Nearmap has announced a national survey program providing true, high-resolution oblique imagery and derivative 3-D products.
Nearmap provides cloud-based subscription access to up-to-date 2-D orthomosaic aerial imagery. Using its patented HyperCamera2 technology, Nearmap is applying the same access model to the oblique aerial imagery market.
Because this new camera system provides a high degree of overlap from different angles, Nearmap can reconstruct the real world in stunning detail, producing not only high-resolution orthomosaic and oblique imagery, but also surface and terrain models, natural-color point clouds and textured 3-D meshes.
“This level of detail and scale of coverage of oblique imagery has never been available as a ready-to-use service for commercial and government needs until now,” said Patrick Quigley, senior vice president and general manager, U.S. of Nearmap. “The HyperCamera2 process maps reality, by capturing the tops, sides and view angles of locations, buildings and objects, providing specific details of what’s exactly on the ground.
Screen capture from a Nearmap 3D fly-through of Austin, Texas, rendered from Nearmap oblique Imagery.
Users will be able to immerse themselves in 3-D textured mesh models, improving analysis and design activities. They can see different elevations and line of sight using the 3-D information.
These features become important in many use cases, including airport or utility planning, or to determine the best location for a crane before a construction project. Other applications include wireless telecommunications network modeling, solar panel design, tactical resource deployment, real estate development promotion, property valuation, insurance underwriting and smart cities.
“3-D brings a whole new aspect of mapping reality to both commercial and government organizations,” said Rob Newman, CEO and managing director of Nearmap. “This new service will help industries plan, design, estimate, communicate and execute their plans — everything from major construction projects to solar installations on homes and businesses.”
Beginning in April, Nearmap has already surveyed oblique images in Las Vegas; Indianapolis; Austin, Texas; Omaha, Nebraska; Phoenix; Seattle; Denver; Kansas City, Kansas; Chicago and New York, and continues to add new areas.
By the end of 2017, Nearmap plans to complete surveying the largest urban areas covering more than half of the U.S. population — about 150 million people.
Nearmap imagery will be refreshed up to three times per year in these coverage areas — with three orthomosaic captures incorporating one oblique capture. Nearmap’s orthomosaic imagery already covers nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population dating back to 2014. “This gives our customers the aerial imagery services they need for their businesses and projects,” Quigley said.
Nearmap’s oblique imagery can be accessed in the MapBrowser interface or integrated into a customer’s own web application using Nearmap’s industry-standard API. Digital surface modeling is also available for export into GIS / CAD tools, including Esri’s ArcGIS Pro. Nearmap will soon enable similar access to the 3-D products.
Integrations of MEMS sensors with signal conditioning and radio communications form “motes” with extremely low-cost and low-power requirements and miniaturized form factor. Now standard features in modern mobile devices, MEMS accelerometers and gyros can be combined with absolute positioning technologies, such as GNSS or other wireless technologies, for user localization.
Navigation has been revolutionized by micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) sensor development, offering new capabilities for wireless positioning technologies and their integration into modern smartphones.
These new technologies range from simple IrDA using infrared light for short-range, point-to-point communications, to wireless personal area network (WPAN) for short range, point-to multi-point communications, such as Bluetooth and ZigBee, to mid-range, multi-hop wireless local area network (WLAN, also known as wireless fidelity or Wi-Fi), to long-distance cellular phone systems, such as GSM/GPRS and CDMA.
With these technologies, navigation itself has become much broader than just providing a solution to location-based services (LBS) questions, such as “Where am I?” or “How to get from start point to destination?”
It has moved into new areas such as games, geolocation, mobile mapping, virtual reality, tracking, health monitoring and context awareness.
MEMS sensors are now essential components of modern smartphones and tablets. Miniaturized devices and structures produced with micro-fabrication techniques, their physical dimensions range from less than 1 micrometer (μm, a millionth of a meter) to several millimeters (mm).
The types of MEMS devices vary from relatively simple structures having no moving elements to complex electromechanical systems with multiple moving elements under the control of integrated microelectronics.
Apart from size reduction, MEMS technology offers other benefits such as batch production and cost reduction, power (voltage) reduction, ruggedization and design flexibility, within limits.
Wireless sensor technology allows MEMS sensors to be integrated with signal-conditioning and radio units to form “motes” with extremely low cost, small size and low power requirements.
New miniaturized sensors and actuators based on MEMS are available on the market or in the development stage.
Today’s smartphone sensors can include MEMS-based accelerometers, microphones, gyroscopes, temperature and humidity sensors, light sensors, proximity and touch sensors, image sensors, magnetometers, barometric pressure sensors and capacitive fingerprint sensors, all integrated to wireless sensor nodes.
These sensors were not initially intended for navigation. For instance, accelerometers are used primarily for applications such as switching the display from landscape to portrait as well as gaming.
These embedded sensors, however, are natural candidates for sensing user context. Because of their locating capabilities, people are getting used to the location-enabled life.
MEMS accelerometers and gyros, for instance, can be employed for localization in combination with absolute positioning technologies, such as GNSS or other wireless technologies.
WIRELESS OPTIONS IN SMARTPHONES
Various wireless standards have been established. Among them, the standards for Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11b and wireless PAN, IEEE 802.15.1 (Bluetooth) and IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) are used more widely for measurement and automation applications.
All these standards use the instrumentation, scientific and medical (ISM) radio bands, including the sub-GHz bands of 902–928 MHz (US), 868–870 MHz (Europe), 433.05–434.79 MHz (US and Europe) and 314–316 MHz (Japan) and the GHz bands of 2.4000-2.4835 GHz (worldwide acceptable).
In general, a lower frequency allows a longer transmission range and a stronger capability to penetrate through walls and glass.
However, due to the fact that radio waves with lower frequencies are more easily absorbed by materials, such as water and trees, and that radio waves with higher frequencies are easier to scatter, effective transmission distance for signals carried by a high-frequency radio wave may not necessarily be shorter than that of a lower frequency carrier at the same power rating.
The 2.4-GHz band has a wider bandwidth that allows more channels and frequency hopping and permits compact antennas.
Wireless Fidelity. Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) is a flexible data communication protocol implemented to extend or substitute for a wired local area network, such as Ethernet. The bandwidth of 802.11b is 11 Mbits and it operates at 2.4 GHz frequency.
Originally a technology for short-range wireless data communication, it is typically deployed as an ad-hoc network in a hot-spot. Wireless networks are built by attaching an access point (AP) to the edge of a wired network.
Clients communicate with the AP using a wireless network adapter similar to an Ethernet adapter. Beacon frames are transmitted in IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi for network identification, broadcasting network capabilities, synchronization and other control and management purposes.
Timers of all terminals are synchronized to the AP clock by the timestamp information of the beacon frames. The IEEE 802.11 MAC (Media Access Control) protocol utilizes carrier sensing contention based on energy detection or signal quality.
RSSs and MAC addresses of the APs are location-dependent information that can be adopted for positioning. For localization of a mobile device, either cell-based solutions or (tri)lateration and location fingerprinting are commonly employed.
Bluetooth. A wireless protocol for short-range communication, Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1) uses the 2.4-Hz, 915-MHz and 868-MHz ISM radio bands to communicate at 1 Mbit between up to eight devices. It is mainly designed to maximize the ad-hoc networking functionality (Wang et al., 2006).
Compared to Wi-Fi, the gross bit rate is lower (1 Mbps), and the range is shorter (typically around 10 m). On the other hand, Bluetooth is a “lighter” standard, highly ubiquitous (embedded in most phones) and supports several other networking services in addition to IP. For positioning either tags (small size transceivers) or Bluetooth low energy (BLE) iBeacons are common.
Each tag has a unique ID that can be used for localization. iBeacon is a low-energy protocol developed by Apple; compatible hardware transmitters, typically so-called beacons, broadcast their identifier to nearby portable electronic devices.
The technology enables smartphones, tablets and other devices to perform actions when in close proximity to an iBeacon whereby a universally unique identifier picked up by a compatible app or operating system is transmitted.
The identifier and several bytes sent with it can be used to determine the device’s physical location, track customers, or trigger an LBS action on the device such as a check-in on social media or a push notification.
One application is distributing messages at a specific point of interest — for example, a store, a bus stop, a room or a more specific location like a piece of furniture or a vending machine. This is similar to previously used geopush technology based on GNSS, but with a much reduced impact on battery life and much extended precision.
Another application is an indoor positioning system, which helps smartphones determine their approximate location or context. With the help of an iBeacon, a smartphone’s software can approximately find its relative location to an iBeacon.
iBeacon differs from some other LBS technologies as the broadcasting device (beacon) is only a one-way transmitter to the receiving smartphone, and necessitates a specific app installed on the device to interact with the beacons.
This ensures that only the installed app (not the iBeacon transmitter) can track users, potentially against their will, as they passively walk around the transmitters. Localization is based on proximity sensing and cell-based solutions.
ZigBee. ZigBee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios.
ZigBee operates in the ISM radio bands: 2.4 GHz in most jurisdictions worldwide, 784 MHz in China, 868 MHz in Europe and 915 MHz in the U.S. and Australia. Data rates vary from 20 kbit/s (868-MHz band) to 250 kbit/s (2.4-GHz band).
It adds network, security and application software and is intended to be simpler and less expensive than other WPANs such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
Owing to its low power consumption and simple networking configuration, ZigBee is best suited for intermittent data transmissions from a sensor or input device.
Applications include wireless light switches, electrical meters with in-home displays, traffic management systems and other consumer and industrial equipment that requires short-range low-rate wireless data transfer.
Distances are limited to 10–100 m line-of-sight, depending on power output and environmental characteristics. ZigBee localization techniques usually use measurement of signal strength (RSS-based positioning) in conjunction with (tri)lateration and fingerprinting.
COMPARING STANDARDS
Table 1 compares the three wireless standards most suitable for a wireless sensor network. The standards also address the network issues for wireless sensors. Three types of networks (star, hybrid and mesh) have been developed and standardized.
TABLE 1. Comparison of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee.
Bluetooth uses star networks, composed of piconets and scatternets. Each piconet connects one master node with up to seven slave nodes, whereas each scatternet connects multiple piconets, to form an ad-hoc network. ZigBee uses hybrid star networks of multiple master nodes with routing capabilities to connect slave nodes, which have no routing capability.
The most efficient networking technology uses peer-to-peer mesh networks, which allow all the nodes in the network to have routing capability. Mesh networks allow autonomous nodes to self-assemble into the network and allow sensor information to propagate across the network with high reliability and over an extended range.
They also allow time synchronization and low power consumption for the “listeners” in the network, thus extending battery life. When a large number of wireless sensors need to be networked, several levels of networking may be combined.
For example, an IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) mesh network comprised of high-end nodes, such as gateway units, can be overlaid on a ZigBee sensor network to maintain a high level of network performance.
A remote application server (RAS) can also be deployed in the field close to a localized sensor network to manage the network, to collect localized data, to host web-based applications, to remotely access the cellular network via a GSM/GPRS or a CDMA-based modem and, in turn, to access the internet and remote users.
ESTIMATION METHODS
The three most common position estimation methods are cell-based positioning (cell-of-origin, CoO), (tri) lateration and location fingerprinting, regarding achievable positioning accuracies as well as their advantages and disadvantages.
They provide different level of accuracies ranging from dm up to tens of m. Compared to (tri)lateration and fingerprinting, the principle of operation of CoO is the most straightforward and simplest. Disadvantages range from the requirement of a large number of devices or receivers as well as their performance in dynamic environments.
All these techniques provide absolute localization capabilities. Their disadvantage is that position fixes are lost if no coverage or signal availability is available.
Thus, combination with other technologies to bridge loss of lock of wireless signals (for example, no GNSS reception) is required. In smartphones, motion sensors exists that can be employed for inertial navigation (IN). In this article, these sensors are also referred to as inertial sensors.
In the simplest case, a position solution can be obtained from the relative measurements of the inertial sensors via dead reckoning (DR). The accelerometers, for instance, can be used by a pedestrian to count steps while walking and the gyroscope and magnetometer can provide the direction of movement.
These sensors have therefore substantially won on importance for navigation solutions.
MEMS LOCATION SENSORS
For many navigation applications, improved accuracy and performance is not necessarily the most important issue, but meeting performance at reduced cost and size is.
In particular, small navigation sensor size allows the introduction of guidance, navigation and control into applications previously considered out of reach. In this context, the small size, extreme ruggedness and potential for very low-cost and weight means of MEMS gyros and accelerometers have been, and will be, able to utilize inertial guidance systems — a situation that was unthinkable before MEMS.
The reduction in size of the sensing elements, however, creates challenges for attaining good performance. In general, the performance of MEMS inertial measurement units (IMUs) continues to be limited by gyro performance, which is typically around 10 to 30 deg/h, rather than by accelerometer performance, which has demonstrated tens of micro-g or better.
MEMS has struggled to reach high-accuracy tactical-grade quality.
MEMS Accelerometors. MEMS accelerometers are either pendulous/displacement mass type or resonator type. The former use closed-loop capacitive sensing and electrostatic forcing while the latter are based on resonance operation.
Both can detect acceleration in two primary ways: either displacement of a hinged or flexure-supported proof mass under acceleration, producing a change in a capacitive or piezoelectric readout, or frequency change of a vibrating element caused by a change in its tension induced by a change of loading from a seismic-proof mass.
Pendulous types can meet a wide performance range from 1 mg for tactical systems down to 25 μg. Resonant accelerometers or VBAs can reach higher performance down to 1 μg.
MEMS-Based Gyroscopes. For MEMS INS, attaining suitable gyro performance is more difficult to achieve than accelerometer performance. Fundamentally, MEMS gyros fall into four major areas: vibrating beams, vibrating plates, ring resonators and dithered accelerometers.
Gyroscopes are usually built as hybrid solutions, with sensor and electronics as two separate chips. The operational principle for all vibratory gyroscopes is based on the utilization of the Coriolis force.
If a mass is vibrated sinusoidally in a plane, and that plane is rotated at some angular rate Ω, then the Coriolis force causes the mass to vibrate sinusoidally perpendicular to the frame with amplitude proportional to the angular rate Ω.
Measurement of the Coriolis-induced motion provides knowledge of the angular rate Ω. This rate measurement is the underlying principle of all quartz and silicon micro-machined.
These gyroscopes are usually designed as an electronically driven resonator, which are often fabricated out of a single piece of quartz or silicon. The output is demodulated, amplified and digitized. Their extremely small size, combined with the strength of silicon, makes them ideal for very high-acceleration applications.
For purely surface micro-mechanical gyroscopes, given their small sizes and capacitances, monolithic integration is an option to be considered not so much for cost as for performance.
Combined IMUs. Further interest in all-accelerometer systems, which are also referred to as gyro-free, arises because high-performing small gyroscopes are very difficult to produce. Two approaches are typically used. In the first, the Coriolis effect is utilized.
Typically, three opposing pairs of monolithic MEMS accelerometers are dithered on a vibrating structure (or rotated). This approach allows the detection of the angular rate Ω. In the second, the accelerometers are placed in fixed locations and used to measure angular acceleration.
In both approaches, the accelerometers also measure linear acceleration, enabling a full navigation solution. In the direct approach, however, the need to make one more integration step makes it more vulnerable to bias variations and noise, so the output errors grow by an order of magnitude faster over time than when using a conventional IMU.
However, these devices only provide tactical-grade performance, and are most useful in GNSS-aided applications. The concept of a navigation-grade all-accelerometer IMU requires accelerometers with accuracies on the order of nano-g’s or better, and with large separation distances.
Use of all-accelerometer navigation for GNSS-unavailable environments will likely require augmentation with other absolute positioning techniques. Further sensor size reductions are underway through the combination of two in-plane (x- and y-axis) and one out-of- plane (z-axis) sensors on one chip. These multi-axes gyroscopes and accelerometer chips produce IMUs as small as 0.2 cm3.
Barometric Sensors. Barometric pressure sensors embedded in smartphones and other mobile devices demand small size, low cost and high-accuracy performance. The key element of a pressure sensor is a diaphragm containing piezoresistors which can be formed by ion implantation or in-diffusion.
Applied pressure deflects the diaphragm and thereby changes the resistance of the piezoresistors. By arranging the piezoresistors in a Wheatstone bridge, an output signal voltage can be generated. The measurement sensitivity of the pressure sensor is determined by the strain at the bottom plane of the diaphragm, whereby larger strain leads to higher sensitivity.
These altimeters are increasingly used in smartphones and other navigation systems. They can enable altitude determination of the user, for example, to determine the correct floor in a multi-storey building.
Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR). The MEMS accelerometers embedded in the mobile device can be used to estimate the distance traveled from the accelerations made while walking, and magnetometers and gyroscopes to obtain user heading. Starting from a known position, determined by GNSS or other absolute positioning technique, the current position of the user can then be dead-reckoned using observations of the inertial sensors.
DR techniques differ from other localization techniques because the position is always calculated relative to the previously calculated position and no correlation with the real position can be made. PDR can give the best available information on position; however, it is subject to significant cumulative errors, i.e., either compounding, multiplicatively or exponentially, due to many factors as both velocity and direction must be accurately known at all instants for position to be determined accurately.
The accuracy of PDR can be increased significantly by using other, more reliable methods — GNSS or another absolute positioning technique such as Wi-Fi — the combination with inertial sensors produces more reliable and accurate navigation.
Altitude Determination. For navigation, determination of the altitude of the user can be of great importance, for example in determining the correct floor in a multi-storey building. Barometric pressure sensors can provide this data, augmenting the inertial sensors that can usually only provide reliable 2D localization.
Furthermore, if only three GNSS satellites are visible, providing a 2D positioning solution, pressure sensors can aid 3D localization.
Altitude determination with a barometric pressure sensor can be performed relatively from a given start height — for example, obtained from GNSS outside the building or from a known height point in the indoor environment.
As the user walks inside the building and up stairs or elevator to other floors, differences in air pressure can be calculated using a simple relationship between the pressure changes and height differences.
For conversion of the air pressure in a height difference, the mean value of the temperature at both stations is also required; MEMS infrared temperature sensors are increasingly found in smartphones to provide this.
Activity Detection. Low-cost inertial and motion sensors provide a new platform for dynamic activity pattern inference. Human activity recognition aims to recognize the motion of a person from a series of observations of the user’s body and environment.
A single biaxial accelerometer can classify six activities: walking, running, sitting, walking upstairs, walking downstairs and standing.
Until recently, sensors on the body have been used for activity detection, and until recently only a few studies have used a smartphone to collect data for activity recognition.
Smartphone accelerometers recognize acceleration in three axes as shown in Figure 1. Different motion sequences can thereby be ascertained.
Figure 1. Smartphone coordinate frame (left) and global horizontal coordinate system (right).
If a smartphone is held horizontally in the hand during a forward motion, then an acceleration in the y-axis is induced. When working with accelerations, two approaches can be applied to measure the linear displacement: integration of the accelerations or step detection combined with step size estimate.
In the first case, the distance traveled can be theoretically calculated by integrating the accelerations once for velocity, twice for distance.
Due to the double integration, however, any error in the signal will propagate rapidly, so the drift on the received signals from the accelerometer makes it impossible to use integration for walks of more than a few seconds.
The Zero Velocity Update (ZUPT) technique, where the velocity is reset to zero between every consecutive step when the foot is stationary for a small amount of time, can overcome this. Any error produced during one step has no influence on following steps. ZUPT can only be used when the accelerometer is placed on the foot, taking advantage of the stationary period between footsteps.
In the latter case, the distance traveled is obtained from step counts by processing the fluctuating vertical accelerations, which cross zero twice with every step. When the number of steps and the step size are acquired, the distance can be calculated by multiplication.
Figure 2 shows the recorded acceleration of a walking person in the z-axis, with significant maxima and minima that enable step-counting. Correction for the gravity effect on the x-, y- and z-axes of the smartphone’s local coordinate system is key to the correct determination of accelerometer-derived distance traveled. The MEMS-based three-axis accelerometer allows the device to detect the force applied along the three axes in order to accomplish specific functions based on predefined configurations.
Figure 2 . Typical recording of accelerometer sensor data in z-axis of a walking user.
The mobile device can be oriented in such that one of the axes is aligned in the direction of movement or heading (for example, y-axis), the positive x-axis is pointing rightward and the positive z-axis is upward (compare Figure 1). When the y-axis is horizontal, the gravity effect will be fully reflected on the z-axis.
However, a cell phone will most likely be placed by a user into a pocket or bag. Therefore, most existing step detection algorithms cannot be used directly — adjustments have to be made to take into account the orientation of the accelerometers. Because a phone can be placed with any side up or down, the accelerations are observed to determine which axis is the most vertical one.
The accelerations of the axis that is pointing directly to the center of the Earth has a value of 1 g due to gravity. So if the smartphone is lying flat on a table, with the display side up, then the z-axis of the accelerometer would theoretically have a value of 1,000 mg.
If the phone is put crooked (not along one of the axes) in someone’s pocket, the values will be lower than 1,000 mg. So to detect which accelerometer has the most vertical axis, the absolute average of the last 30 samples, or 1.2 seconds, of all three axes of the accelerometers of which the absolute value is closest to 1 g, is the most vertical axis and the accelerometer to use.
SYSTEM COMPARISON
Table 2 compares the most commonly used location sensors and systems in mobile devices classified depending on their positioning capability — absolute or relative — and on their type. A meaningful combination in form of a hybrid solution will produce the best performance for localization of a mobile smartphone user.
TABLE 2. Specifications of the most commonly used location sensors and systems in mobile devices.
Combining MEMS, Wireless. For the majority of indoor navigation systems, the combination of MEMS sensors and wireless options provides the optimal solution. MEMS sensors can provide relative positioning information, with an unbounded accumulation of location errors over time. Wireless systems provide an absolute position in either a local or global coordinate frame, independent of previous estimates without integrating measurements over time. The combination of these two technologies takes advantages of the strengths of both, producing a more robust position solution.
CONCLUSIONS
The increasing ubiquity of location-aware devices has pushed the need for robust GNSS-like positioning capabilities in difficult environments.
No single sensor or technique can meet the positioning requirements for the increasing number of safety- and liability-critical mass-market applications.
Integration is one approach to improving performance level, but a significant step change in high-performance positioning in GNSS-difficult environments, higher performance level are required from MEMS and wireless technologies.
ALLISON KEALY is a professor of geospatial science at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technolgy University, Australia. She holds a Ph.D. in GPS and geodesy from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is co-chair of FIG Working Group 5.5. Ubiquitous Positioning and vice president of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) Commission 4: Positioning and Applications.
GÜNTHER RETSCHER is associate professor in geodesy and geoinformation at the Vienna University of Technology, with a Ph.D. in applied geodesy. He is co-chair of IAG Sub-Commission 4.1 on Emerging Positioning Technologies and GNSS Augmentation and of the IAG/Fig Working Group on Multi-Sensor Systems.
Martek Marine has deployed the Centrik system to manage its UAS operation, the same system used by major airlines.
Centrik is a cloud-based aviation management software solution specifically tailored for RPAS/UAS operations. It encompasses all aspects of operations: safety, quality, compliance and risk management, while providing comprehensive reporting functions, the company said.
Centrik gives visibility of every single electronic flight bag and enables sharing of audit information direct with the Civil Aviation Authority or any interested third parties.
It maintains a complete training record for every single member of staff, allowing us to see instantly who has which qualification and who needs to renew their training.
It also compiles all assessment results, delivers alerts management when training certificates are about to expire and provides handy checklists of core competencies.
Martek UAS.
Pushing UAS capabilities to enable a multitude of compelling use cases can only happen with the approval of the relevant Aviation Authorities who are requiring us to demonstrate the highest level of operational standards and business oversight.
“Thinking that you can manage a major UAS operation with old fashioned spreadsheets, folders and emails is fundamentally flawed — akin to putting cartwheels on a Tesla,” said Paul Forster, head of UAS Operations. “Investing in Centrik is another statement of our intent to be the world-leader in UAS operations, to compliment our well documented $multi-million investments so far in the world’s best maritime UAS/RPAS.”
A manufacturer of refinery infrastructure was about to finish the assembly of a radiant box when a thumbnail-size notch was noticed in one of the pipes just before it was to be installed. The radiant box facility is used in the process of refining hydrogen under very high temperature (1,300 to 2,000°F) and pressure (45 to 360 psi).
The Elios by Flyability is a collision tolerant drone.
The notch was noticed near the end of the assembly process of the 144 40-foot-high vertical pipes composing the radiant box. The refinery owner insisted that each of the installed pipes be inspected thoroughly before moving to the final stages of testing and firing up the radiant box.
The refinery manufacturer faced a difficult problem. Made of a particular heat-resistant alloy containing 30 percent chrome, the pipes need careful treatment — contact with another alloy could damage them, which made use of scaffolding impractical. Instead, the customer turned to Industrial SkyWorks and its indoor inspection drone, Elios by Flyability.
The complexity of the location, the large number of pipes, and the fact that they could easily be mixed up required a meticulous work approach by Industrial SkyWorks. The two-man UAV crew set up a charging station just outside the building. Four flights were needed per pipe to ensure complete coverage. Using the onboard lights of the Elios, the UAV flew to the top of each pipe and descended slowly, recording video.
The Elios drone flew continuously for nearly five days in a dry and dusty environment, imaging both sides of each pipe. Once finished, the crew presented high-resolution video of each pipe to the satisfied client.
Resulting savings are estimated at 75 percent for cost and 85 percent for time, the company said. For instance, using a UAV avoided the need for workers to work at height with the associated safety procedures.
The Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science (CBI) at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi has officially joined the United Nations-Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) Academic Network. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi is one of three Universities in the nation, including Harvard University and the University of Maine, who are part of this network.
The primary goal of the UN-GGIM Academic Network is to make accurate, reliable geospatial information readily available in support of national, regional and global development. As a member of the UN-GGIM Academic Network, CBI will work alongside the United Nations to provide research and education expertise to international governments.
“Blucher’s inclusion in this prestigious academic network is a direct reflection of the quality of our researchers at A&M-Corpus Christi,” said Dr. Kelly Quintanilla, Interim President and CEO of A&M-Corpus Christi.
To be accepted to the UN-GGIM Academic Network, applicants must meet certain criteria. Requirements included an established track record in Geographic Information Science (GIS), a description of current programs and future GIS education and research plans. Most notably, the CBI was chosen based on their ability to positively impact the UN-GGIM Academic Network.
“Dr. Richard Smith, CBI Research Scientist, has already assisted the United Nations by providing online geospatial education to UN staff. We are now formally linked in with a worldwide network of academics and scientists to assist the UN take advantage of recent advances in geospatial technologies we are developing here in Corpus Christi,” said Gary Jeffress, R.P.L.S., CBI director and professor of geographic information science.
According to the Department of Labor, GIS, Geospatial Surveying and Engineering are the fastest growing fields in the United States. Researchers in this scientific discipline study data and computational techniques that are used to capture and analyze geographic information. For example, it’s with this information Google Earth and Bing Maps can function the way they do. Those who can use this system properly and find relationships within the data are in high demand.
With this in mind, experienced professors at A&M-Corpus Christi help Island University students get hands-on experience with the latest GIS technology. The CBI has been recognized for their Free Online Curriculum for GIS and Geospatial Surveying and has worked together with United Nations staff to expand UN operations involving GIS technology. The CBI offers a Bachelor of Science in Geographic Information Science, a Master of Science in Geospatial Surveying Engineering and a Doctoral Program in Geospatial Computing Sciences.
NovAtel’s OEM7 v7.03.00 firmware is now available on all OEM7 receivers. The OEM7700, OEM719 and OEM729 can be updated to the 7.03.00 firmware, which supports new features like the SPAN Land Vehicle technology, direct inertial measurement unit (IMU) connections and tracking of the NavIC Indian regional satellite system on the L5 frequency.
The SPAN Land Vehicle feature provides performance benefits specifically for extended loss of GPS signals, robust alignment routines and improved attitude performance for fixed-wheel land vehicle applications. During extended periods of GNSS outage, typically in low-dynamic operating environments or in dense urban canyons, the SPAN Land Vehicle feature optimizes integrated GNSS+INS performance to maintain accurate position, velocity and attitude.
To achieve this, NovAtel uses intelligent vehicle dynamics modeling and its patented Antenna Phase Windup Technology. Intelligent vehicle modeling identifies IMU errors in the integrated GNSS+INS system that accumulate after extended GNSS outages and reduces the impact of those errors within the SPAN solution.
NovAtel’s Antenna Phase Windup technology is used to sense changes in direction and, when combined with intelligent vehicle modeling, corrects for IMU errors in attitude (roll, pitch, yaw).
Users can now connect SPAN enabled OEM7 receivers directly to the ADIS-16488 and Epson G320N IMUs using an SPI interface, and to the STIM300 IMU using RS422, without the need for an interface card.
OEM7 receivers with NavIC L5 frequency tracking enabled will be able to access the test signals of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) before it becomes operational (targeted for early 2018).
Brandon Jarratt took plenary attendees behind the scenes of city creation in Zootopia, using Esri CityEngine. (Photo: Esri)Brandon Jarratt, Disney.
Brandon Jarratt took GIS professionals behind the scenes of animated city creation at the Esri User Conference, being held this week in San Diego.
Jarratt served as general technical director for Disney’s Zootopia, which won the 2016 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Jarrett took the stage during the plenary session to describe how the Zootopia team used Esri CityEngine software to create the complex city that serves as the backdrop for the movie.
Jarratt said Disney animated features need three elements: compelling stories, appealing characters and believable worlds. That’s believable worlds, not realistic worlds.
Disney animated movie elements. (Photo: T. Cozzens)
In this case, the complex city of Zootopia had to be designed from the ground up as a complex city with various districts designed to accommodate the vast array of animal species.
In the world of Zootopia, humans don’t exist. Transportation systems, houses, streets and services need to accommodate animals as tall as giraffes and as small as a shrew. To meet these challenges, the designers turned to Esri CityEngine and its multi-scaling feature.
The Zootopia world also needed to incorporate various habitats, or in this case, districts. At the center a large complex city dominates.
The four burroughs of Zootopia. (Image: Disney)
CityEngine was used in the creation of the city in Big Hero 6 as well. In Big Hero 6, the base city geography used was San Francisco, upon which Japanese-style buildings were placed. In all, 80,000 buildings were incorporated into San Fransokyo.
San Fransokyo in Big Hero 6. (Image: Disney)
Zootopia, on the other hand, was built from scratch — including the terrain. The team started with research of various landscapes to create a basemap.
Zootopia concept map. (Photo: T. Cozzens)
At the city-building stage, CityEngine’s custom tool was used to lay down streets.
Buildings were designed for each district. The building styles couldn’t be repeated too often, or the city would look unrealistic, Jarratt said. The designers used carefully calibrated mix rules to keep the cities lively.
The desert area of Sahara Square is make of 61,000 parts, including buildings, wall segments and palm trees. (Image: Disney)
The ability in CityEngine to change the makeup of a city, adjusting the frequency of the various parts, made it easy for the illustration team to meet the art director’s requirements. When he wanted more skyscrapers, or buildings of a certain design, the team was able to provide new concept images the same day.
Zooptopia being built in Esri CityEngine. (Photo: T. Cozzens)
Esri’s CityEngine GIS technology is used by city planners to design our future smart cities. “It’s so similar to how city planners create real cities,” said Esri President Jack Dangermond. He then presented Jarratt with Esri’s first-ever Best Animated Feature Using GIS award.
QY Research has released its Global GNSS Chips Market Research Report 2017, a comprehensive study on the global GNSS chip market. The report is segmented based on applications, end-users, technology and geography.
The report covers key players, current trends and influences on the global market. Investment return analysis, SWOT analysis and feasibility studies were used to analyze the key global market players’ growth in the industry.
Highlights of the report include:
A complete backdrop analysis, including an assessment of the parent market.
Important changes in market dynamics.
Market segmentation.
Historical, current and projected market size, including value and volume.
Reporting and evaluation of recent industry developments.
Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon automotive platforms were selected to power the next-generation of infotainment systems in the Geely Auto Group vehicles.
According to Qualcomm, these systems include the world’s first-announced infotainment offering with an integrated 4G LTE modem using the Snapdragon 820Am automotive platform.
Geely also expects to use Snapdragon automotive platforms on upcoming generations of its iNTEC technology package, which includes G-Netlink, a system that allows drivers to interface with their vehicles in a number of ways, as well as G-Pilot, an intelligent drive technology designed to support a high degree of driving comfort, assistance and autonomy.
“China is emerging as a source of automotive innovation, not only benefiting Chinese customers but also the rest of the world, by quickly adopting and commercializing leading-edge car attechnology,” said Patrick Little, senior vice president and general manager for automotive at Qualcomm Technologies. “We are pleased to work with Geely and the Chinese automotive ecosystem to help define the future of connected car experiences and use our industry-leading technologies to accelerate its realization.”
According to the company, select Geely models are expected to use the Snapdragon 820Am variant of the platform with an integrated X12 LTE modem, supporting up to 600 Mbps downlink and 150 Mbps uplink speeds.
In addition, Geely vehicles featuring Snapdragon automotive platforms are expected to be available from 2020 onward, the company reported. Geely’s connected cars featuring telematics applications are already available using Snapdragon LTE modems.
Polynesian Exploration Inc. has launched its high-accuracy navigation system for demanding applications such as autonomous driving and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Polynesian Exploration is a navigation startup founded by a group of navigation-industry veterans in Silicon Valley in October 2016.
The navigation system is designed to fully utilize the advantages of both GNSS and inertial navigation systems (INS) to provide centimeter-level position and velocity accuracy with dual frequency real-time kinematic, together with accurate attitude information (roll, pitch and heading).
The system provides superior short-term stability against satellite signal outages and highly accurate heading whether the system is static or moving, Polynesian Exploration said.
The rugged and waterproof system will be ready for shipment starting July 1.
Polynesian Exploration described the demand for high-accuracy GNSS/INS solutions this way:
By the year 2020, four GNSS are expected to be fully operational, which are GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou. The abundance of measurements from multiple constellations around the world will enable unprecedented improvements in the accuracy, continuity and integrity of GNSS navigation systems.
Although GNSS signals have grown to become ubiquitous, all radio-navigation systems are subject to radio frequency interference, short signal blockages and severe multipath errors in certain environments (such as urban canyons).
INS can potentially mitigate integrity and continuity risks caused by those issues to a certain degree. Additionally, INS is able to compute and output user’s position, velocity and attitude at high frequencies. Reporting information to users at a high-frequency is essential for many vehicle control applications, such as self-driving cars, UAV flight stability or autonomous landing.
We design our navigation systems with various performances depending on user demands, which include, but are not limited to, up to 400-Hz position, velocity, attitude outputs and meters to center-meter level position accuracy.
They can also be operational in all weather conditions and will be available globally.
Additionally, we are able to integrate special sensors for each unique application as requested by our customers. We are driven by customer satisfaction and strive to offer the best experience for our customers.
Spectra Precision has introduced its new SP90m multi-frequency and multi-application GNSS receiver.
Spectra Precision’s SP90m GNSS receiver.
The Spectra Precision SP90m is a powerful, highly versatile, ultra-rugged and reliable GNSS positioning solution for a wide variety of real-time and post-processing applications. It features integrated communications options such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, UHF radio and cellular modem as well as two MSS L-band channels to receive Trimble RTX correction services.
With a modular form factor, the SP90m is flexible and can be used as a base station, campaign receiver, continuously operating reference station (CORS), real-time kinematic (RTK) or Trimble RTX rover, or integrated on-board a machine.
The patented Z-Blade GNSS-centric technology uses all available GNSS signals to deliver fast and reliable positions in real-time. The SP90m GNSS receiver also allows the connection of two GNSS antennas for precise heading or relative positioning determination without a secondary GNSS receiver.
The SP90m’s unique design enables a broad range of mounting capabilities. In addition to the wide range of built-in communication options, the SP90m features an internal removable battery, internal memory, optional accessory kits for specific applications.
The receiver is also compatible with a variety of software solutions such as Spectra Precision Survey Pro. The weatherproof, high-impact-resistant molded aluminum housing ensures the user’s investment is safe in extreme field conditions, which is important for campaign or base-station applications.
“With the addition of the SP90m receiver to its portfolio, Spectra Precision has introduced a new generation of ultra-rugged, compact and feature rich GNSS solution to the surveying market,” said Olivier Casabianca, general manager of Trimble’s Spectra Precision Division. “This highly flexible receiver can be used where a typical integrated receiver on a range pole is not optimal and other configurations may be required. It is an ideal solution for geospatial professionals looking for a single receiver that can be used for multiple applications.”
The Spectra Precision SP90m receiver is available now through the Spectra Precision global dealer network. For more information, visit www.spectraprecision.com or email: [email protected].
Hexagon announced today its new Leica Cyclone REGISTER 360 laser scanning software for simpler, automated registration, and its Cyclone Cloud Services platform for secure global collaboration through an on-demand software-as-a-service model.
Together, the new products offer users smarter ways to register, visualize and collaborate around digital reality projects, delivering solutions into the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), plant, survey and public safety markets through the connected Leica Cyclone family.
“Digital realities are enabling professionals and newcomers to laser scanning to shape the world around us. Whether it’s on a construction site for building documentation or in a plant environment for life cycle updates, efficiencies and productivity gains are realised with the ability to merge reality and digital data quicker and with more accuracy,” said Hexagon President and CEO Ola Rollén. “These new developments in laser scanning registration with our Cyclone software improve the user experience and overall workflow of point cloud processing.”
Cyclone REGISTER 360 is the a professional-grade registration software that combines automation, high performance and ease of use into one powerful package available to novices and experts alike. Simplifying and automating the entire production process, Cyclone REGISTER 360 enables users to automatically process, validate and deliver point clouds according to rigorous quality control and reporting standards.
Cyclone Cloud offers professionals a new way to consume and deliver digital reality data through a highly scalable, intuitive and web-based platform. TruView Cloud Services is the only cloud-based digital reality visualization and collaboration platform that enables quick setup of private user communities, connecting with and making the data available anywhere in the world.
Users can publish digital reality content in Cyclone from handheld devices and terrestrial, mobile and unmanned aerial vehicles. With open application programming interfacing, the data can be delivered in any device and operating system with connectivity for building information modeling, geographic information systems and computed-aided drafting.
