With Coronavirus all over the news, it’s actually encouraging to hear that China is making high-level efforts to contain the infection: two isolation hospitals built in just one week in Wuhan where the outbreak began, travel restrictions inside China, very few people being allowed to leave the country, enforced mask-wearing, and local communities in neighboring provinces blocking visits by outsiders.
Two drone-related stories caught my attention, both in China and connected to the virus outbreak — one where drones were being used to enforce “wear-a-mask (see video), and another where disinfectant was being dispensed by drones.
Photo: Xag
It’s not exactly clear who was behind recent drone flights that broadcast live warnings to people without protective masks on the streets — some villages in rural China were apparently overflown and people were advised to wear a mask while outdoors.
Around Beijing, similar activities were maybe down to well-intentioned social media people and traffic police.
XAG, which has fielded 42,000 agricultural spraying drones in China, is urging authorities to use its drones for widespread disinfectant spraying, and has set up a significant fund to support these activities. The company claims its drones can disinfect a local community in less than four hours, and may already have done so.
Medical transport drones. Staying with the medical theme, Aquiline Drones (AD) in Cincinnati is a drone company operating under a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, and is working on a system to transport human organs for transplants.
VyrtX is an organ transport company in Ohio that has teamed with AD, with the object of creating a highway-in-the-sky across the state to overcome ground delivery delays. Apparently around 25% of precious transplant organs don’t make it in time to be used; they are lost to the patients on lengthy wait lists — and many people are dying as a consequence. There are supposedly enough donors, but organs deteriorate during ground transport and desperate transplant candidates are losing out badly.
So the next step for VyrtX and AD are custom-designed drones for life-saving rapid transport between donor and transplant hospitals. VyrtX is working with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, the Ohio UAS Centers and four Ohio organ procurement organizations to develop the air corridor and begin rapid organ transport by drone across the state.
The University of California, San Diego, Health (UC San Diego Health) is joining an increasing number of health organizations in developing a drone system for blood and documentation transport between its facilities. Collaborating with the UPS Flight Forward drone delivery program and with Matternet, medical payloads will travel between Moores Cancer Center and Jacobs Medical Center. The Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine, about 1.5 miles north, will be added provided initial test flights work out well.
Trained professionals will load and operate the drones, which will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths and will carry no cameras. (Photo: UC San Diego Health)
UPS Flight Forward is another company that was granted (FAA) Part 135 Air Carrier authorization and is already operating a UAS delivery program at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C.. UPS Flight Forward is also planning with CVS to deliver prescriptions and other products to CVS pharmacy customers.
Another drone medical supplies delivery system in Tanzania ran an operational trial in the fall of 2018. Wingcopter (a German drone manufacturer), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and DHL flew medicines from the mainland to an island. The DHL Parcelcopter completed a 60-km route autonomously in around 40 minutes, for a total of 2,200 km flown during the pilot project.
Building on these earlier trials, Wingcopter is now working with Merck and the Frankfurt University of Applied Science to demonstrate a drone delivery system between two Merck facilities in Germany. The object is to show the benefits of direct drone airborne transport over trucks for moving small packages between a Merck lab in Gernsheim to its headquarters in Darmstadt.
The first flight was recently accomplished over roughly 15.5 miles between the facilities, carrying a sample of pigments.
Photo: Wingcopter
The BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) flight passed over a dense metropolitan area, power lines, railways, and roadways. Benefits include time savings of around an hour, provided much greater savings at some times, and avoided significant ground vehicle emissions.
To sum up, drones being used to help combat coronavirus, to reduce time and costs for the transport of medical samples and supplies over medium distances, and there’s a spin-off with potential commercial promise, too. It’s a good month for the drone industry…
UAV Navigation’s flight control solutions for remotely piloted air systems/unmanned aerial vehicles (RPAS/UAVs) are compatible with the Trimble UAS1 high-precision GNSS receiver. The core benefits of Trimble’s GNSS solution include centimeter-level precision and easy integration.
Image: UAV Navigation and Trimble
The light, small Trimble UAS1 receiver is less vulnerable to vibrations or temperature fluctuations, making it suitable for UAVs and RPAS. In addition, the receiver can provide real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning using a base station, enabling users to achieve higher precision for their projects.
Most UAV missions demand precision in its subsystems. The Trimble UAS1 receiver meets these requirements and includes a 336-channel high-precision GNSS engine. It tracks L1/L2 frequencies from the GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou constellations.
The Trimble UAS1 supports OmniSTAR and Trimble CenterPoint RTX GNSS corrections, which enable precise and robust positioning without the use of a base station via a subscription service. The receiver also offers an industry-standard camera hot-shoe interface and a wide DC voltage range to work in a broad range of UAVs.
While Trimble is highly specialized in providing advanced GNSS solutions, UAV Navigation’s focus is on innovations in flight control systems. With this combined technology, current UAV/RPAS systems can now operate in more demanding environments and deliver higher precision through better navigation, UAV Navigation stated in a press release.
A key feature of a new high-accuracy GNSS correction service
Innovation Insights with Richard Langley
INTEGER VITAE SCELERISQUE PURUS. So wrote the Roman poet Horace at the beginning of one of his odes — one which, incidentally, was sung by college choirs at one time. It is usually translated as “upright of life and free from wickedness” and is just about the only common Latin quotation in which we find the word “integer.”
Besides upright, the word can be translated as unimpaired, perfect or whole. It is this latter meaning that the English mathematician Thomas Digges appropriated to describe whole numbers. The modern mathematics definition of the set of integers includes the additive inverses of the whole numbers plus zero. We have to worry about the integer nature of carrier-phase ambiguities when trying to achieve high-precision GNSS positioning but that is a story for another day.
The Latin word integer is the root of the English word integrity. In everyday speech, integrity means the quality of being honest or trustworthy (and having strong moral principles). But it is also used to describe something that is unimpaired or uncorrupted, especially in regard to electronic data such as that provided by a navigation system.
As I wrote in an Innovation column back in 1999, “The performance of any navigation system is characterized by its accuracy, availability, continuity, and integrity. From a safety point of view, integrity is arguably the most important factor. Without some assurance of a system’s integrity, we have no way of knowing whether the information we receive is correct: How are we to know whether a navigation system is actually achieving its advertised accuracy and not misleading us with faulty information?” Navigation systems that provide safety-of-life services must ensure a very high level of integrity. For example, the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) continuously assesses the integrity of GPS satellite signals as well as its own corrections, warning WAAS users when a failure is encountered within about 6 seconds of failure. This helps to ensure that aircraft do not use misleading data that could potentially create hazards.
And now, high-precision GNSS positioning technology using real-time augmentation is being adopted for autonomous applications in the automotive, rail, aviation and marine industries. These applications need high integrity in their position determinations in addition to high accuracy. As with the pioneering non-autonomous aviation use, augmentation services for the new market will need to monitor many aspects of their service to ensure a high level of integrity including the high-end data processing algorithms, real-time data transmission, end-to-end encryption, and functional safety assurance. This will be a challenging task that will require a multi-disciplinary approach, deep understanding of GNSS error modeling and risk assessment.
In this month’s column, we look at the design, construction, operation and performance of the first safety-critical, high-accuracy augmentation service created specifically for autonomous applications.
In addition to the need for high accuracy, the adoption of high-precision GNSS positioning technology for autonomous applications in the automotive, rail, aviation and marine industries has brought with it the need for high integrity and reliability. GNSS integrity concepts had their beginning in safety-critical applications in the aviation and marine industries, which have used GNSS to provide absolute position for precision runway approach, enroute navigation, port approaches, open sea and coastal waterway navigation.
For precision GNSS users (those using precision or high-end equipment) in the surveying, construction and agriculture industries, the focus has primarily been on accuracy. Over the past decade, real-time networks have been developed to offer sub-2-centimeter performance to end users. Although some integrity information has been provided, it has often been in the form of disturbance indices that network operators can use to inform users of suspected down time or periods of poor performance. But the information lacks a functional safety component. Additionally, this information has not typically been integrated in real time into position engines to aid in the generation of reliable integrity parameters for the end users.
Although GNSS does have limitations, particularly in urban environments, GNSS equipment is one of the few sensor types available to system integrators that can provide absolute position in autonomous applications.
This realization — combined with the further miniaturization, lower power consumption and expansion of inexpensive multi-frequency, multi-constellation GNSS chips capable of real-time-kinematic- (RTK-) style processing — has made the adoption of GNSS for mass-market applications very appealing.
Most mass-market applications don’t have the same accuracy requirements that drive the professional high-precision market. TABLE 1 summarizes applications that can benefit from a high-precision GNSS correction service. In most cases, decimeter-to-meter-level accuracy is typically acceptable. Reliability becomes more critical for these applications.
Table 1. Applications that can benefit from a high-precision GNSS service with integrity. (Data: Sapcorda)
The integrity demand, which we define as the degree of difficulty an application poses to the integrity monitoring system, is based on the required accuracy, availability, failure rate and continuity requirements of the application. Applications with a high integrity demand pose the most difficult challenges.
With the spread of autonomous applications in various areas, the likelihood of liability and legal cases being decided based on PVT data provided by the systems is high. This eventuality brings with it a need for a non-proprietary open standard for ensuring consistent implementation of the integrity information and functional safety along with the separation of end-user and provider responsibility. In this article, we describe the requirements and concepts for a high-precision GNSS correction system with high integrity.
SYSTEM OVERVIEW
Our Sapcorda correction service provides high-precision GNSS correction data on a continental scale. Its core component is an underlying tracking network of reference stations used to generate the precise corrections. The reference stations operate in real time and continuously transmit their data to the data control center. The data control center processes the data, computing orbit, clock, instrumental bias and atmosphere corrections and integrity information, and then encrypting the data before broadcasting it to the end user (see FIGURE 1).
The corrections are broadcast in the Safe Position Augmentation for Real Time Navigation (SPARTN) format developed by a consortium of GNSS manufacturers and service providers, via two communication channels, L-band and the internet. The data is then received by the end users who must decrypt it before it is used in processing. The SPARTN correction format consists of a set of messages that broadcast the GNSS corrections in a state-space representation. With our network, Sapcorda can offer a high-accuracy positioning service with fast convergence. An example of positioning performance for a monitoring station in Sapcorda’s European network coverage area is shown in FIGURE 2. The typical accuracy level is close to that of traditional network RTK services.
FIGURE 2. Horizontal position performance for a monitoring site in Europe using Sapcorda’s high-precision service. (Image: Sapcorda)
The system provides coverage for both North America and Europe as shown in FIGURE 3. Unlike traditional local or regional network RTK systems, Sapcorda’s network provides seamless coverage on the continental scale and operates in broadcast-only mode.
The integrity of a system can be described as the trustworthiness of the positions generated by the position engine. Trustworthiness is defined by the protection level associated with a given solution. Many of the concepts related to GNSS integrity originated from the development of the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS). The integrity concept was formalized by the Stanford Integrity Diagram, which outlines the key concepts related to integrity. TABLE 2 defines the terminology surrounding the integrity concept.
Table 2. Integrity terms. (Data Sapcorda)
The integrity risk is the probability that a user will experience a position error larger than the alert limit without an alarm being triggered. When this occurs, the user is in a potentially dangerous situation as the system is providing dangerously misleading information to the user, who is unaware.
The protection levels are computed based on the expected behavior of the error sources encountered in a GNSS positioning system. If the protection level is less than the system’s alert limit, then the system is operating within its normal bounds. If the error sources are not properly monitored or quantified, protection levels become optimistic. This occurs when the true position error, which is typically unknown, exceeds the protection level supplied by the system. When this situation occurs, it is labeled hazardously misleading information (HMI) because the system may believe that its position is more accurate than it truthfully is. If the true position error remains less than the alert limit, then this is classified as misleading information. As the true position is not beyond the alert limit, the operator/system can continue to rely on this information without being in a potentially dangerous scenario.
To define the true integrity risk of the system, it is necessary to understand its error sources, threat models, frequency of occurrences and potential failure modes. Many threats could render a correction service unavailable, including hardware failures, data outages or software bugs, atmospheric anomalies and satellite failures. The following section describes these threats along with the capabilities used for monitoring them.
Error Sources. The primary error sources in high-precision GNSS positioning are described in TABLE 3.
Table 3. GNSS network error sources, their magnitude and mitigation approach. (Data Sapcorda)
Although not mentioned in this table, additional error sources include site displacement effects such as solid earth tides, ocean tide loading and polar tides; carrier-phase wind-up at both the receiver and satellite; and satellite and receiver antenna phase-center variations and relativistic delays. These effects must be consistently modeled at both the server and the end-user for centimeter-level positioning.
Based on the error sources described in Table 3, it is necessary to convert this information into a format that can be used by the position engine to derive protection levels for each solution. How the final protection level is derived by a position engine is not within the scope of this article. For this, several approaches can be used including carrier-phase-based receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (CRAIM), solution separation and others.
The following equation can be used to describe the overall error contribution for each measurement:
where
is the total uncertainty for satellite i
is the uncertainty of the ionosphere model
is the uncertainty of the troposphere model
is the uncertainty of the combined orbit, clock and bias (ephemeris) corrections
is the uncertainty of the measurements in the given environment
The terms , and are derived from the real-time reference network operator while the term must be computed by the end-user receiver. This final term is perhaps the most difficult to determine, particularly for kinematic environments, as the value is highly dependent on antenna quality, multipath and measurement quality.
PERFORMANCE AND RESULTS
We processed 24 hours of data at three stations covered by Sapcorda’s European network and within the red circle shown in FIGURE 5.
FIGURE 5. Location of stationary testing carried out within Sapcorda’s European network. (Image: Sapcorda)
The test stations were situated in an open-sky environment with high-quality geodetic antennas and receivers. The position results and protection levels were derived from Sapcorda’s own position engine.
FIGURE 6. Integrity plots for the horizontal error and protection levels for three stations within Sapcorda’s European network coverage area.(Image: Sapcorda)
FIGURE 6 shows the horizontal component integrity plots for the three stations. The protection levels are computed for the five-sigma level. In all three examples, the protection level can properly bound the horizontal position error. In terms of the measured accuracy, the typical performance observed at the three stations is between 3 and 7 centimeters for the 95th percentile.
In addition to the stationary testing, two kinematic trials were carried out in cooperation with a system integrator. The integrator setup consisted of a commercial RTK receiver and position engine being fed with SPARTN corrections. The equipment was mounted onto the vehicle used for the tests. Both tests were carried out in an urban environment, which introduced measurement outages due to trees, overpasses and urban canyons. FIGURE 7 shows the area in which the kinematic trails were carried out, as well as some of the urban conditions with which the system had to contend.
FIGURE 7. Location of kinematic trials using Sapcorda’s North American correction service and examples of the environment encountered during the testing. (Image: Sapcorda)
FIGURES 8 and 9 show the position performance and integrity plots for the two kinematic trial scenarios. The reference trajectory was computed using a short baseline post-processed kinematic solution computed with a third- party application. The typical accuracy of the Sapcorda-enabled solution was on the order of 2 to 4 centimeters, while the maximum error was 10 centimeters. In both cases, the protection levels were able to properly bound the horizontal position error. Figure 8 shows an area of increased position error, which occurs around the 22.6- to 22.7-hour mark of the day. This period coincides with the image in the bottom right of Figure 7, where the vehicle passes into a difficult environment with overhead trees and walkways, as well as significant shading from a tall building. Even in this type of environment, the protection levels were able to properly bound the horizontal position error.
FIGURE 8a. Horizontal position performance for kinematic trial #1. The red line indicates the 1-sigma error of the position engine. (Image: Sapcorda)FIGURE 8b. Horizontal position performance for kinematic trial #1: The 5-sigma integrity diagram. (Image: Sapcorda)FIGURE 8b. Horizontal position performance for kinematic trial #1: The 5-sigma integrity diagram. (Image: Sapcorda)FIGURE 9b. Horizontal position performance for kinematic trial #2: The 5-sigma integrity diagram. (Image: Sapcorda)
In addition to the position performance, re-initialization time plays a critical role for precise positioning systems operating in difficult environments. Due to the regular outage and signal blockages, which occur in urban environments, the re-initialization time is critical to providing high availability. Traditional precise point positioning (PPP) systems, even those that perform ambiguity resolution, can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to re-initialize and achieve an acceptable accuracy level (typically 10 centimeters) after a complete outage. Researchers in both academia and industry have developed several methods to reduce this time by “bridging the gap” after outages.
However, these approaches rely on assumptions about either the vehicle trajectory or the stability of the ionosphere before and after outages. The impact of these assumptions on overall integrity have not been adequately studied. Systems that rely on inertial measurement units (IMUs) to constrain the position after an outage introduce a dependency between what should be two independent sensors in the overall system.
FIGURE 10 shows the re-initialization time of the integrator’s position engine when using Sapcorda’s correction service. In this case, the re-initialization time is computed as the time it takes to return to RTK-ambiguity-fixed mode as indicated in the position engine output after an outage. Results based on comparisons against short-baseline RTK positioning showed typical accuracies below 10 centimeters upon re-initialization. In this definition, the time of the outage is included in the overall re-initialization time. In nearly all of the 42 occurrences, the time to re-initialize is less than 10 seconds. This is sufficient to allow an IMU to provide position updates during the GNSS outage.
FIGURE 10. Re-initialization time of the integrator’s position engine enabled by Sapcorda’s correction service. (Image: Sapcorda)
SYSTEM DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
In addition to understanding GNSS error sources and performance, it is also important to consider the integrity of the entire system. This includes software development processes, hardware selection, data communication standards and security.
Software Design
Aspects needing to be addressed include:
Software Coding Standards. As software is used more and more in safety-critical scenarios, standards have been developed to minimize common errors and failures. Some standards relevant for safety-critical applications development include International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard 26262 and Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) C/C++ coding standards. Many of these standards can be automated via the static analysis tools described below.
Functional Safety. The objective of this analysis is to understand the possible failure modes of a system, how likely they are to occur, and how to mitigate their risk. Several methods can be applied for functional safety analysis. One such approach is failure mode effect analysis (FMEA). In general, functional safety analysis is a complex task requiring a wide range of experience and expertise. Understanding how design or feature choices impact overall failure modes is also critical for simplifying the number of cases and overall system complexity.
Test Coverage. Unit tests provide the fundamental verification that a function can perform its expected task. Coverage analysis tools provide insight into which sections, paths and combinations are being tested. Various metrics are possible, including:
statement coverage: measures the number of executable lines of code that are evaluated
branch coverage: measures which code paths are being evaluated (for example, if statements, both true and false must be covered)
modified condition/decision coverage (MC/DC): in addition to checking all branches, all combinations of branches must be considered.
The degree of effort to meet target coverage metrics greatly varies based on the type of metric chosen.
Code Quality Metrics. Code quality metrics attempt to reduce the complexity of functions and methods in the software. Code quality metrics may include:
cyclomatic complexity scores
establishing the maximum number of control statements within a function
establishing the maximum number of lines or methods called within a single function.
Static Analysis. Static code analysis provides an examination of source code prior to execution. It can detect common implementation issues such as divide-by-zero errors, bounds overrun, poorly defined loops or control statements, among others. Most commercial products provide support for MISRA C/C++ guidelines and other best practices for safety-critical applications.
Automated Testing. Test automation is critical for monitoring performance changes and ensuring high-quality code changes. Critical scenarios such as leap-second changes, week rollovers and ephemeris failures can be logged and then used as part of the automated test plan. And, as bugs emerge, adding additional test scenarios for these is also beneficial.
Data Communication Protocol
One must also consider several aspects related to the transmission of the correction service to users.
Open Source. A standardization of an open-source data communication protocol for mass-market applications allows for a receiving system to employ multiple corrections from more than a single specific provider without requiring independent functional safety requirements. This can provide a much higher level of redundancy than is possible when depending on only a single service provider.
Integrity and Functional Safety. To properly quantify the protection level, it is necessary to provide quality information about the corrections being provided by the service. Employing “do not use” flags ensures users drop satellites that may be unhealthy or performing poorly. General system status messages identifying the cause of a failure are also critical for proper separation of issues between server and recipient.
Encryption and Anti-Spoofing. As the use of GNSS expands, the threat of spoofing has become more significant. Data message encryption must be robust and resilient to protect the user of the data against external threats.
Self-Contained and Repeatable. Replication of events is important for safety-critical applications. A message format used for such applications should be self-contained and not rely on any external sources for factors such as initialization or the expansion of data. This may include the expansion of time-tagged data, or limiting the expansion of ephemeris to a specific Issue of Data Ephemeris (IODE).
SUMMARY
High-precision GNSS correction services for applications requiring both accuracy and integrity will continue to grow. To meet these demands, GNSS correction services that previously focused on accuracy as their primary goal must begin to work toward providing adequate integrity information to provide reliable positions and protection levels. This requires a multidisciplinary approach to achieve an in-depth understanding of GNSS error sources, integrity concepts and functional safety.
End users will benefit from the clear separation of the server and recipient responsibilities and through an open communication standard that facilitates the use of multiple correction service providers and is developed with safety and integrity at its core.
The adoption of formal safety practices, including software development strategies to reduce risk and mitigate errors, is also critical in achieving a reliable and safe high-precision correction service.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This article is based on the paper “Integrity for High Accuracy GNSS Correction Services” presented at ION ITM 2019, the 2019 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Reston, Virginia, Jan. 28–31, 2019.
LANDON URQUHART is the R&D engineering manager for Sapcorda Services Inc., with offices in Berlin and Hanover, Germany, and Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. He obtained his M.Sc.E. from the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering at the University of New Brunswick (UNB), Fredericton, Canada. His research interests are GNSS correction services for mass-market applications.
RODRIGO LEANDRO is the chief technology officer at Sapcorda Services in Scottsdale. He holds a Ph.D. in spatial geodesy from UNB. Dr. Leandro has been active in GNSS R&D for more than 15 years and has served in engineering leadership roles in various companies in the GNSS industry.
PAOLA GONZALEZ is a product engineer at Sapcorda Services and is based in Hanover. She completed her B.Sc. in geodesy at Zulia University in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and her master’s degree in geomatics at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe, Germany. In the past few years, she has been working in the GNSS industry, focusing mostly on performance analysis, evaluation and verification of different equipment, software and services.
FURTHER READING
• Authors’ Conference Paper
“Integrity for High Accuracy GNSS Correction Services” by L. Urquhart, R. Leandro and P. Gonzalez in Proceedings of ITM 2019, the 2019 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Reston, Virginia, Jan. 28–31, 2019, pp. 543–553, https://doi.org/10.33012/2019.16709.
• GNSS Integrity
“GNSS Position Integrity in Urban Environments: A Review of Literature” by N. Zhu, J. Marais, D. Betaille and M. Berbineau in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol. 19, No. 9, September 2018, pp. 2762–2778, doi: 10.1109/TITS.2017.2766768.
“Carrier Phase-based Integrity Monitoring for High-accuracy Positioning” by S. Feng, W. Ochieng, T. Moore, C. Hill and C. Hide in GPS Solutions, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2009, pp. 13–22, doi: 10.1007/s10291-008-0093-0.
“New Tools for Network RTK Integrity Monitoring” by X. Chen, H. Landau and U. Vollath in Proceedings of ION GPS/GNSS 2003, the 16th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation, Portland, Oregon, Sept. 9–12, 2003, pp. 1355–1360.
“The Integrity of GPS” by R.B. Langley in GPS World, Vol. 10, No. 3, March 1999, pp. 60–63.
• Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems
“Satellite Based Augmentation Systems” by T. Walter, Chapter 12 in Springer Handbook of Global Navigation Satellite Systems, edited by P.J.G. Teunissen and O. Montenbruck, published by Springer International Publishing AG, Cham, Switzerland, 2017.
Minimum Operational Performance Standards for Global Positioning/Satellite-Based Augmentation System Airborne Equipment, RTCA/DO-229E, prepared by SC-159, RTCA Inc., Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2016.
“The Stanford – ESA Integrity Diagram: A New Tool for The User Domain SBAS Integrity Assessment” by M. Tossaint, J. Samson, F. Toran, J. Ventura-Traveset, M. Hernandez-Pajares, J.M. Juan, J. Sanz and P. Ramos-Bosch in Navigation, Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 54, No. 2, Summer 2007, pp. 153–162.
“Validation of the WAAS MOPS Integrity Equation” by T. Walter, A. Hansen and P. Enge in Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting, The Institute of Navigation, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 28–30, 1999, pp. 217–226.
“WAAS MOPS: Practical Examples” by T. Walter in Proceedings of NTM 1999, the 1999 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, California, Jan. 25–27, 1999, pp. 283–293.
• Jamming and Spoofing
“Interference” by T. Humphreys, Chapter 16 in Springer Handbook of Global Navigation Satellite Systems, edited by P.J.G. Teunissen and O. Montenbruck, published by Springer International Publishing AG, Cham, Switzerland, 2017.
• Ionospheric Threats
“Ionospheric Impact on GNSS Signals” by N. Jakowski, C. Mayer, V. Wilken and M.M. Hoque in Física de la Tierra, Vol. 20, 2008, pp. 11–25.
“Ionospheric Disturbance Indices for RTK and Network RTK Positioning” by L. Wanniger in Proceedings of ION GNSS 2004, the 17th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation, Long Beach, California, Sept. 21–24, 2004, pp. 2489–2854.
The MQ-9 Reaper drone. (Photo: U.S. Air Force/Paul Ridgeway)
A small aircraft’s encounter with a likely military drone near Edwards Air Force Base resulted in navigation failure, according to a report filed with NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System.
In October 2019, a single engine Piper P-46 Malibu was flying at 24,000 feet 36 miles north of Los Angeles en route San Diego.
Defense drone overhead
The pilot reported, “I saw a DOD drone (inverted V tail) pass overhead approximately 1,000 [feet] above. At the same time, my PFD [primary flight display] indicated that I had a large magnetic variation error, and in turn … indicated that I was now flying to a new way point (TCH VOR) located in Utah, well off my flight plan.”
Later, the navigation system indicated that the aircraft was on its way to a spot in Montana.
Interestingly, the flight plan displayed by another cockpit instrument, the Multi-Function Display, was not affected.
The aircraft had been operating under an Instrument Flight Plan. Federal Aviation Administration rules for light aircraft allow such operation with GPS as the sole navigation sensor.
With the primary flight display not operating properly, the aircraft was no longer able to fly a safe instrument approach to landing. Fortunately, the weather was such that it could proceed and land using Visual Flight Rules.
In the pilot’s words, “Had it not been a VMC [visual meteorological conditions] day allowing me to fly a visual approach, I would have had to [advise Air Traffic Control] – and find a way to land without any reliable approach capability.”
A combination of factors
The general consensus among experts is that this incident was inadvertent and likely arose from a combination of factors. Most significant were that the drone flew above the light aircraft, temporarily blocking some GPS signals, and emitting electromagnetic radiation from one or more of its on-board systems.
It is not possible to say what those systems and radiation may have been. It is unlikely they were intended to interfere with GPS reception, as that would pose serious safety-of-flight concerns in the nearby congested Los Angeles airspace.
GPS signals are infamously easy to disrupt, though. It is probable that the close proximity of the drone resulted in some radiation from its systems “spilling over” into GPS frequencies and causing the problem.
Of greater concern is that the light aircraft’s systems did not quickly reset and recover once the drone had moved off and the interference ceased. Had the aircraft been flying in the clouds or bad weather, the loss of its only radionavigation source could have been quite serious.
While not clear from the report, it is likely that the navigation system only recovered after a complete shutdown and restart. From the report in the NASA database:
“The system has since been checked and is operating correctly, but it seems pretty clear this was some type of interference / jamming arising from the DOD drone. Clearly, this is a significant risk to all aircraft, and because if [sic] occurred within the LA airspace it is a serious threat to safe flights.”
The need to address interference
Shortly before this incident, the International Civil Aviation Organization identified addressing interference with satellite navigation system signals an “urgent priority.” This was in response to concerns from several member countries and organizations citing safety of flight issues. One example cited was the near loss of a passenger aircraft flying in the mountains during a period of GPS disruption.
The October 2019 report of interference from the drone is number ACN 1696794 in the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System. It can be accessed by searching here.
Drone service slated to begin February 2020, with goals of enhancing efficacy, reliability and predictability of delivering medical products between hospitals and laboratories.
In February, the University of California (UC) San Diego Health will launch a pilot project to test the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to transport medical samples, supplies and documents between Jacobs Medical Center, Moores Cancer Center and the Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine (CALM), speeding delivery of services and patient care currently managed through ground transport.
Trained professionals will load and operate the drones, which will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths and will carry no cameras. (Photo: UC San Diego Health)
The program is a collaboration with UPS, which received in September 2019 the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Part 135 Standard certification and authorization to use unmanned aircraft systems for a drone delivery program, and Matternet, a Mountain View, California-based drone systems developer for health care institutions. This latest effort builds upon the UPS and Matternet drone project already taking place at WakeMed Health and Hospitals, a private, non-profit health care system based in Raleigh, N.C.
“Currently, medical samples that must be transported between health care sites are carried by courier cars, which are naturally subject to the variabilities of traffic and other ground issues,” said Matthew Jenusaitis, chief administrative officer for innovation and transformation at UC San Diego Health. “With drones, we want to demonstrate proof-of-concept for getting vital samples where they need to be for testing or assessment more quickly and simply. It’s another way to leverage emerging technologies in a way that can tangibly benefit our patients.”
The project calls for medical professionals at Jacobs Medical Center, located on the east health campus of UC San Diego in La Jolla, to pack payloads, such as blood samples or documents, into a secure container that attaches to one of Matternet’s M2 rechargeable battery-powered drones.
The drones will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths, initially between Jacobs Medical Center and special landing sites at Moores Cancer Center, located less than a mile away and within visual line of sight under the FAA’s Part 107 rules, and then subsequently at CALM, which is near the Jacobs Medical Center. The flights will take only minutes to complete and will be monitored by remote operators. The drones will carry no cameras.
In May 2018, the FAA designated the city of San Diego as one of nine lead participants in the regulators’ Integration Pilot Program. UC San Diego was also approved by the FAA to test the use of drones in transporting lab specimens and pharmaceuticals throughout its health system.
“Right now, most biological samples must travel between sites by courier car, within designated hours,” said James Killeen, MD, clinical professor of emergency medicine and director of information technology services at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “That leaves the system vulnerable to the vagaries of road congestion, accidents, construction and more. Travel time can be slow and unpredictable. A drone can fly over such obstacles in a much more direct way, and take just a few minutes to cover the same distance.”
The contract begins the offering for the purchase of complete drone solutions to all state agencies, commissions, political subdivisions, institutions and local public bodies allowed by law.
DroneUp is an end-to-end drone pilot service provider for aerial data collection. In August 2019, the company was awarded the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Services Master Agreement #E194-79435 by the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The services under this latest award (Contract Number #2020DRONE0002) are available for use by all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of the United States through the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) ValuePoint Cooperative Purchasing Organization.
The State of Alaska is now able to use the award for the benefit of state departments, institutions, agencies, political subdivisions, and other eligible entities.
DroneUp’s award includes but is not limited to service categories for
Emergency Support Services,
Law Enforcement Support,
Aerial Inspection or Mapping Data Services,
Agricultural and Gaming, and
Agency Media Relations and Marketing.
Primary users are expected to be
Agriculture & Game Management,
Emergency Management,
Transportation,
Forestry,
Mines,
Minerals and Energy, and
Public Universities and Community Colleges.
“We appreciate the efforts to streamline public sector access to leading-edge UAS services through the contract with the State of Alaska, and we look forward to supporting our hardworking state and local agencies,” said Tom Walker, DroneUp’s CEO.
The use of drones for precision agriculture is gaining momentum because of their capability to deliver the most updated information fast and efficiently. UAVs are transforming how agriculture is done. By implementing drone technology, farms and agriculture businesses can improve crop profit, save time, and make land-management decisions that improves long-term success.
A few weeks ago Quaternium tested its innovative HYBRiX drone to spray fertilizers in the orange fields near Valencia, Spain. With its system of longer-than-average flight-duration, farmers have the opportunity to monitor and spray their fields precisely and rapidly.
“I am really glad to see that the entire spraying process in my orange fields has hardly taken six hours,” said farmer Pedro Andreu while operating the HYBRiX. “With other drones, we had to spend multiple hours waiting for batteries to charge and days to finish the work.”
The test convinced Andreu to use the technology to simplify his work. He engaged farmers in the neighborhood to join him and implement this technology in their work as well.
Alicia Fuentes, Quaternium CEO, accompanied the team for the field demonstration. She noted that farmers could benefit by using precision farming technology in a variety of ways: monitoring the health of their crops, estimating soil conditions, planting future crops, fighting infections and pests, updating the health of plants, and livestock monitoring.
Hybrid fuel system. HYBRiX UAS operates using a hybrid electric-fuel system. This makes it easy to operate the multi-rotor drone through the fields of a farm for an entire work whole day by refilling the spraying tank when needed and the fuel tank every 2-3 hours. Its built-in capacity of 5 liters of fuel enables HYBRiX to surpass the flying time from minutes to 2 to 4 hours.
The powerful propulsion system of HYBRiX allows the aircraft to carry up to 10 liters of liquid, with a maximum takeoff weight of 25 kg. The combination of hybrid power with its increased range extender capacity allows the farmer to cover large acres of land without carrying uncomfortable batteries and ensure long flight time in the field with the aircraft.
Quaternium is now focused on refining this technology to extend crop protection across the country so that farmers can benefit from the outcome to make their work more efficient.
The U.S. Department of Transportation on Wednesday released updated guidelines for autonomous vehicles.
“Ensuring American Leadership in Automated Vehicle Technologies: Automated Vehicles 4.0” (AV 4.0) was announced by U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao in a keynote speech at CES 2020 in Las Vegas.
AV 4.0 unifies efforts in automated vehicles across 38 federal departments, independent agencies, commissions and executive offices, providing high-level guidance to state and local governments, innovators and stakeholders on the U.S. government’s approach toward autonomous vehicles.
“AV 4.0 will ensure American leadership in AV technology development and integration by providing unified guidance for the first time across the federal government for innovators and stakeholders,” Chao said.
AV 4.0 establishes federal principles for the development and integration of automated vehicles, consisting of three core focus areas: prioritize safety and security, promote innovation, and ensure a consistent regulatory approach.
It also outlines ongoing administration efforts supporting autonomous vehicle technology growth and leadership, as well as opportunities for collaboration including federal investments in the sector and resources for innovators, researchers and the public.
“AV 4.0 brings all of the important work happening on automated vehicle technologies across the federal government under one unified approach. The federal principles released today help foster an environment for innovators to advance safe AV technologies, and put the U.S. in a position of continued leadership in the future of transportation,” said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios.
The USDOT is preparing for emerging technologies by engaging with new technologies to address legitimate public concerns about safety, security and privacy without hampering innovation, the department said in a press release.
With the release of “Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety” (ADS 2.0) in September 2017, the USDOT provided voluntary guidance to industry, as well as technical assistance and best practices to states, offering a path forward for the safe testing and integration of Automated Driving Systems.
In October 2018, “Preparing for the Future of Transportation: Automated Vehicles 3.0” (AV 3.0) introduced guiding principles for autonomous vehicle innovation for all surface transportation modes, and described the USDOT’s strategy to address existing barriers to potential safety benefits and progress.
“AV 4.0 builds on these efforts by presenting a unifying posture to inform collaborative efforts in automated vehicles for all stakeholders and outlines past and current federal government efforts to ensure the United States leads the world in AV technology development and integration while prioritizing safety, security, and privacy and safeguarding the freedoms enjoyed by Americans,” the press release stated.
AV 4.0 will be published in the Federal Register for public review and comment. More information on the USDOT’s work on automated vehicles can be found at https://www.transportation.gov/av/4.
A roundup of recent products in the GNSS and inertial positioning industry from the January 2020 issue of GPS World magazine.
OEM
Heavy-duty antenna
For challenging environments
AT311 antenna. (Photo: CHC Navigation)
The heavy-duty CHCNAV AT311T is designed for demanding applications subject to shocks and vibrations. With advanced filtering and robust signal tracking, it provides survey-grade GNSS signals to enhance position reliability for marine applications, machine control, precision agriculture and industrial automation. Features include multi-constellation GNSS tracking using GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, IRNSS and SBAS. Its IP68 water-resistant design makes it safe to use in extreme conditions with a wide temperature range (–40° C to +85° C). Its internal stacked structure enhances performance in high-interference environments, and the 40-dB signal gains, advanced signal filtering and multipath rejection design provide superior and robust GNSS signal tracking in challenging surroundings.
The UAS1 GNSS receiver module has been designed for UAV/UAS applications requiring centimeter accuracy in a small package.(Photo: Trimble)
The UAS1 compact, high-precision GNSS board was designed for unmanned aerial systems (UAS). It allows UAS system integrators to add upgradeable GNSS-based positioning using rugged connectors and Trimble’s software interface. Its 336-channel GNSS engine is capable of tracking L1/L2 frequencies from GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou for centimeter-level, real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning. The compact board provides capabilities from high-accuracy GPS-only to full GNSS features. The receiver supports fault detection and exclusion (FDE) and receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM). System integrators also have the ability to detect interference with an RF spectrum monitoring and analysis tool embedded in the receiver.
The Onyx multi-frequency GNSS OEM board offers integrated StarFire/real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS capabilities. It features 255-channel tracking, including multi-constellation support for GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo. It provides high performance in GNSS receiver sensitivity and signal tracking as well as patented multipath mitigation, interference rejection and anti-jamming capabilities. Through software options, the Onyx ,allows upgrades from free differential GPS signal sources such as WAAS, to increased accuracy services such as StarFire and RTK Extend. The software-enabled features are sold in bundles, but can also be purchased individually to suit changing application needs.
The OSA 5401 and OSA 5405 now enable power utility and broadcast networks to achieve sub-microsecond synchronization. (Photo: Business Wire)
The OSA 5401 and OSA 5405 upgraded PTP grandmaster clocks deliver precise, robust timing in a compact form factor. Oscilloquartz PTP timing technology enables power utility and broadcast networks to achieve sub-microsecond synchronization. The pluggable OSA 5401 is a small PTP grandmaster clock, and the OSA 5405 is an integrated PTP grandmaster with dual GNSS antenna and receiver. With spoofing and jamming detection capabilities, they also provide high availability. The OSA 5401 and 5405 provide new levels of accuracy and resilience for infrastructure and support emerging bandwidth-intensive, latency-sensitive applications. With sub-microsecond synchronization, smart grids can perform flexible, real-time decision making, as well as monitoring and automated maintenance. The OSA 5401 and OSA 5405 comply with the latest PTP profiles for time, frequency and phase synchronization in both power utility and broadcast networks. These include the IEC/IEEE 61850-9-3 Power Utility Profile for precise time distribution and clock synchronization in electrical grids with an accuracy of 1μs, and SMPTE 2059 for synchronizing video and audio equipment over packet networks.
The SBAS-capable CMA-5024 GPS has received U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval for installation on Boeing 737 Next-Generation aircraft. It enables B737NGs to comply with worldwide ADS-B Out mandates as well as SBAS/GPS navigation, enabling the first localizer performance with vertical guidance (LPV) approaches for B737NGs. The CMA-5024 GPS is a cost-effective alternative to replace a multi-mode receiver (MMR). The approved DO-260B ADS-B Out positioning source can be paired with any DO-260B compliant transponder, allowing operators to meet FAA and EASA ADS-B Out requirements, the UAE’s ADS-B Out and RNP requirements mandated by GCAA as well as India’s GAGAN requirements.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved the VTU-20 automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast (ADS-B) transmitter for airport surface management. Adhering to the performance and design assurance specifications of FAA-E-3032, the externally mounted VTU-20 ensures integration and interoperability with Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X (ASDE-X), Airport Surface Surveillance Capability (ASSC) and ADS-B receiver surveillance solutions for airport. The VTU-20 can be permanently or magnetically mounted to all airside vehicles, including utility, emergency, snow-removal and maintenance equipment. Each vehicle is clearly and uniquely identified, providing an essential addition to any surface movement guidance and control system.
Skyward’s Advanced Airspace Intelligence drone airspace maps provide airspace data combined with essential ground intelligence including 3D views of key structures, transmission lines, and more than a million vertical obstacles. The platform also provides access to LAANC, the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability program provided by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. Data available for situational awareness includes vertical structure obstacles, power lines, airports, runways, national parks, stadiums, hospitals and schools.
Hi-Target PPK GO precision add-on enables Phantom 4 RTK drones to achieve the accurate and reliable camera positioning data in any coordinate system without measure targets or ground control points. With 2-centimeter accuracies on XYZ, the output text file with position information or geotagged images can be used directly in major photogrammetric mapping or 3D survey software. The add-on allows selection of GPS/GLONASS/Beidou/ Galileo L1+L2+L5 and further parameter adjustments for position calculation in the PPK process to ensure the most reliable and accurate camera positioning even in poor single satellite system signals.
The R620 GNSS receiver is a complete refresh of Hemisphere’s previous version, the R330. (Photo: Allison Barwacz)
The next-generation R620 receiver is designed for land and marine applications requiring high-precision positioning. It is a complete refresh of the previous version (R330) and has a new low-profile ruggedized enclosure. Customers can start with sub-meter positioning accuracy and upgrade the receiver through activations and subscriptions to add functionality and improve performance capability to centimeter-level accuracy. Powered by the Vega series, the R620 GNSS receiver processes and supports more than 1,100 channels. It simultaneously tracks GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou (including Phase 3), Galileo, QZSS, IRNSS, SBAS and Atlas L-band corrections. It has status LEDs , a powerful WebUI, UHF (400-MHz and 900-MHz) radio, cellular modem, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Ethernet (including power over Ethernet), CAN, serial and USB.
For land surveying and geospatial information systems (GIS)
Photo: Geneq
The rugged SXPad 1500 data collector features an alphanumeric keypad and long-range Bluetooth, and was designed to meet the rigorous IP67 standard for challenging field conditions. It has a 5-inch sunlight-readable touchscreen. The SXPad 1500 can be connected to any GNSS receiver or compatible robotic total station. Driven by a 1-GHz processor and the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system, providing the power to work with maps and large data sets in the field. Its integrated cellular modem and Wi-Fi provides wireless connectivity for internet access and GIS data transfer — helpful for configuring a real-time kinematic (RTK)-compatible GNSS receiver. Equipped with an internal memory of 1 GB (memory can be expanded to 16 GB with an SD card), the SXPad 1500 provides enough storage space for data recording. Its high-performance lithium battery allows uninterrupted field operation for up to eight hours.
The LT700H RTK Android tablet is designed to increase efficiency and productivity of the mobile field workforce in applications requiring centimeter-to-decimeter positioning accuracy. Portable, rugged and versatile, the LT700H enables precision GIS data collection, forensic mapping, construction site layout, environmental surveys, landscaping and earthmoving jobs. Powered by 184-channel high-performance GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou module and a superior tracking GNSS helical antenna, the LT700H provides position availability in demanding environments. Its integrated 4G modem ensures seamless communication from field-to-office and robust connectivity to RTK correction networks.
The Trimble Alloy GNSS reference receiver now supports BeiDou Generation III (BDS-3) signals. This will enable operators to meet the ongoing demand from surveyors, mapping professionals and precision farmers for accurate, reliable corrections derived from real-time networks. Released in 2018, the Alloy has the processing power needed for high-quality data from multiple constellations. Alloy version 5.42 firmware tracks all available and planned GPS Block IIIA L1C and BDS-3 signals.
Hexagon showcased the Leica DSX utility detection solution at Intergeo 2019. (Photo: Allison Barwacz)
The Leica DSX utility detection solution can be used together with Leica GPS/GNSS systems to generate highly accurate, georeferenced maps. The DSX uncovers utilities for repair and maintenance, civil engineering and surveying projects. The ground-penetrating radar system includes portable hardware and software that automates data analysis and creates a 3D utility map.
DroneShield has released a vehicle-mounted drone detection and defeat product, DroneSentry-X.
Lightweight at about 10 kilograms, it can be easily mounted on most vehicles. DroneShield expects the product to be of interest to military, law enforcement, security and VIP the markets. The product is suitable for both vehicle/convoy and fixed site installations. The product was developed in response to substantial customer interest, according to the company.
“Vehicle market for counterdrone protection is rapidly rising,” said DroneShield’s CEO Oleg Vornik. “In addition to catering for that segment, DroneSentry-X provides a more affordable detect-and-defeat solution for price-sensitive customers as an alternative to purchasing full-functionality DroneSentry product from us. DroneShield offers a complete suite of detection and defeat solutions to our customers, and this new product covers the customer need which we identified in our recent engagements.”
Qualcomm Technologies unveiled at CES 2020 its newest addition to the company’s portfolio of automotive products — the Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride Platform.
Snapdragon Ride is an advanced, scalable and open autonomous driving solution consisting of the family of Snapdragon Ride Safety system-on-chips (SoCs), Snapdragon Ride Safety Accelerator and Snapdragon Ride Autonomous Stack.
CES 2020, the massive annual consumer electronics show, is taking place Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas.
Snapdragon Ride aims to address the complexity of autonomous driving and ADAS by leveraging its high-performance, power-efficient hardware, industry-leading artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and pioneering autonomous driving stack to deliver a comprehensive, cost and energy efficient systems solution.
The unique combination of Snapdragon Ride SoCs, accelerator and autonomous stack offers automakers a scalable solution designed to support three industry segments of autonomous systems, namely L1/L2 Active Safety ADAS for vehicles that include automatic emergency braking, traffic sign recognition and lane keeping assist functions; L2+ Convenience ADAS for vehicles featuring Automated Highway Driving, Self-Parking and Urban Driving in Stop-and-Go traffic; and L4/L5 Fully Autonomous Driving for autonomous urban driving, robo-taxis and robo-logistics.
The Snapdragon Ride Platform, based on the Snapdragon family of automotive SoCs and accelerator, is built on scalable and modular heterogeneous high-performance multi-core CPUs, energy efficient AI and computer vision (CV) engines, industry-leading GPU.
The platform with combination of SoCs and accelerator can be used as needed to address every market segment offering industry-leading thermal efficiency, from 30 Tera Operations Per Second (TOPS) for L1/L2 applications to over 700 TOPS at 130W for L4/L5 driving.
The platform can therefore result in designs that can be passively or air-cooled, thereby reducing cost, and increasing reliability, avoiding the need for expensive liquid cooled systems and allowing for simpler vehicle designs, and extending the driving range for electric vehicles. The Snapdragon Ride SoCs and accelerator are designed for functional safety ASIL-D systems.
Snapdragon Ride is expected to be available for pre-development to automakers and tier-1 suppliers in the first half of 2020. Qualcomm Technologies anticipates Snapdragon Ride-enabled vehicles to be in production in 2023.
While the company believes the next wave of innovation may be in the L2+ Convenience ADAS segment, the hardware solutions utilized in Snapdragon Ride from a single system-on-chip (SoC) for an Active Safety ADAS system driven by regulatory mandates to a highly scalable architecture of multiple SoCs and dedicated autonomous driving accelerators allowing for fully autonomous self-driving systems.
Qualcomm Technologies’ family of ADAS SoCs and accelerators are built on the fundamental approach of heterogeneous compute capabilities designed for application requirements.
These ADAS SoCs and accelerators effectively manage a large amount of data from onboard systems, leveraging Qualcomm Technologies’ next generation AI engines; image signal processors for camera sensors; enhanced digital signal processors (DSPs) for sensor signal processing; high-performance CPUs for planning and decision making; cutting-edge GPU technology for high-end visualization and immersive user experience; dedicated safety and security subsystems across the SoC and autonomous driving accelerator.
Through the autonomous driving accelerator, Qualcomm Technologies brings energy efficient compute capabilities to mainstream vehicles, which has so far been largely unavailable to the automotive industry due to exceptionally complex and expensive thermal solutions that are fundamentally unscalable because of their power consumption requirements.
Snapdragon Ride Benefits
Proven and integrated safety board support package with safe OS and hypervisors
Safety frameworks from automotive industry leaders, including Adaptive AUTOSAR
Optimized and comprehensive foundational function libraries for computer vision, sensor signal processing, and standard arithmetic libraries
AI tools for improving model efficiencies, as well as optimizing runtime on heterogeneous compute units
Comprehensive autonomous driving stack for highway functions, such as perception and planning for highway driving functions
Cost-efficient localization solution with Qualcomm Vision Enhanced Precise Positioning (VEPP)
Hardware and Software in Loop Test environment
Data Management Tools for intelligent data collection and automated annotation
Autonomous Stack
Integrated as a part of Snapdragon Ride is Qualcomm Technologies’ new purpose-built autonomous driving software stack, a modular and scalable solution available to automotive OEM and tier-1 suppliers to accelerate their development and innovations.
The software stack facilitates automakers’ abilities to offer increased safety and comfort to everyday driving by offering optimized software and applications for complex use cases, such as self-navigating human-like highway driving, as well as choice of modular options like perception, localization, sensor fusion and behavior planning.
The software infrastructure for Snapdragon Ride supports customer specific stack components to be co-hosted with the Snapdragon Ride Autonomous Stack components.
“Over the years, we have consistently demonstrated our prowess in large-scale deployment of high-performance and highly intelligent cockpit and connected car solutions that operate in power-constrained environments across virtually every class of vehicle. Today, we are pleased to be introducing our first-generation Snapdragon Ride platform, which is highly scalable, open, fully customizable and highly power optimized autonomous driving solution designed to address a range of requirements from NCAP to L2+ Highway Autopilot to Robo Taxis. Combined with our Snapdragon Ride Autonomous Stack, or an automaker or tier-1’s own algorithms, our platform aims at accelerating the deployment of high-performance autonomous driving to mass market vehicles,” said Nakul Duggal, senior vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We’ve spent the last several years researching and developing our new autonomous platform and accompanying driving stack, identifying challenges and gathering insights from data analysis to address the complexities automakers want to solve.”
Hyundai is the first Uber Elevate partner with manufacturing capabilities to mass produce Uber Air Taxis
Uber and Hyundai Motor Company announced at CES 2020 a new partnership to develop Uber Air Taxis for a future aerial ride-share network and unveiled a full-scale aircraft concept. Hyundai is the first automotive company to join the Uber Elevate initiative, bringing automotive-scale manufacturing capability and a track record of mass-producing electric vehicles.
CES 2020, the massive annual consumer electronics show, is taking place Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas. Hyundai Motor’s innovative smart mobility solutions including UAM, PBV, Hub and more are showcased at Booth 5431 in the Las Vegas Convention Center North Hall.
The taxi concept was created in part through Uber’s open design process, a NASA-inspired approach that jump starts innovation by publicly releasing vehicle design concepts so any company can use them to innovate their air taxi models and engineering technologies.
In this partnership, Hyundai will produce and deploy the air vehicles, and Uber will provide airspace support services, connections to ground transportation, and customer interfaces through an aerial ride-share network. Both parties are collaborating on infrastructure concepts to support take-off and landing for this new class of vehicles.
The SA-1 air taxi. (Photo: Uber/Hyundai)
“Our vision of urban air mobility will transform the concept of urban transportation,” said Jaiwon Shin, Executive Vice President and Head of Hyundai’s Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Division. “We expect UAM to vitalize urban communities and provide more quality time to people. We are confident that Uber Elevate is the right partner to make this innovative product readily available to as many customers as possible.”
“Hyundai is our first vehicle partner with experience of manufacturing passenger cars on a global scale. We believe Hyundai has the potential to build Uber Air vehicles at rates unseen in the current aerospace industry, producing high quality, reliable aircraft at high volumes to drive down passenger costs per trip. Combining Hyundai’s manufacturing muscle with Uber’s technology platform represents a giant leap forward for launching a vibrant air taxi network in the coming years,” said Eric Allison, head of Uber Elevate.
In preparation for this announcement, Hyundai worked with Uber Elevate to develop a PAV (personal air vehicle) model, S-A1, that uses innovative design processes to optimize electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for aerial ridesharing purposes. S-A1 previous eVTOL designs Uber Elevate has released in the following ways:
It is designed for a cruising speed up to 180 miles/hr (290 km/hr), a cruising altitude of around 1,000-2,000 feet (300 – 600 mt) above ground, and to fly trips up to 60 mile (100 km).
The Hyundai vehicle will be 100% electric, utilizing distributed electric propulsion and during peak hours will require about five to seven minutes for recharging.
Hyundai’s electric aircraft utilizes distributed electric propulsion, powering multiple rotors and propellers around the airframe to increase safety by decreasing any single point of failure. Having several, smaller rotors also reduces noise relative to large rotor helicopters with combustion engines, which is very important to cities.
The model is designed to take off vertically, transition to wing-borne lift in cruise, and then transition back to vertical flight to land.
The Hyundai vehicle will be piloted initially, but over time they will become autonomous.
The cabin is designed with four passenger seats, allowing riders to board and disembark easily and avoid the middle seat with enough space for a personal bag or backpack.
Ushering in the era of seamless mobility, Hyundai’s exploration of future urban transportation incorporates the electric PAV concept with a new ground transportation, the Purpose Built Vehicle (PBV) concept.
Hyundai’s vision for creating communities from future transit systems comes into focus with yet another new infrastructure concept, called the Hub. When many PBVs and PAVs are docked and connected to a Hub, they make a new public space where diverse groups of people can come together.
