VBOX Automotive has launched the NTRIP Base Station, expanding its GNSS test equipment range. The system combines a multi-constellation, multi-frequency GNSS engine with a built-in networked transport of RTCM via internet protocol (NTRIP) server.
The equipment transmits real-time kinematic corrections over radio and cellular or Wi-Fi networks, supporting accurate real-time positioning across wider areas in varied environments compared to traditional radio-only systems.
The base station launches in three models, with specifications designed to fit users’ needs. All systems combine quad-constellation, dual-frequency GNSS technology with built-in cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity.
Internal GNSS antenna and 2.4 GHz radio Quick to deploy for short-range applications, for temporary or mobile testing.
Internal GNSS antenna, no radio Compact and simple, ideal for NTRIP or semi-permanent installations with external high-power radio masts.
External GNSS antenna, no radio Optimized for permanent installations with tripod-mounted antennas for maximum satellite visibility, supporting NTRIP or external radio.
Compatible with VBOX 4, VBOX 3iS, and external GNSS rovers, the new NTRIP Base Station supports both MSM4 and MSM7 RTCM formats, has up to 24 hours battery life, and is rated to IP67 to handle the demands of long outdoor test sessions.
“We have developed the NTRIP Base Station in response to the growing need for accurate positioning in more varied test environments,” said Martin Papps, engineering director at Racelogic. “This new Base Station delivers centimetre-level accuracy without the range and line-of-sight limitations of traditional radio corrections.”
Septentrio, a leader in high-precision GNSS positioning solutions, introduced the AsteRx SB3 ProBase, the latest generation of GPS/GNSS base station receivers, designed for the creation of top-quality measurements for RTK and differential corrections.
The AsteRx SB3 ProBase is an IP68-housed GNSS base station receiver, featuring the latest quad-constellation GNSS technology for the best quality measurements. The new ruggedized receiver complements the SB3 receiver family: the AsteRx SB3 Pro, rover receiver, the AsteRx SB3 Pro+ rover and base receiver and the AsteRx SB3 CLAS, dedicated to the Japanese market.
“Customers often look for a simple, high-quality and easy-to-integrate base station to set up local high precision RTK or to densify their network and the AsteRx SB3 ProBase is the perfect solution,” said Silviu Taujan, Product Manager at Septentrio. “Thanks to its configuration flexibility and monitoring capabilities it is extremely easy to deploy and configure the SB3 ProBase. Plus, it comes with our industry-leading GNSS+ technologies, including anti-jam and anti-spoofing technology (AIM+) for unbeatable robustness and reliability.”
AsteRx SB3 products are pin-to-pin compatible with Septentrio’s popular AsteRx SB ProDirect receiver and with the recently released AsteRx SBi3 GNSS/INS system, making it simple to change receivers.
Trimble continues to increase its footprint to deliver high-accuracy positioning correction services
Photo: Trimble
Trimble has acquired MidStates VRS, a network previously owned by Butler Machinery and Frontier Precision. The addition of the network, in North and South Dakota, increases the footprint of Trimble’s VRS Now GNSS corrections service to cover more than one million square miles in North America. Financial terms were not disclosed.
As part of an ongoing expansion strategy, the new coverage for the VRS Now subscription service helps users in more places achieve high-accuracy positioning to increase productivity, reduce operational costs and improve safety.
The correction service is designed for professionals in agriculture, geospatial and construction as well as emerging autonomous applications including lane-keeping for passenger vehicles, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) position identification and unmanned aerial system guidance.
Adding 105,000 square miles of coverage, the acquisition expands Trimble’s VRS Now network to be one of the largest in North America — over one million square miles, contributing to Trimble’s shift toward a software, services and subscription business emphasis.
When using the Trimble VRS Now service, land and construction surveyors, GIS professionals and farmers — with a Trimble or third-party commercial GNSS receiver — can leverage instant high-accuracy corrections delivered via cellular network to improve productivity.
Enabling users to work without a GNSS base station, the service is cost-effective and simple to use. It is ideal for a variety of applications that require sub-inch level accuracy and is an important component of the connected construction site and connected farm workflows.
“The MidStates VRS network covers significant farmland, oil fields and rapidly developing urban areas, providing farmers and surveyors in the region with the real-time GNSS correction services they need to improve their day-to-day work,” said Patricia Boothe, senior vice president of Trimble’s Autonomy Sector. “The purchase of the MidStates network demonstrates Trimble’s ongoing commitment to provide a wide range of correction services for autonomous solutions — delivering unmatched access to fast, reliable and highly accurate positioning in more areas than ever before.”
Trimble networks are supported by a global network operations team made up of GNSS system engineers, geodesy experts and IT professionals. The team monitors the networks 24/7 from operation centers located on three continents, providing consistent and reliable service uptime and performance integrity.
Trimble VRS Now. The correction service offers instant access to centimeter-level positioning tailored to the users’ geographic location; the service is always on wherever and whenever needed within the network coverage area. With no base station or setup required, it is cost-effective, efficient and simple to use.
VRS provides positioning professionals with instant access to real-time kinematic (RTK) and post-processing (PP) corrections utilizing a network of permanent (fixed) continuously operating reference stations (CORS).
Trimble-owned VRS networks are accessible now in areas throughout the U.S. and Canada as well as Eastern Australia and Tasmania, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and New Zealand.
Photo: Joel Papalini/iStock / Getty Images Plus/Getty Images
Airports are extremely congested spaces, both on land and in the air, making it difficult to conduct surveys that provide insights into their continued monitoring and maintenance.
UAVs create the opportunity to survey such sites safer and faster, reducing disturbances to everyday operations while collecting a level of detail unparalleled by conventional surveying techniques to locate and accurately capture areas in need of maintenance and management on airport runways.
Following several drainage and grading issues throughout a 650-acre airport, Texas-based civil engineering company Gessner Engineering was contracted to provide surveying services to identify the most problematic regions.
The team had to conduct the survey with minimal impact on runway operations. By coordinating with the airport’s air traffic controllers, the team planned a 6–8-hour flight window, with just a few pauses for ongoing traffic, while the airport operated as usual.
Before the flight, the surveyors used senseFly eMotion flight-planning software to carry out pre-flight risk assessments and plan flights. During the survey, four 20-minute flights were completed with the senseFly eBee fixed-wing drone. With its fully autonomous and easy-to-use aerial mapping capabilities, the eBee was able to capture the high-resolution aerial photos needed to map the entire airport. The data was processed using Pix4D Mapper to generate a topographic model including a point cloud with a ground sample distance of 1.5 inches.
The point cloud was so comprehensive, it brought attention to four more areas with drainage issues, providing a level of detail that would not have been possible using only a ground GNSS base station. The UAV survey took one day, compared to four weeks for traditional surveying. This cut the project time in half and significantly reduced disturbances to airport operations.
“The savings in manpower with the shorter surveying time, accurate data retrieved, and the additional drainage issues identified demonstrate the value of drones, as an enabler of solving complex challenges in congested airspaces, especially where time is limited,” said Troy Hittle, general manager, North America, SenseFly. “The success of this project by using UAV equipment has offered new possibilities to both Gessner Engineering and the future of aviation maintenance.”
The Edge1 system by Skycatch is a combination GNSS base station and drone data-processing unit that delivers high-accuracy maps and point clouds in minutes.
The high-performance built-in Nvidia TX2 Mobile GPU enables both maps and point-cloud processing locally within 30 minutes, as well as running artificial intelligence (AI) tasks in real time.
The base station of the Edge1 uses a Swift Navigation dual-frequency GNSS real-time kinematic (RTK) receiver. The receiver supports signals from GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo, enabling reliably fast centimeter-level accuracy globally even in remote locations, with reliable 5-centimeter accuracy.
Users of the Edge1 system can process and receive their maps in the field, without the need for internet connectivity to process data. The system automatically generates 2D maps and 3D data, with the capability to download and use them in Skycatch’s Data Hub, as well as commonly used programs like Civil 3D, BIM360 and others.
Turkey has opened GNSS base station in Antarctica, according to Sputnik News. The station can track changes in the location of icebergs and transmit photos of Antarctica’s surface, as well as process data from GPS, GLONASS and Galileo.
“A GNSS satellite navigation base station was set up within the framework of the fourth Turkish scientific expedition to Antarctica,” said Turkish Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank, as quoted by the national Anadolu news agency. “A group of specialists from the Turkish General Directorate of Mapping has built Turkey’s first GNSS base station abroad.”
The 24-member Turkish research team joins 15 scientific projects in the Earth, life, and marine sciences. The expedition is being conducted under the auspices of the Turkish Presidential Administration and the Ministry of Industry and Technology and coordinated by the TUBITAK.
Komatsu Australia and Skycatch Inc. are partnering to boost the efficiency of construction, mining and quarry sites across Oceana with the High Precision Package.
The High Precision Package is also known as Komatsu’s Everyday Drone Solution, a key component to the Smart Construction workflow.
The Everyday Drone contains the Explore1 high-precision UAV, the Edge1 integrated GNSS base station and edge compute module, and the Viewer, an online data visualization and analysis tool, packaged into a commercial-grade kit.
High-precision package. (Photo: Skycatch)
The Everyday Drone allows a user to experience time to data without needing ground control points (GCP), and the ability to seamlessly integrate precision aerial data into their Smart Construction Workflow.
In common construction workflows, the time to data using traditional surveying methods could take weeks until project stakeholders can view or analyze their job site data. With the Edge1, customers are able to leverage a seamless GCP free workflow that consistently delivers sub 50-mm accurate data, in arbitrary or local coordinate systems within 30 minutes, saving countless hours and labor costs.
“We are now using the Everyday Drone at the start of projects to collect whole site information for pre-tender and bidding capability, comparing against 3D design surface to provide fleet and project managers real, accurate information viewed in the Smart Construction Application,” said Aaron Marsh, national technology solution expert manager, Smart Centre, Komatsu Australia. “This allows them to work out their cut and fill volumes with accuracy from the beginning, and enables the project tender team to select the right machines for the project optimising fleet recommendation and empowering the team to make the right, data-based decisions from the start.”
“Skycatch is proud to offer a better way of accessing precision data on-site. With traditional methods, the solutions are piecemeal, cumbersome, and time-consuming,” said Christian Sanz, Skycatch founder and CEO. “Now, customers are able to make informed decisions about changes to what was planned and what is actually happening on site in near real-time, ultimately providing greater productivity, increased profit and reducing project risk from beginning to end,”
Customers tested the receptiveness of the Everyday Drone Solution, said James Mackenzie, national remote support manager at Komatsu Australia. They first tested in civil construction, and then quickly expanded into quarry sites. Mackenzie was able to survey six quarries in five days for different customers, post-processed in the cloud, receiving the data back the next day.
“Compared to a traditional survey, this is 100% more productive and efficient,” Mackenzie said. “By using the Everyday Drone, customers are no longer putting themselves in harm’s way, surveying around heavy machinery or climbing up unstable stockpiles at risk of twisting an ankle.”
He also noted that customers appreciated the fast turn-around time, the ease of use, and the ruggedness of the products.
“Skycatch’s ability to provide near real-time data throughout the entire project is vital, and being able to deliver that to the customer, supervisor and give project teams the ability to make decisions throughout the project easily with usable, accurate data is key to the success of the project as a whole, not just in siloed environments is priceless,” Marsh said.
Skycatch has announced an on-premise data processing and GNSS base station, the Skycatch Edge1, manufactured in partnership with DJI and now available worldwide.
Edge1 base station. (Photo: Skycatch)
Tested and optimized for the Skycatch Explore1 and DJI Phantom 4 RTK drones, the self-positioning Edge1 allows commercial drone users the ability to process and receive data without the need for internet or cellular connectivity, the company said.
Field teams can fly their drone, process the data and receive centimeter-level data outputs in 30 minutes or less, directly to a tablet. 2D maps and 3D point clouds are available for viewing and sharing directly from the tablet.
The Edge1 concept began as a companion to the Skycatch Explore 1 drone. Now, a new generation of the Edge1 will support all DJI drones, including the recently released DJI Phantom 4 RTK, and will process any 2D geotagged images.
In addition to a survey-grade GNSS base station, the Edge1 includes built-in WiFi, LTE, reliable sub-5-centimeter accuracy, and delivers high-quality data outputs, the company added. Built around a state-of-the-art compute module, the Edge1 is also capable of running deep learning algorithms to extract more insights from collected data in near real time.
“It’s truly a revolutionary product that we’re excited to make available to the DJI community, and the construction and mining industry at large,” said Christian Sanz, founder & CEO of Skycatch. “With the partnership and support of DJI, the Edge1 will be assembled with precision execution in their world-class manufacturing facility, and will be available faster to the customer.”
“As the commercial drone industry has grown, the amount of data collected by our enterprise users is unprecedented,” said Jan Gasparic, director of strategic partnerships at DJI. “We are glad to work with Skycatch to manufacture the Skycatch Edge1 GNSS base receiver, enabling enterprise customers, especially those in the construction industry, to process data from their DJI drones on-site and in real-time.”
Skycatch is an industrial data collection and analytics company focused on indexing and extracting critical information from the physical world, using a combination of hardware, software and artificial intelligence. Built for enterprise, its turnkey solutions are deployed across global project sites with largest construction, mining and energy companies.
