secretary’s of State, did not care about American lives, especially American fliers. You can never hope to win a war when all of your targeting information is being treacherously given to the enemy on a daily basis. I am still incredulous they could be so treacherous.
Lessons Learned
Yes, this is sensational and revealing, and there are obviously lessons to be learned — indeed, lessons that the current administration could, should and indeed must learn — such as allowing military professionals to do what they do best and stop micromanaging the Defense Department. But this represents merely a handful of lessons, and this book, this wonderful tome concerning life and leadership at all levels from basic airman to four-star general, is such an educational tool for today’s leaders that it needs to be required reading at all the service academies, certainly the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). But you don’t have to be in the government or the military to enjoy and learn from the life lessons presented here. General Piotrowski is incredibly honest about his triumphs, his failures, his family life, and his service. He is brutally honest and self-effacing concerning the effects of time spent away from his family defending his nation. Not only in wartime, but during the Cold War as well. For example, remember AWAC aircraft at the time had no CONUS (Contiguous United States) mission, so all the missions were flown overseas. I flew AWAC missions for nine years, average sortie length 12-14 hours, including four years flying NATO AWAC aircraft from Geilenkirchen, Germany, and one year in Iceland. The other four years I was TDY (temporary duty) overseas an average of 220 days per year. General Piotrowski did the same and more, and believe me, it is a huge sacrifice for the service member and their families.
So, there is a lot of good fatherly advice in this book, and I only wish someone like General Pete could have written this book 40 years ago when I was a young lieutenant.
The bottom line is the title says it all: Basic Airman to General; The Secret War and Other Conflicts — Lessons in Leadership and Life. Get a copy today, you won’t be disappointed.
Until next time, happy navigating, and remember: GPS is brought to you courtesy of the United States Air Force.
Editor’s Note: Alan Cameron is editor-in-chief and publisher of GPS World magazine. He also writes the monthly GNSS Design & Test newsletter. The views expressed are his own.
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” This insight comes from the 20th-century American sage Yogi Berra. Yet predictions — hedged guesses, if you will — form the basis of nearly all new business ventures and decisions in ongoing business activities.
For surveyors in the year 2015, one of the key predictions — or guesses — to make concerns the next GNSS to come predictably and reliably online, to augment GPS where GPS alone does not fully function: under canopy, in dense urban environments, and so on. More satellites visible at more varied angles in the sky can help surmount these obstructions.
Staking the future of one’s business, in the form of new equipment acquisition, in such an environment is a bit like betting on a long-distance horse race. First one steed surges to the head of the pack, then it falls back as another charges forward. We have seen this pattern repeatedly in the growth of GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou.
Some may say that GLONASS, the Russian system, has already won the race (the first heat, at least) and currently fills the role of GPS partner in precision surveying. It does, to some extent, but its future viability is cloudy — and its past record is patchy, to say the least. It rose to full operational capability around the turn of the century, then fell very, very low in numbers as short-lived satellites expired and were not replaced at sufficient rate. Recently, GLONASS has mounted a resurgence, but that has been marred by repeated launch failures and a disturbing anomaly. It cannot be counted or confirmed a winner, yet.
I spoke yesterday with an expert and veteran professional land surveyor who expressed the opinion that the manner in which surveying is conducted will change more in the next five years than it has in the last 25. Keep in mind that the last 25 years saw enormous changes themselves, as GPS significantly transformed, upgraded and made vastly more efficient most surveying activities.
Betting on a horse race in such a rapidly changing environment becomes even more chancy.
Here’s a tip from a racetrack tout: don’t count Galileo out.
GLONASS we recounted briefly above. BeiDou recently achieved a regional operations status over Eastern Asia, but further developments there have been puzzlingly quiet for some time.
The European system has come on with agonizing slowness since the year 2000, suffering many delays and most recently what could have been a debilitating failed dual launch. But the combined strength of the European Union continues to push determinedly forward, and the program has an ambitious schedule with an eye firmly fixed on operability. And some recent research results tend — perhaps — to substantiate the claim, long pooh-poohed by those in the United States, at least, that Galileo will eventually prove “better” than GPS. Details further on.
What might a prudent yet pragmatic, forward-looking surveying firm do in this uncertain environment, where the only certainty is change, and likely to be rapid change at that? Here’s another racetrack tip: don’t make any big bets just yet, but study the field closely and continuously. In particular, watch Galileo’s performance.
A further item to be checked in Galileo’s favor: its system operators have long been in close talks with the U.S. government on many matters involving co-operation and interoperability. As recounted in a recent story concerning the Federal Communications Commission’s surprising role in this matter, the Europeans are filling out the proper forms for full accreditation within the United States. This could turn out to be important in business operations.
Back to studying the field closely: also study leading manufacturers’ offerings in this regard. They also are making bets on the future; quite possibly they have better information, and/or have done more extensive analysis of what information is available, paired with in-depth, highly technical research and development of signal characteristics and how signals from disparate GNSS can be most productively combined.
A quick scan of GPS World’s2015 GNSS Receiver Survey shows the following key manufacturers (among others) have GPS receivers now commercially available that are Galileo-ready: Altus Positioning Systems, Ashtech, Geneq, iFEN, JAVAD GNSS, Leica Geosystems, NovAtel, NVS Technologies, Septentrio, Sprecta Precision, Spectrum, Topcon, and Trimble.
Better than GPS???
Supporters of Galileo have long raised hackles west of the Atlantic with claims that Galileo would provide better accuracy than GPS. Not! cried the faithful, and especially not when the modernized and improved, strengthened, more accurate GPS III signals are coming along just as fast if not faster than Galileo. Recently the pace of GPS III has come into question; can the Gold Standard and clear leader for 25+ years really be falling back into the pack?
σ(pr_gnd) versus elevation for Galileo E1 (dotted lines) and GPS L1 (solid lines for different smoothing constants: red (10s), green (30s), cyan (60s), purple (100s).
Let’s disregard that question for the time being, and look at some recent research, to be reported in full in the cover story of GPS World magazine’s April issue, out soon. In it, the authors (two German and one American researcher) report:
“Analysis of new Galileo signals at an experimental ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) compares noise and multipath in their performance to GPS L1 and L5. Raw noise and multipath level of the Galileo signals is shown to be smaller than those of GPS. Even after smoothing, Galileo signals perform somewhat better than GPS and are less sensitive to the smoothing time constant.”
This is all pretty arcane and a bit removed from current field of operations, as far as surveyors are concerned. But it does signal something, and it provides food for thought.
The researchers obtained their results using four JAVAD Delta receivers, all connected to Leica AR 25 choke ring antennas.
Precision matters. While “accuracy” is somewhat one-dimensional, “precision” is multi-faceted. We submit to you that whatever area of GNSS-based location you are interested in, precision matters today and will matter more in the future. In this column, we’ll explain why this is.
Traditional test approaches involve taking measurements to evaluate fundamental performance, for example, time-to-first-fix. As the number of critical applications that rely on positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) increases, the list of considerations for testing also grows.
Critical applications typically require higher integrity. There are a myriad of techniques to achieve this, from adding constellations, additional frequencies, improved navigation message authentication approaches and everything in between. Examples of safety-related applications include rail, connected car and aviation. Commercially critical application examples are smartphone payment authentication and container port automation. Protecting the warfighter and ensuring mission success against growing interference and jamming are key initiatives for the military. All of these applications are becoming more sophisticated and complex, stressing the importance of precision in testing.
Neal Fedora
Testing these critical applications requires:
Precise and clear test objectives
Precise definition of test approaches to explore both nominal and off-nominal conditions
Comprehensive test tools that include all required signal components precisely modeled and controlled
Test signal precision of at least an order of magnitude better than the device under test
Results analysis that can quickly and effectively highlight areas of interest or concern.
Robustness against Cyber Attacks. The second area calling for more precision is the need for a more robust PNT systems in the face of increasing cyber attacks and interference. While well known in the IT world, the GNSS community is relatively unfamiliar with being targeted by hackers. Attacks on GNSS technologies are increasing in frequency and sophistication for both commercial and military users. The stakes are rising as the incidents increase from occasional (often accidental) interference to more structured and organized approaches to jamming and even spoofing.
We’re predicting a game of cat and mouse where these cyber attacks and interference threats will continually evolve to try and stay one step ahead of the protections in place. In our view, this will call for increasingly clever and proactive threat-detection techniques in navigation systems, in addition to precise, reliable test solutions to verify them.
Spirent’s test solutions address these growing demands by providing not only multi-GNSS signal simulators, but also inertial and interference simulators, anti-jamming test solutions, and record and replay of actual observed interference and even communications port vulnerability testing.
In our view, the diversity of critical applications will increase, emphasizing the need for a precise approach to test planning, execution and analysis. Robust PNT is an achievable vision, and we are excited for the future.
John Pottle is marketing director for Spirent Communications plc. Neal Fedora is director of engineering for Spirent Federal Systems Inc.
In the 2016 President’s Budget, submitted in February, the U.S. Air Force requested a budget of $122.2 billion. That exceeds the Office of Management and Budget’s recommendation by almost $10 billion. I applaud the Air Force action and think it may be too little, too late.
On the satellite or hardware side of the house, GPS III has problems centering on development and delivery issues with a subcontractor. In this case, however, the whole satellite program is not failing; just a component, albeit an important one: the Mission Data Unit or MDU.
For GPS III+, the Air Force plans for a two-phased competition process: a Production Readiness competition for up to three firm-fixed price contracts to mature competitors’ production designs for a competition in a full and open competition for up to 22 GPS III Production SVs [satellite vehicles] with an expected award in FY17/18.
This sounds great if you need an entirely new GPS III system, which consists of, at a minimum, a new payload, satellite, launcher and ground C2 system. OCX is only designed to work with current and planned GPS SVs, and it doesn’t even do that today. In fact, the government only needs an MDU, a critical part of the payload. Failure to produce the MDU on time has delayed GPS III by 18 months to date.
More troubling to me are the phrases from the government plan that essentially mean “We are going to pay competitors to mature their technology so they can compete against the current prime (LMCO), who is building the first 10 GPS III satellites.” The government is saying the competitors on their own cannot compete against LMCO so we, the government, are going to give them contracts and lots of money to help them get to a point where they can compete, and then we are going to have a recompetition.
This will to take at least three years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and LMCO may well win again in the end, but at least we will have conducted a competition. Does this make sense?
Will the U.S. Air Force initiate a competition to acquire an entirely new GPS III SV, or fix the problem with the current GPS III program, the MDU? It appears the Air Force is looking to pursue an entirely new GPS III system to include SVs.
A significant added cost to the GPS budget concerns the need for a new ground C2 system if the total new systems approach is taken. If preliminary elements of the GPS space segment are developed without cross-checking the impact to the GPS control segment, technical, operational, budgetary and schedule impacts will be significant.
The already troubled next-generation GPS ground control system, OCX, budget likely has not considered the integration costs of a newly developed, yet-to-be-procured GPS III+ SV. OCX today is geared for the GPS III already contracted for, and it is failing to meet that challenge in a spectacular and expensive way. It is possible, even probable, that OCX integration costs for yet another new model of GPS III family of satellites would increase the OCX budget significantly — unless one assumes that the Air Force acquires a perfectly matched new satellite that integrates seamlessly with OCX.What are the chances of that, and why would you spend hundreds of millions of scarce acquisition dollars to procure an exact and more expensive replica?
Budget constraints are tight and getting tighter, mandating the Air Force “do more with less” in every context. For GPS III SVs, this means developing an alternate MDU rather than buying a new block of GPS SVs.
A leap second will be introduced this year at 23:59 on June 30. This phenomenon comes around periodically and is necessary for keeping Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in line with the small vagaries of the Earth’s slowing rotation. Although it is an event that will pass unnoticed by the majority of people, it has implications for anyone involved in the development of GNSS-enabled devices. For some, it can be the cause of a major headache.
Part of the problem with the leap second is its irregularity. Occurring every two or three years, it means that receiver technology moves on in between — and because the Earth’s slowing rotation is not at a constant rate of change, it cannot be predicted when the next one will be announced. A rapidly developing market of GNSS products having to deal with random alterations to its time framework is not an ideal situation. Suitable preparations, clearly, should be employed.
The behavior of a new receiver when subjected to a leap second may prove critical in certain instances, and without robust characterization it can lead to inconsistent performance. It has already happened this year: on January 21, GPS signals started to include information which effectively announced this year’s leap second event, with the relevant data for future delta time, and week and day numbers. This caused issues with some receivers that weren’t expecting it: some units applied the additional second immediately. It would be interesting to see how these systems might have reacted during an actual leap second transition.
Receiver logic flow requires testing so that any GPS receiver can remain compliant with the IS-GPS-200 standard, and potential problems mustbe mitigated and controlled. The use of a GNSS simulator — which outputs a scenario containing the leap second event — allows for the receiver and any systems around it to be exercised over and over again, ironing out any anomalies, to ensure total reliability.
The recent issues with those non-compliant GPS engines highlights the advantage that simulation provides. The consistency it delivers enables a very thorough testing schedule, which will in turn lead to a straightforward application of the time change.
One school of thought holds that leap seconds should be abandoned, and that we should stick to atomic time from now on. Their removal would mean that by 2100, the Earth’s rotation would be some two to three minutes behind humanity’s precise, atomic-powered, 24-hour clock, and half an hour or so by 2700.
The World Radiocommunication Assembly, which has control over such matters, had been postponing a decision on whether to abolish the leap second for over a decade; another vote is due this year. It wouldn’t be any great wonder if this prevarication continues, so whilst it still exists, it is best to concentrate on what this June’s extra second might have in store for anyone currently developing a GNSS product. Armed with a simulator, the unpredictability of leap second scheduling should no longer be a major concern. Should this year’s vote be again inconclusive, those who have taken the positive step of acquiring a GNSS simulator will be in good shape to deal with the next time the clocks show 23:59:60.
Mark Sampson is LabSat product manager for RaceLogic.
Editor’s note: Dennehy is GPS World’s editor for location-based services, writing a monthly column for the LBS Insider newsletter. The views expressed are his own. He will be covering the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for GPS World. Contact him at [email protected] with your news.
Sen. Ed Markey’s new car technology report, released earlier this month, basically says that connected vehicles can be hacked, causing danger to drivers and presenting major privacy concerns. While some critics believe Markey’s report was meant to drive media hysteria, others say it raises serious issues that the industry needs to address. In other location news, I’ll be covering the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for GPS World. What will be the showcased location technology? Wearables? Connected vehicles? Or something new?
Kevin Dennehy
By Kevin Dennehy
A report released by Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) earlier this month says that even though drivers have come to rely on new connected technologies, automakers haven’t done their part to protect them from cyber attacks or privacy invasions
First reported by CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Markey’s report, Tracking & Hacking: Security & Privacy Gaps Put American Drivers at Risk, includes information from 16 automobile manufacturers who were given questions about security and privacy. However, few of the carmakers’ answers included how vehicles may be vulnerable to hackers — and what driver information is collected.
Location industry veteran Kim Fennell, deCarta CEO, said the report should be a real concern to the industry. “But it’s more of an issue for autonomous driving and the security of the car’s electronic control system. Even today, the OnStar service, which was a pioneer in the connected car space, can remotely slow your vehicle down in the event of a theft,” he said. “This feature, if hacked, could definitely create massive problems if the proper security technologies are not implemented.”
Markey’s report raised additional concerns about the use of navigation and other features that record and send location or driving history information.
Fennell said there should be a distinction between the infotainment systems in the vehicle and the on-board control systems of the car.
“We believe that there should be a strict firewall between these systems so that nothing malicious can happen that is initiated from the connected infotainment system. Any data should flow one way — from the control system of the car to the infotainment system,” he said. “This is not to say that the connected infotainment system shouldn’t be secure, it should be. In working with our OEM and Tier One partners, we have implemented strict security protocols between our servers and their apps.”
Markey’s report found that “[automakers] use personal vehicle data in various ways, often vaguely to ‘improve the customer experience’ and usually involving third parties, and retention policies — how long they store information about drivers — vary considerably among manufacturers.”
In addition, the report found that customers are often not made aware of data collection and, when they are, they often cannot opt out without disabling features, such as navigation.
Percentage of Vehicles that can record driving history
Overall, Fennell hopes that the most malicious thing that could happen in the event of a hack of an infotainment system is that a “Pandora station is changed to play nothing but Justin Bieber songs, the traffic information for your route is projected to be ridiculously long or the Yelp rating of the restaurant that you are going to is lowered down to one star.”
Ultimately though, the driver should be in control of the car and nothing in the infotainment system should affect the behavior of the vehicle, Fennell said.
In terms of driver safety, in a recent survey, deCarta found that more than two-thirds of respondents considered dashboard screens that display videos and other Internet content to be the most dangerous types of onboard information systems. Approximately 79 percent of those polled preferred “voice-activated mapping systems that allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road” as an essential safety-enhancing feature.
“There are two things that infotainment systems could do better to prevent driver distraction. First, instead of replicating the stove-piped app store environment of the smartphone, in-car infotainment services could be better integrated,” Fennell said. “If I find a destination on Yelp, I’d like to send that to my navigation system instead of typing in the address. Second, with today’s better automated speech-recognition technology and text-to-speech engines, it’s now possible to make requests of your infotainment system using natural language commands. Voicebox is doing some great things in this area.”
Fennell said that most existing systems are not connected. “But those that are, aren’t predictive enough. Your navigation/infotainment system should almost work as a concierge,” he said. “It should recognize what time it is and realize you are most likely leaving for work and offer up the best route based on traffic conditions. It should recognize that you are going to a destination in an urban area and offer the most convenient parking to your destination.”
Company Rolls out Indoor Positioning Product that Doesn’t Require Retailer Involvement
After testing and demoing the product in San Francisco last year, IndoorAtlas is rolling out a consumer app called GPSindoor, which uses smartphones to locate shoppers inside a mall. The product features product proximity advertising to allow shoppers to see where they are relative to a product for promotion marketing.
The product includes a crowdsourcing function to allow user-generated data to build indoor maps, wayfinding and other options for shopping promotions, said Wibe Wagemans, IndoorAtlas president.
“We don’t need any retailers per se. We need only the shopper and [their] smartphone,” he said. “There is no brand or retailer involvement if you use our app. Unlike Wi-Fi and Bluetooth beacons, since GPSindoor relies on a community of shoppers, it allows for higher accuracy than static maps. That gives us the confidence to take on the giants like Apple Beacons and Google Indoor Maps head on — we are completely independent of retailers and not dependent on them for our success in becoming the GPS of indoors.”
In other location news:
HERE released a new version of its mapping system for Android, saying it made significant improvements. According to the company’s blog, after more than 3 million downloads, it is shedding the “beta” label with this version. In the beta version, when users asked for a route, the app gave them three car routes. If a user wanted public transit or pedestrian routes, they had to switch to the appropriate tab. This process was slow and inconvenient for people who don’t use a car all the time, HERE said.
In its recent financial statements, Garmin indicated a growing, and profitable, segment is its wearables/fitness band product line. Mio is also expanding its wearable offerings. This should be a big topic at next months’ Mobile World Congress.
I’ll be covering the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for GPS World. Contact me at [email protected] with your news.
The Lockheed Martin GPS III Non-Flight Satellite Testbed (GNST).
A Lockheed Martin vice president has stated that the first GPS III satellite will likely launch in 2017, not 2016 as had been projected in the most recent update.
The company is readying the first satellite for launch availability by the end of 2015, for launch as early as the end of this year, but Space News reports that Mark Valerio, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s military space business, stated in a Feb. 18 news briefing that he expects the Air Force will schedule its launch for early 2017.
The GPS III generation of modernized satellites — with new signals, added signal strength, and resistance to interference and jamming — was originally projected to begin orbiting in 2014. Technical difficulties have delayed the program. The principal issues, those with the payload, have now been resolved, according to Valerio.
Valerio expects a firmer GPS III launch announcement for 2017 in March. He expected the final launch date “will depend on the health of the existing constellation, the availability of launch slots and synchronization with the ground system.” Ultimately, the Air Force always makes the final decision on the launch date.
Lockheed Martin is contracted to build eight GPS III satellites.
Late last year, a spokesman for the Space and Missile Systems Center said that “The first GPS III launch is tentatively considered for the first half of FY17, based on booster availability and Air Force launch priorities.”
The Air Force has put out feelers for other contractors to finish out the full generation of GPS III satellites. Lockheed Martin is building eight, with an option for four more, totalling 12; a complete constellation of III-generation satellites would require 24. Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems and Northrop Grumman Aerospace are reportedly interested.
“The best thing I can do is keep marching along the plan we have,” Valerio said. “We’re certainly not afraid of the competition.” Lockheed Martin has submitted cost-cutting proposals for the current GPS III satellite design, he added.
Ground Control
The corresponding new ground system for GPS III, the Operational Control Segment (OCX), has also fallen behind schedule. Just this month, the Air Force announced that Lockheed Martin may develop an interim control capability, a set of changes implemented upon the current control segment, the Architecture Evolution Plan (AEP), as a backup.
Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation, recently stated that OCX delays have pushed back GPS III operational testing “until after at least six, and as many as eight,” satellites have been launched into orbit. “This introduces significant risk that effectiveness and suitability deficiencies in GPS III satellites will not be discovered until it is too late to prevent their introduction to the operational constellation.”
Budget Blues
Don Jewell, GPS World’s contributing editor for defense, has written at length about the GPS III and OCX situations in his February newsletter column, “USAF FY16 Budget Plus $10B More, Please!”. We condensed some of his remarks, particular to the budget battle on Capitol Hill, for the Out in Front column of the March issue of the magazine, due out soon. Here is a further digest of those comments.
The 2016 President’s Budget, submitted in February, contains an Air Force requested a budget of $122.2 billion. This may be too little, too late.
On the satellite side of the house, GPS III has problems centering on development and delivery issues with a subcontractor. In this case, however, the whole satellite program is not failing, just a component, albeit an important one: the Mission Data Unit (MDU).
For GPS III+, the Air Force plans for a two-phased competition process: a Production Readiness competition for up to three firm-fixed price contracts to mature competitors’ production designs for a competition in a full and open competition for up to 22 GPS III Production SVs [satellite vehicles] with an expected award in FY17/18.
This sounds great if you need an entirely new GPS III system, which consists of, at a minimum, a new payload, satellite, launcher and ground C2 system. In fact, the government only needs an MDU. Failure to produce the MDU on time has delayed GPS III by 18 months to date.
More troubling are the government proposals to entertain other bids to finish the second half of the GPS III constellation. Such a competition or re-bid will take at least three years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars — and Lockheed Martin may well win again in the end
A significant added cost to the GPS budget concerns the need for a new ground C2 system if the total new systems approach is taken. If preliminary elements of the GPS space segment are developed without cross-checking the impact to the GPS control segment, technical, operational, budgetary and schedule impacts will be significant.
The already perturbed OCX budget likely has not considered the integration costs of a newly developed, yet-to-be-procured GPS III+ SV. OCX today is geared for the GPS III already contracted for, and it is failing to meet that challenge.
Budget constraints are tight and getting tighter, mandating the Air Force “do more with less” in every context. For GPS III SVs, this should — but by no means necessarily does — indicate developing an alternate MDU rather than buying a new block of GPS SVs.
Editor’s Note: Janice Partyka is principal of JGP Services, a consulting practice. She is GPS World’s editor for wireless, writing a monthly column for the Wireless LBS Insider newsletter. The views expressed are her own.
Hard to believe, we have only now reached the 10th anniversary of Google Maps. As important as digital maps have become, their purpose is much the same as the printed and drawn maps that preceded them. Digital maps emerged in the 1960s with the Census Bureau’s DIME maps. These first digital maps were used for analysis of place-specific data, such as populations within census tracts or cities. Digital maps in turn led to geographic information systems (GIS) for spatial analysis. Though GIS had uses in fields like city planning, the main stimulus for digital maps came in the 1990s with the convergence of the completion of GPS infrastructure, and affordable and portable computers.
Naturally, just knowing where you are doesn’t have huge value, but if that information can be fused with a digital map, which could generate a route to the destination of your choice, or access information on the places that surround you, then you have something. This is why companies like Etak, Tele Atlas and Navteq began the painstaking process of converting satellite images, printed topographic maps and data that could only be observed with one’s eyes (such as street signs, addresses, speed limits, and turn restrictions) into digital form.
One of my projects during the 1990s was to compare the accuracy of competing digital maps. It was a tedious process, entailing two-person driving crews traveling each street. The passenger recorded all relevant information and made periodic readings with a large, costly GPS receiver. At the time, digital maps could only be accessed by complicated GIS programs which restricted their usefulness.
Since then, digital maps have grown in significance due to the advent of smartphones, a growing suite of digital-map-enabled applications, and of course Google Maps. Google has made maps friendlier to developers through its application program interfaces (APIs), which also improved the user experience for scrolling across locations from a map view.
Google has mastered the process of data capture from roadways. Rather than rely on the eyes of people in the field, sensors and cameras collect mapping data. Image-processing software extracts and geo-codes textual data, automating and enhancing map creation. And Google has incorporated overhead and street-level photographic images into maps, adding substantial value.
We will never arrive at having a perfect digital map. The work to keep mapping accurate and give it more context will be ongoing. The next challenge in digital mapping is making it work offline and creating accurate maps of the indoors. These next innovations will not be led by GPS, but by sensors, including beacons. GPS has already done the heavy lifting.
Effective vehicle routing, navigation and traffic prediction is critical to making UberPool work. First, Uber must find pairs of trips that are similar enough in their timing and pathways to make a pairing attractive to the riders. Then, Uber needs to execute quickly and on time, given the unpredictability of whether the other rider is ready when expected. Coping with these uncertainties will be a huge challenge for Uber. Just 10 percent of work trips in America are by carpool. Can Uber develop the algorithm to make ride sharing attractive? Let’s wait and see.
