Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division conduct a terrain walk using the Dismounted Assured Positioning System during the 2023 PNTAX. (Photo: U.S. Army)
MerlinTPS has tested its Terrestrial Positioning System (TPS) at the Department of Defense (DOD) PNT Assessment Exercises (PNTAX), demonstrating resilience against electromagnetic radio frequency interference. This test positions TPS as an alternative to GNSS-based systems in environments where GNSS is compromised or unavailable.
PNTAX is designed to evaluate positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies under conditions where traditional GPS signals are degraded or denied. MerlinTPS’s system uses broadcast radio signals, which are less susceptible to jamming and spoofing than satellite signals, to provide positioning and timing data.
The company is also working to enhance the portability and integration of TPS, collaborating with a RISC-V core engineering firm to reduce the size of their neuromorphic design, facilitating easier integration into OEM devices.
Throughout the PNTAX, Persistent Systems’ MPU5 radios supported backhaul communications reliably, even under harsh environmental conditions.
The tests at PNTAX represent a step forward for MerlinTPS in moving towards commercial deployment, with the goal of providing an alternative and reliable PNT solution across various industries globally, according to the company.
Topcon Positioning Systems has entered a strategic partnership with Bentley Systems and Worldsensing to integrate Topcon’s GNSS technology into the companies’ software and connectivity solutions to improve geospatial data accuracy and operational efficiency.
Under the agreement, Topcon’s web-based GNSS processing engine will be incorporated into Bentley’s iTwin internet-of-things (IoT) monitoring solutions, offering users real-time geospatial intelligence for better decision-making and operational effectiveness. According to Steve Bentley, senior director of infrastructure IoT at Bentley Systems, the system is designed to advance the capabilities of infrastructure digital twins.
It is a connect-and-collect solution that allows for real-time detection and analysis of potential risks. GNSS technology is the core component, which aims to make ground-movement monitoring applications more cost-effective and efficient while reducing the initial investment required for GNSS monitoring.
It is available for commercial use in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. According to Bentley Systems, the solution will expand its reach to South and Latin America.
Septentrio is closely working with several UAV solutions providers including 3DR, Holybro, ARK Electronics and Systork, resulting in various new products that allow for easier prototyping or integration of the Septentrio mosaic GNSS receiver into UAVs.
mosaic is a compact triple-frequency receiver leveraging signals from all available GNSS constellations to offer the highest degree of positioning availability, even under challenging conditions. Built-in anti-jamming and anti-spoofing technology protects mosaic against intentional or unintentional interference. A high level of positioning reliability is also required by UAVs, which operate in challenging environments such as around high structures, under foliage or in places of possible RF interference. In addition to collaborations with hardware integrators, Septentrio works closely with the open-source autopilot community including PX4 and Ardupilot, which aims to facilitate a smooth integration process for end-users.
The recently available products, which are designed to bring reliable high-accuracy positioning to UAVs, include Holybro H-RTK mosaic-H (dual antenna heading), 3DR mosaic-X5 CAN GPS, Systork Linnet mosaic-X5 and ARK mosaic-x5 GPS. These products offer UAV-centered features such as magnetometer, barometer and UAV CAN communication. The integrated mosaic module receives signals from all GNSS constellations and outputs centimeter-level RTK positioning as well as full GNSS carrier raw data
Dual antenna operation is also supported with mosaic-H for heading and pitch or heading and roll orientation with sub-degree accuracy. Its anti-interference technology AIM+ is designed to protect the system from malicious jamming and spoofing attacks and reduces the risk of self-interference which occurs when nearby electronics like cameras and servos accidentally emit radio signals that interfere with GPS/GNSS.
Hexagon | NovAtel has released its 7.09.01 and 7.09.02 firmware, designed to provide improved precise point positioning (PPP) accuracy and availability for ionospheric scintillation on all OEM7 receiver boards, enclosures and SMART Antennas.
Ionospheric scintillation refers to rapid fluctuations in GNSS signal strength and phase due to localized irregularities in the electron density of the ionosphere resulting from solar activity. Scintillation adversely affects GNSS positioning particularly around the geomagnetic equator after local sunset.
Ionospheric activity is increasing as the peak of Solar Cycle 25 is approaching. To mitigate these effects, 7.09.01 and 7.09.02 firmware is designed to offer substantial enhancements to the accuracy and availability of high-precision positioning during ionospheric scintillation.
Version 7.09.01 is available for agriculture applications replacing Version 7.08.15. Version 7.09.02 is available for all other markets replacing Version 7.09.00.
Data comparing the performance of 7.09.01 and 7.09.02 to previous firmware versions showed 60% improved TerraStar-C PRO PPP accuracy during periods of ionospheric scintillation and less than 90% uptime with TerraStar-C PRO PPP in scintillation regions.
Additionally, the 7.09.01 for agriculture includes Precision time protocol (PTP) available on SMART7-I and SMART7-SI for synchronizing accurate GNSS time with other devices on a shared network. Compared to the previously released Version. 7.09.00, the system shows improvements to the time to first fix (TTFF).
Users can download the firmware updates for specific platforms at https://bit.ly/3Jr8hJi
The GEODNET Foundation has received more than $2 million of strategic investments from new investors including CoinFund, Pantera, VanEck and Santiago R. Santos. The additional funds raised will support the Foundation’s near-term objectives of decentralization and developer accessibility.
GEODNET, the company’s blockchain-based global navigation network, has more than 5,000 GNSS reference stations added to its real-time kinematic (RTK) network, designed to enhance location and intelligent autonomy services. Standard GPS is typically off by two meters; however, devices connected to GEODNET’s global RTK network are designed to achieve instant accuracy within 1 cm to 2 cm.
The network can be used in agriculture, UAVs, consumer robotic devices and commercial global positioning services such as PPP precision point positioning (PPP), automotive-focused PPP-RTK services and low-Earth orbit satellite tracking.
GEODNET has more than 4,000 registered reference stations in more than 2,500 cities across 120 countries. It is designed to provide robust precision navigation systems to a variety of industries, including self-driving cars, agriculture, consumer robots, and more. An additional 2,000 stations are being delivered and installed.
TrustPoint, a commercial GPS and navigation technology company, has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract by AFWERX, totaling $1.6 million. The contract focuses on the development of advanced, resilient navigation applications to meet the challenges faced by the Department of the Air Force.
In collaboration with the Naval Postgraduate School, TrustPoint aims to enhance its GNSS capabilities and pave the way for applications that will boost the national defense of the United States.
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and AFWERX have partnered to optimize the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and STTR processes. Their efforts aim to provide quicker proposal-to-award timelines, broadening the applicant pool to include more small businesses and reducing bureaucratic overhead through ongoing process improvements. Since the initiation of the Open Topic SBIR/STTR program in 2018, the DAF has expanded the scope of innovations it funds, with TrustPoint’s project commencing on April 2, 2024.
K1000ULE in flight. (Photo: Kraus Hamdani Aerospace)
There was a lot of press noise in December 2023 about DOD’s Replicator program– which has been interpreted as a project to field thousands of U.S. UAVs to counter a perceived weakness in the face of China’s options for waging UAV war. Then there was a move by the Replicator program office to better explain its approach. It was reported as having at least four concurrent elements:
Encourage U.S. industry to conceive and implement ways to overcome the new aspects of conducting war and possibly use more UAVs more often.
Let China know that the United States is already on the move to not only keep up with but exceed Chinese capabilities.
Overhaul the extremely burdensome and slow existing DOD procurement machine to make large, rapid acquisitions.
Invigorate DOD military services to quickly adapt to find ways to use UAVs in multiple offensive and defensive roles.
Presumably, lessons learned in Ukraine — where both sides have been throwing both improvised and specially designed explosive drones at each other — and U.S. Red Sea encounters with Houthi rebels — have helped to frame some of Replicator’s objectives.
Anyone who has labored through a DOD request for proposal (RFP), RFP response, competitive re-bid and maybe even more competitive re-rebid that potentially led to months of questions and waiting leading to an ultimate reward or disappointment can imagine what hoops the procuring agency had to jump through. They can also imagine the time that elapsed from the definition of a requirement to a written firm procurement specification, and approval of a procurement package.
Never mind the allocation of procurement staff, establishing a budget and then processing of possibly multiple responses – this is a complex, arduous and time-consuming task for both industry and the procurement agencies. With help from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), it is anticipated that acquiring and fielding thousands of commercially available autonomous drones will now go quicker.
Imagine the inertia needed to change the way that military services use the materiel they’ve acquired and how difficult it might be to change what is bought and how it is used at the very front end of a war effort. When the opposition chucks many, small, inexpensive, airborne bombs at you and you do not have an immediate answer other than a limited number of multi-million-dollar interceptor missiles, it can be very painful. Matching drones with drones is essential.
Replicator was initially envisaged as a $1 billion program over two years to counter this and other problems for the warfighter.
On March 23, Congress finally passed the FY 24 $825 billion defense spending bill — almost six months late — which contained $200 million for Replicator, and DOD began to scramble to find an additional $300 million for the program’s first year. It should work out as there is money currently unspent from the FY23 budget that DOD has already requested Congress to re-allocate, and there is only a little more than six months left for this fiscal year anyway.
It is rumored that AeroVironment, with its Switchblade 600 semi-autonomous, one-way Kamikaze UAV, may benefit from an early Replicator procurement. With an anti-armor charge, Switchblade weighs about 50 lb and can fly for 24 miles and up to 40 minutes before engaging its target, allowing adequate time for manual intervention.
The U.S. Navy has selected a solar-powered UAV from a California start-up because it is the best demonstrated commercially available option for their Marine Corps scouting group.
The K1000ULE from KHAero in Emeryville, California is a long-range reconnaissance UAV.
With 24-hour flight endurance, extremely quiet and virtually radar-undetectable, the UAV provides the Marines with a suitable scouting tool – almost a launch-and-forget facility for day and night, most weather recon activities. It is also a relatively low workload for a team of only three to five personnel to transport and operate.
With vertical take-off and landing capabilities, the K1000ULE is ideal for covert autonomous operations from unprepared areas that a small squad might secure. The mission equipage includes full-motion video with target identification and classification and a secure communications systems.
With anti-jam, anti-spoofing multi-constellation GNSS, the vehicle can operate reliably in most signal-denied areas. It finds and automatically uses thermal columns to soar up to 20,000 ft and loiter undetected. It is capable of beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight, can carry ADS-B for airborne collision avoidance and can be operated in swarms by a single operator when required – quite some UAV!
The Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie Wingman UAV was developed to work with and on-behalf of high-end airborne assets, such as the F-22 and F-35, and is termed an ‘attributable’ adjunct to these ~$90 million fighter/ground-attack aircraft. Autonomous, driven by AI, and stealthy, the jet-powered UAV carries General Aviation electronics, along with other military communications. It is said to cost in the $5 to 10 million range — which makes it somewhat disposable if it is sent into a “tight or risky” location from which its fighter escort should hold back.
With a 3,000 miles range, 45,000 ft ceiling and carrying capacity of up to 1,800 lb of under-wing armaments, the aircraft can be controlled from an accompanying aircraft as a “Loyal Wingman,” or from the ground and be dispatched to carry out an autonomous, independent mission, requiring approval by a person to release weapons.
The XQ-58A was recently flown with two U.S. Marine Corps F-35 fighter jets at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida to demonstrate the capability for electronic attack and to fly alongside these fifth-generation high-end aircraft. The UAV autonomously detected, classified, and positioned multiple simulated targets during the exercise and provided target-tracking information to the F-35s.
The “Loyal Wingman” concept is still being developed and there are other companies, including Boeing Australia, flying competing prototype UAVs.
So, a more mil-spec tone to this month’s UAV updates, nevertheless a short recap of recent interesting unmanned, autonomous aircraft developments.
Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez have introduced a new permit program designed to oversee the testing of autonomous vehicles in New York City. The program is part of the city’s initiative to ensure the safe and responsible exploration of autonomous vehicles. With safety as the primary concern, the program mandates that a trained driver must be present behind the wheel of any autonomous vehicle being tested, ready to take control at any moment.
The permit application process requires companies to demonstrate preparedness for testing in New York’s challenging urban environment through detailed plans for technology deployment and safety. This includes showcasing prior testing experience, technological capabilities and comprehensive safety plans detailing how the technology will be safely operated on city streets.
Companies interested in participating in the program must follow industry best practices for the recruitment and training of safety drivers, obtain approval from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, and coordinate closely with the city’s emergency services. They must also comply with cybersecurity best practices and provide detailed reports on the automation level and safety performance of their autonomous vehicles and technology.
Inertial Labs has integrated the FT Technologies FT743-D-SM Acoustic Resonance air speed sensor into its inertial navigation systems (INS).
This integration aims to improve the accuracy of horizontal air speed estimation for multi-rotor UAVs, even in GNSS-denied environments. The FT743-D-SM airspeed sensor is a digital anemometer-based solution that can estimate airspeed incoming from any direction using acoustic resonance technology, which is immune to vibration and external acoustic noise. The airspeed magnitude and direction allow the INS to estimate horizontal air speed in the longitudinal and lateral axes.
The INS receives aiding data from the dual-axis airspeed sensor and experiences significantly less position drift compared to a dead reckoning alternative in GNSS-denied environments, the company said. The system can be used in mission-critical roles in multiple military or defense applications, as well as in civilian applications such as wind energy, marine navigation, UAVs and dynamic positioning systems.
An exclusive interview with Michael Gavart, CTO of M3 Systems.
The Boreal UAV ready for departure on a maritime mission scheduled to last several hours. (Image: M3 Systems)
What is your role?
I am responsible for all the technical developments on the UAV.
Please describe it.
It’s fixed wing. It has a 4 m wingspan, a maximum takeoff weight of 25 kg, a carrying capacity of up to 7 kg and up to eight hours of flying time. What is special about this UAV is its size and the size of the payload bay, which is large enough to hold different kinds of payloads.
Do you have different versions?
We have a surveillance version, called BOREAL ISR, that has been used for several projects. Another use case for this UAV is to embed scientific payloads. For example, we had several campaigns for meteorology in partnership with Météo-France in the Indian Ocean to study cyclones and another in the Caribbean Sea to study tropical convection. We did several large scientific campaigns with Météo-France.
Most of the payloads we integrate are for scientific testing. Some of them are for cartography in the visible or infrared domain and other kinds of payloads involve radio frequency testing. Among them, we have, of course, GNSS.
The project we conducted in 2023 was a demonstration campaign for the operational use of this surveillance UAV. The campaign occurred from July to November 2023. It consisted of 20 five-hour flights, three of which were at night. In total during that campaign, the UAV flew more than 100 hours for about 8,000 km and captured data from about 20,000 sq km. This made it possible to identify hundreds of boats fishing illegally. In some cases, the country’s navy intervened and the UAV took live video of the operation to help analyze the scene.
The UAV also flew many operations over the tropical forest, some of them at night, which made it possible to identify some recent mining activities in sites that had already been destroyed some months before.
Another subject was forest fires. During one flight, we identified more than 20 forest fires and the firefighters were able to prioritize where to intervene to fight the fires.
What about flights beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)?
The radio link enables operators to fly the UAV from up to 100 km from the ground control station, provided that we remain in radio line of sight (RLOS) conditions. Additionally, the UAV has a satellite communication system to fly beyond RLOS in some cases. For some scientific missions, the UAV was flown beyond RLOS conditions using satellite communications, and we could fly up to 250 km from the ground control station.
The Boreal UAV is currently deployed for various kinds of terrestrial applications. (Image: M3 Systems)
When was this UAV first available? What is the market for it?
The first big campaign occurred in 2019, for scientific meteorology over the Indian Ocean. The BOREAL drone LAB, a scientific meteorology drone, was ready to operate in 2014.
A second product, (maritime and terrestrial surveillance use cases) was developed and ready to operate in 2021.
Are you selling large numbers of this UAV or only for some special missions?
Several of them have been sold to laboratories for science. From now on, we sell hours of flights as a service on the ISR product. Each drone is used for specific missions (surveillance in particular).
You rent it out instead of selling it?
We sold UAVs to laboratories and now we sell hours of flights as a service. We don’t rent the product. We have a drone fleet that allows us to conduct several missions throughout the year.
How does all this fit in with M3 Systems’ other products and application areas?
GNSS development requires testing radio frequencies in flight. Our UAV is very useful for testing GNSS payloads. We also have a project to provide payloads for satellites. It is an intermediate step for testing these payloads in the air. The BOREAL drone also leverages the group’s expertise in ATM/UTM, making its integration into the airspace seamless.
What GNSS receiver is on the UAV? Also, what correction networks does it use?
The drone embeds a standard GNSS receiver and uses it for its own navigation needs without corrections service. However, through the PASSPORT project the objective was to demonstrate the added value of OSNMA encryption in the Galileo signal, particularly its anti-spoofing capabilities. To assess this, we needed to conduct a spoofing attack on receivers with the OSNMA functions. We used a Septentrio Polar X 5 receiver. Due to safety concerns, this could not be performed on the drone during flight. Instead, we recorded the IQ signal onboard the drone during the flight campaign and later replayed it in the lab for the receiver. During the replay, we introduced spoofing while OSNMA was disabled on the receiver and showed that spoofing was easily achieved. When enabling the OSNMA service on the receiver, spoofing was still possible but the authentication key was not received, indicating that the signal was not trustworthy.
An exclusive interview with Brandon Malatest, co-founder and COO of Per Vices
What is your title and role?
I’m one of the founders of Per Vices. My friend and I started the company a long, long time ago. I’m a physicist. I attended the University of Waterloo, graduated with an honors degree in physics, and have been working with Per Vices for more than ten years. My role has shifted from doing the actual engineering work to running all the other elements of the company, because as we continue to grow, we can’t be doing everything and that was the logical break. So, I definitely have a technical background, but I’m not the one who’s designing the products anymore.
When was the company founded?
In 2006. Our first commercial product was in 2012. We specialize in designing high performance software-defined radios. These are full transceivers that are used across a very wide range of markets: spectrum monitoring, electronic warfare, MRI, radar, test and measurement markets, communications, radio links — you name it and we’ve done some work in that space. The whole idea behind software-defined radios is that they are very flexible systems. So, with the same hardware platform, you can change the software or firmware, and have it used for a completely different application.
Wonderful. By the way, I grew up among physicists. My father was a physicist for 60 years, the last 35 of which at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. My paternal grandmother was one of the first women in Europe to get a Ph.D. in physics and math and Enrico Fermi was one of her thesis advisors.
Why is SDR important for autonomous systems?
There are eight major points that I’d like to hit on.
Flexibility. Software-defined radios are reconfigurable, which means that the same hardware platform can be used for many different communication protocols, across different radio bands with varying bandwidth. That makes them very flexible for interfacing with other types of systems. So, in terms of the autonomous systems, there are a number of different wireless devices that need to be interoperable.
SDRs are very flexible radio platforms. They’re designed to have very wide operating frequencies with varying bandwidths so as to replace what used to be done in hardware through dedicated DSP chips, replacing dedicated hardware with a software-based architecture.
From a flexibility standpoint, that means that software-defined radios usually use some type some type of DSP mechanism, like a field programmable gate array (FPGA). That allows the SDR itself to process all types of different signals across varying frequencies and manipulate them in different ways. Anything that’s wireless is basically converting an analog signal to a digital signal and then performing some action on that digital signal. SDRs do that in a different way. They still have the hardware that’s used for tuning, but on the software side the decoding and processing happens. In a traditional FM radio, you have everything done in hardware: it has a dedicated tuning block, a dedicated DSP that does the demodulation, and it spits out the audio. So, the same way that computers, way back in the day, were designed and built from the ground up with one sole purpose — whether it be word processing or running complex trigonometry.
But now, if you look at the utility of computers, it is the fact that you can run different software applications on them. So, the same idea is with SDR. Traditional radio devices were built from the ground up for a single application. Now, SDRs are like a modern-day computer, where you can do basically anything within that tuning frequency. Also, just like with a computer, you change the software and use it for different applications.
Flexibility is definitely one of the most important elements. It allows the user or the system integrator to have an SDR that can adapt to different communication standards and frequency bands. This flexibility is crucial for autonomous systems operating in dynamic environments, where communication requirements may change. So, if you’re suddenly needing to change from operating at 2.4 GHz to operating at 5 GHz due to spectrum congestion or something along those lines, an SDR can do that with the same hardware platform.
YellowScan’s bathymetric lidar product, the Navigator, mounted on the Noa from Acecore. This full waveform lidar system ensures continuity between underwater points and the surrounding terrain.(Image: YellowScan)
Adaptive communication. Because SDRs tune to various frequency bands and then all the decoding is done in software, they can support different communication standards with the same hardware platform. That enables autonomous systems to communicate effectively with various entities in the environment, such as sensors and additional equipment.
Spectrum awareness. We can call it smart SDRs, or SDRs where you can integrate with AI or you can do your own pre-programming on it. You can monitor different parts of the spectrum to see which is the least congested, so that you can have a clear frequency band of operation to communicate or to use that information for passing data to and from sensors or a command and control system or anything.
Going back to the hardware component, the FPGA onboard acts as a digital signal processing unit. So, SDRs have those onboard DSP units — usually, FPGAs — and that allows for such things as signal modulation and demodulation filtering, waveform generation. All this can be done in real time. It also allows for all the sensor data to be processed very effectively and quickly, with significantly reduced latencies.
Reduced hardware complexity. This relates to putting it all together. When you have the DSP unit and the flexible hardware platform, you don’t really need anything else. So, you can use that SDR to minimize the complexity associated with the overall system. When you’re using multiple disparate technologies, it does become challenging to make sure that they’re all integrated well with one another and work well together. With SDRs, you can really simplify that, that hardware complexity. Then, because SDRs are programmable and customizable, they can be used all the way from prototyping to production. By changing different software or firmware elements associated with the SDR, you can have it operate in different ways. So, if you want to prototype a different communication band that may work better for some environments, you can do that very easily without needing to re-spin new hardware upon new hardware upon new hardware, which gets to be costly and time-consuming.
Remote monitoring and control. SDRs can be set for what we’ll call static operation, where they will perform only one task, to prevent tampering. You can also set them to be updated over the air or through some type of network. So, again, the flexibility is quite significant and it’ll allow you to mitigate different challenges where some of the systems might not be able to be controlled or interfaced regularly from a hardware perspective. That can all be encrypted.
How does your module interface with autonomous platforms?
The analog connection — to external amplifiers or filters, if you need to have very clean use of a particular part of the spectrum — is via SMA connections, which are pretty standard in the industry. On the digital side, there are two different ports. One is an out-of-band communication interface. That’s just a 1 GB Ethernet port that is very common across the entire industry and is used for configuring the SDR. Again, that’s out of band, so you’re not causing any interference with the actual operation. The other one is the digital interface for sending data to and from the system. That can be done over a 10 G interface, a 40 G interface or a 100 G interface, depending on the platform, how much bandwidth you need, etc.
What is your market at this point?
We don’t discuss our customers specifically, because often they are either very large commercial entities that don’t like to have their names disclosed or they are defense prime contractors that don’t want their names to be disclosed either. So, I can’t really get into customer specifics. What I can say, however, is that our SDRs have been deployed in support of many applications, across such systems as radars, early warning systems, MRIs, signals intelligence, spectrum monitoring, low latency wireless links, and test and measurement. There’s definitely been interest in having our systems deployed for a variety of spectrum monitoring applications on UAVs or other autonomous systems where dynamic spectrum control is important.
That’s exactly where our high-performance products fit the bill, because they have a very wide tuning range — from near DC up to 18 GHz, and it offers up to 16 radio chains, where you can monitor every different part of the spectrum continuously.
Are your systems deployed primarily on land, sea, or air platforms?
Primarily on land and air vehicles. Our system is not miniaturized for robots. When you get into sea, it does become a little bit more challenging.
What about small UAVs?
It depends on how small you’re talking about. Often, those small UAVs will use a card, as opposed to an entire system. So, it’ll be a special PCB, that performs just one dedicated function. For some of the UAVs that demand the highest performance, they usually can support a payload of one of our SDRs. They’re not small, but they definitely can support the size, weight and power of one of our higher end SDRs, which are 19” 3U form factor rack-mountable solutions.
What are a couple of use cases or scenarios for autonomous systems?
Interoperability would probably be one of the biggest that keeps creeping up.
Swarms?
Yes. Basically, the ability for the different elements within a system to communicate with one another. The idea would be having some sort of AI or machine learning applied to autonomous systems, which is the future. The problem right now with it is that many of the autonomous systems utilize different communication protocols. That makes it very challenging to have a single set of controls to interface with them.
For us, one of the use cases would be for SDR to be the intermediary. So, capturing the digital data from each of those different frequencies and combining them into one source for that machine learning or AI to utilize. Imagine that you had sensors that were being used for short range radar, long range radar, communications, etc. You will be across the L band, the C band, the 2.8 GHz band, the 5.8 GHz band. You will be across several different protocols. Not all those systems will play well with one another. So, where we fit in is communicating with all of those disparate devices and converting all that data into a digital domain for additional processing to take place.
Another scenario is what we see a lot in our customers who are doing command and control for various tactical systems and want a single platform on their side to interface with all these separate RF devices.
CHCNAV’s Apache USV, made of macromolecule polyester carbon fiber and Kevlar fiber-glass, can be carried by a single person. (Image: CHCNAV)
Bridges are essential components of our transportation infrastructure, facilitating seamless travel and connecting communities. The construction and maintenance of a bridge is an ongoing process, influenced by a variety of natural factors, including topography, geology, meteorology and hydrology. To protect the foundations and ensure the structural integrity of bridges, it is critical to continuously monitor bridge piers with a focus on providing consistent data support. For this project, the acquisition of 3D point cloud data of the riverbed surrounding a bridge is essential for the long-term safety monitoring of its abutments.
The Challenge of Traditional Surveying Method
Traditionally, bridge pier surveys are conducted using manned boats equipped with multibeam sonar — a method that, while mature, faces several challenges:
1. Significant safety hazards. Survey areas are prone to tidal changes, high winds, waves, and traffic from passing vessels, which can often create dangerous working conditions. Stone ridges along the riverbanks, potentially hidden during high tide, pose additional risks to manned boats surveying near bridge piers.
2. Low operational efficiency. After a typhoon, the timeline for surveying is tight. However, setting up and calibrating multibeam sonar equipment on manned boats is time-consuming. Operations in shallow areas, such as riverbanks and near central river sandbars, are limited to short periods of low tide, requiring strict adherence to schedules.
3. Poor data quality. Multibeam surveying requires overlaps of more than 20%. Accurate route keeping by manned boats, critical to multibeam surveying, is often compromised by environmental conditions and operator experience, resulting in poor data quality. In addition, GNSS signal reception under bridges is poor, affecting positioning accuracy and thus the integrity and efficiency of data collection.
4. High operational costs. The lack of specialized underwater topographic survey vessels requires the rental of traditional manned boats, which increases project costs.
A USV can operate where it would be dangerous or inefficient for a manned boat. (Image: CHCNAV)
The CHCNAV Solution: Efficient Autonomous Surveying
To overcome these obstacles, one bridge project team implemented an innovative solution: the use of the Apache 6 unmanned surface vessel (USV) coupled with a NORBIT multibeam echosounder and an iLiDAR 3D laser scanner. This integration results in a system that is not only lightweight, compact, and easy to install and operate, but also portable and energy efficient.
The Apache 6 USV, with its all-carbon fiber hull weighing only 15 kg, combines lightness with durability. Its modular design simplifies logistics and transportation, while its ability to withstand offshore conditions and automatically follow pre-determined routes enhances operational efficiency. The system synchronizes surface and underwater data, with beams capable of scanning shallow flats and channel slopes. The echosounder and iLiDAR share position, heading and attitude data to optimize cost efficiency.
The iLiDAR 3D laser scanner features an ultra-lightweight design, with the main unit weighing less than 3 kg. Its high level of integration, requiring only a single cable for full-surface data access, and compatibility with leading multi-beam data acquisition and processing software underscore its utility.
Advantages of Using USVs
Compared to traditional manned boat surveys, the Apache 6 USV’s integration of surface and underwater sensors offers several advantages, including high integration, compact size, safe unmanned operation and lower operating costs. In addition to ensuring the safety of personnel and bridge structures, it increases survey efficiency in complex environments. Using this autonomous survey system, two project engineers were able to create a high-resolution 3D point cloud model of the riverbed scour around the bridge piers at a low operational cost. This dataset is invaluable for ongoing safety monitoring of the bridge piers, facilitating proactive maintenance and ensuring the long-term stability and reliability of this critical transportation infrastructure.
