Maritime Robotics, a Norwegian provider of autonomous technology, and Teledyne Marine have delivered several unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to Ukraine’s Navy for advanced sensor data collection.
Maritime Robotics’ Otter USV, equipped with the Teledyne RESON SeaBAT T51-R multibeam echosounder, is now being used by Ukraine’s Navy. The USV is designed for critical data collection without endangering human lives, as the sensors are carried by an unmanned vehicle. The data and information collected by the USV aims to strengthen Ukraine’s defense, enhance maritime traffic security and support the safety of civilians in the areas.
Otter USV is part of Maritime Robotics’ portfolio of autonomous technologies capable of supporting military personnel in mapping and securing marine environments. Controlled and navigated remotely, Maritime Robotics’ USVs are designed to identify, locate and safely neutralize potential threats such as explosive devices and sea mines.
On Oct. 26, 2023, I participated in an American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) Pacific Southwest Region Fall Technical webinar. The webinar provided an overview of the ASPRS Positional Accuracy Standards for Digital Geospatial Data (Edition 2, Version 1.0 – August 2023). The document can be downloaded here.
ASPRS Webinar Announcement. (Image: ASPRS)
I also participated — virtually — in the Nov. 2, 2023, California Spatial Reference Center (CSRC) Coordinating Council fall meeting where Dr. Riadh Munjy, California State University, Fresno, discussed the revisions to the ASPRS Positional Accuracy Standards for Geospatial Data.
The most significant changes introduced in this second edition of the standards include:
Elimination of references to the 95% confidence level as an accuracy measure.
Relaxation of the accuracy requirement for ground control and checkpoints.
Consideration of survey checkpoint accuracy when computing final product accuracy.
Removal of the pass/fail requirement for Vegetated Vertical Accuracy (VVA) for lidar data.
Increase the minimum number of checkpoints required for product accuracy assessment from 20 to 30.
Limiting the maximum number of checkpoints for large projects to 120.
Introduction of a new term: three-dimensional positional accuracy.
Addition of Best Practices and Guidelines Addenda for:
General Best Practices and Guidelines
Field Surveying of Ground Control and Checkpoints
Mapping with Photogrammetry
Mapping with Lidar
Mapping with UAS
As outlined above, Edition 2 contains Best Practices and Guidelines for (1) General Best Practices and Guidelines and (2) Field Surveying of Ground Control and Checkpoints. The three addenda listed in the table of contents: Mapping with Photogrammetry, Mapping with Lidar, and Mapping with UAS will be available for public comment later, and will be added to Edition 2, Version 2.0.
Dr. Abdullah informed me that these addenda are on track to be put out for public comments during December 2023, therefore he believes they will probably be published in January or February 2024. The box titled “Summary of Significant Changes in Edition 2” provides the changes with the reason and justification for each change. The document can be downloaded from ASPRS here.
One of the changes is to relax the accuracy requirement for ground control and checkpoints. At first glance, this seems like the wrong thing to do. However, after understanding the justification, the requirement for ground truth still needs to be at least twice as accurate as the product.
Both Dr. Abdullah and Dr. Munjy’s emphasized in their presentations that the current accuracy requirements for ground controls in photogrammetric work of four-times better than the produced products, and the checkpoint accuracy requirement is three-times better than the assessed product. This makes it difficult, if it is not impossible, to use RTK-based techniques for this type of surveying. This by itself is not the reason for the change. During Dr. Abdullah’s presentation, he provided the following reasons for the change:
“Experience taught us that the requirements of four-times and three-times adopted in edition 1 of the standards are excessive and too restrictive, partly due to the reason outlined in (b) below.
Today’s sensors, software, and processing methodology are more accurate and the room for errors in the product is diminishing, therefore we do not need a safety factor of 3 or 4 to obtain accurate products.
Increasing demand for higher accuracy geospatial products.”
The new standards now factor in the accuracy of the survey checkpoints when determining the accuracy of the product. During Dr. Abdullah’s presentation, he provided the following reason for the change, “As we are producing more accurate products, errors in surveying techniques of the checkpoints used to assess product accuracy, although small, can no longer be neglected and it should be represented in computing the product accuracy.” He also highlighted that, “As product accuracy increases, the impact of error in checkpoints on the computed product accuracy increases.” The document provides equations used to compute the values. See below.
A very significant change, in my opinion, is the removal of the standards for Vegetated Vertical Accuracy (VVA) for lidar data. See below.
VVA not used as a criterion for acceptance. (Image: ASPRS)
I am not sure I agree with the reasoning, but I understand why it was done. GNSS-based surveys do not perform well in vegetated areas, and this is the technology used to validate the non-vegetated vertical accuracies (NVA). That said, there are non-GNSS technologies — sometimes denoted as traditional surveying methods — that could be used to validate VVA, so this seems like an elimination of a requirement based on the limitation of a particular technology.
Traditional surveying methods that use geodetic levels, theodolites, and total stations to measure distances, angles, and heights are still used by surveyors to perform certain projects. Since there are other surveying methods that could be used for evaluating the VVA, it does not seem like a valid reason for a change.
The ASPRS standards does state that, “for projects where vegetated terrain is dominant, the data producer and the client may agree on an acceptable threshold for the VVA.” Therefore, the client can require the surveyor to meet a specific accuracy level for vegetated areas. I am sure this was discussed during the working meeting, so I leave it to the experts to make the appropriate decisions and recommendations.
Finally, it should be noted that, as discussed above, the new ASPRS standards eliminated the reference to the 95% confidence level as an accuracy measure. The document provides the following statement about the National Standard for Spatial Data Accuracy (NSSDA):
“The National Standard for Spatial Data Accuracy (NSSDA) documents the equations for the computation of RMSEX, RMSEY, RMSER and RMSEZ, as well as horizontal (radial) and vertical accuracies at the 95% confidence levels — AccuracyR and AccuracyZ, respectively. These statistics assume that errors approximate a normal error distribution and that the mean error is small relative to the target accuracy. The ASPRS Positional Accuracy Standards for Digital Geospatial Data reporting methodology is based on RMSE alone, and thus differs from the NSSDA reporting methodology. Additionally, these Standards include error inherited from ground control and checkpoints in the computed final product accuracy.”
Appendix D of the ASPRS document provides the equations with an example for computing the accuracy statistics. The document also has a section with examples for users who wish to relate the ASPRS 2023 Standards to the FGDC National Standard for Spatial Data Accuracy (NSSDA).
Dr. Munjy ended his presentation at the CSRS 2023 fall meeting with the following statements:
“ASPRS Accuracy Standards 2023 have become more aligned with science and statistical theory,” and “These Standards are intended to be a living document which can be updated in future editions to reflect changing technologies and user needs.”
I would encourage all users to download the document to better understand the changes and reasons for the changes. It can be downloaded here.
Hexagon’s Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial division has partnered with Pitkin County Regional Emergency Dispatch Center to upgrade its digital mapping and response for 911 calls in Colorado’s premier mountain tourist destination. The partnership aims to make the county safer for residents and visitors.
By using HxGN Connect software, Pitkin County can bring modern mapping capabilities to its computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, as well as incorporate Smart Advisor, Hexagon’s assistive artificial intelligence solution.
Pitkin County, home of Aspen and its four major ski areas, hosts 1.5 million tourists per year. The upgrades will improve emergency response capabilities for major events such as the X Games and JAS Aspen music festival, the company says.
The cloud-based solution, hosted in Microsoft Azure, is designed to map 911 calls and conduct long-term resource planning. Smart Advisor will work in the background to help dispatchers and first responders connect related incidents and provide geofencing to concentrate resources on large events. Officials plan to expand the system to take advantage of its cross-organization collaboration capabilities by potentially linking the county’s CAD system with the fire department’s network of mountaintop smoke detectors and the Department of Public Works’ snowplows.
Pitkin County dispatchers will use HxGN Connect for digital mapping within its CAD system in the mountainous tourist destination.
The Educational Irish Research Satellite, EIRSAT-1, has successfully launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on Dec. 1, 2023. Hitching a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher, the small satellite has made history as Ireland’s first satellite.
Over the course of six years, EIRSAT-1 was designed, built and tested by students from University College Dublin (UCD) in Dublin, Ireland, participating in the European Space Agency (ESA) Academy’s Fly Your Satellite Program. The program is a hands-on initiative that helps university student teams develop their own satellites according to professional standards. The launch opportunity itself was provided by the ESA.
Throughout the development of the satellite, ESA experts provided training and guidance to dozens of UCD students, the ESA said. The students’ learning journey included test campaigns at ESA Education’s CubeSat Support Facility in Belgium, as well as dedicated spacecraft communications sessions at both ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Centre and the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. These sessions were designed to teach the procedures for operating Ireland’s first spacecraft.
From low-Earth-orbit (LEO), EIRSAT-1 will carry out three main experiments, which were built from scratch by the students:
GMOD, a detector to study gamma ray bursts, which are the most luminous explosions in the universe and occur when a massive star dies or two stars collide.
EMOD, an experiment to see how a thermal treatment protects the surface of a satellite when in space.
WBC, an experiment to test a new method of using Earth’s magnetic field to change a satellite’s orientation in space.
Following EIRSAT-1’s deployment to orbit, the student team is now working to establish contact with the satellite and start operations from their dedicated ground control facility, also entirely operated by students and located at UCD in Dublin.
The U.S. Army has awarded Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman other transaction agreements (OATs) for the first phase of the Launched Effects (LE) program.
Launched Effects “will provide standoff sense and effect capabilities for soldiers while keeping air and ground forces outside the range of adversary weapon systems,” according to the service’s Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors. It also said LE will also support forces entering and exiting mission areas.
Northrop has been awarded for two payloads and Lockheed Martin has been awarded for one, with each award valued at about $100,000, according to the Army. The OTA will total about $37 million over all three phases.
The LE program consists of three phases. During that span, the Army aims to mature payloads from a technology readiness level of 6, a prototype system that has been tested in a relevant environment, to TRL 7, a prototype that has been demonstrated in an operational environment.
Launched effects have been successfully tested by the Army in the past, including at Project Convergence. In January 2023, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems announced its Eaglet launched-effect flew for the first time, dropping off an Army-owned Gray Eagle Extended Range UAV during a demonstration in Utah.
1976: The first military GPS five-channel receiver built in one of several programs that studied the feasibility of GPS. The receiver weighed more than 270 pounds and had seats for two operators. (Image: Rockwell Collins/Smithsonian)
Half a century ago, on December 22, 1973, Deputy Secretary of Defense William P. Clements, on the recommendation of the Defense Systems Acquisition and Review Council, directed the entire Department of Defense — through the Navstar GPS Joint Program Office, under the spectacular leadership of Col. Bradford Parkinson — to proceed with the GPS program. While this magazine mostly focuses on the present and the future, we occasionally pause to remember how it all began.
In the following articles, we are lucky to benefit from the long memories of four gentlemen who were there. Read the full articles.
Charlie Trimble provides the 4000A GPS Locator to the Smithsonian Museum. Introduced in 1984, it was the first commercial GPS positioning product. (Image: Smithsonian)
Trimble Navigation, which had started out making Loran receivers, was looking for its next marine project when HP decided to cancel its GPS project. Budget problems in Washington put completion of GPS in doubt. However, encouraging words from Brad Parkinson were enough for Trimble Navigation to buy the canceled project.
The purchase included a stack 14-ft high of unclassified reading material and a breadboard that fit on the table of a mobile home. It was a working GPS receiver that had recorded the mobile home’s position as it was driven around freeways in the San Francisco area. It took 12 months for a team of two engineers and 15 consultants to come up with the seven breakthroughs needed for the block diagram. Trimble was to iterate this block diagram on an 18-month cycle to follow Moore’s Law cost curve to the $100 required for car navigation. It took another year to build six rack-mounted multichannel receivers.
In October 1984, Trimble sold the first receiver for $100,000. Then came the sale of 20 OEM single channel timing receivers. The oil service industry was an important early market. At the time there were only seven GPS satellites in the sky and applications were limited to 3-4 hrs/day of accurate position measurement. Accuracy was a market driver, which led to the development of differential systems. These provided meter accuracies over wide areas. The next and far more difficult step was enabling a 1st order survey — which required accuracies of 1 cm/km.
Meanwhile, next gen GPS was added to Trimble’s marine Loran-C receiver and the company produced aviation receivers for the commercial markets. In January 1986, Trimble licensed its GPS technology for the Japanese car navigation market to Pioneer.
Then came the Shuttle disaster, and a new rocket had to be designed to launch more satellites. With only seven satellites in the sky and an unknowable time for rocket development, GPS use for navigation was off the table. Getting carrier phase 1st order products to work became critical for Trimble’s survival. In May of 1986, Trimble shipped an order of seven survey systems to the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Earthquake monitoring was a niche market add-on. Another “bet your company” deal was a Japanese order of 25 dual frequency systems.
During this time Trimble started to realize GPS was more than a device — that time-stamping events and geo-tagging things made it a valuable information technology component. The real value was in the information. By 2000, the Hong Kong price of the GPS function in quantities of a million devices a month was $1. GPS became ubiquitous and a fundamental component of a thriving information technology market.
GPS started out as a real-time worldwide system for navigation. It is now an indispensable part of modern life. GPS has truly changed our world.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) project started 50 years ago, in 1973. I was fortunate to be part of incorporating GPS into the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) when I worked for the National Geodetic Survey (NGS). GPS was not considered operational until 1993, but NGS started performing GPS surveys in 1983. Geodetic control surveys that formerly took six to 12 months to perform using classical methods could be performed with GPS in a few weeks using fewer personnel and resources. It changed the way NGS and others performed their surveying operations.
While one group in NGS was developing programs to evaluate and compute coordinates using GPS, another NGS group was completing the readjustment of the North American Datum of 1983 [NAD83 (1986)]. The analysis of GPS indicated that some of the latitude and longitude values estimated using GPS did not agree with the published NAD83 coordinates. The classical techniques used a triangulateration process (involving angles and distances) that required several triangles to connect two stations that were not intervisible. GPS, on the other hand, could directly measure the distance between the two stations, resulting in more accurate coordinate differences.
To support surveyors, NGS, working with other federal agencies under the auspices of the Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee (FGCS), developed a GPS test network in the Washington, D.C., area to demonstrate whether a specific manufacturer’s GPS receiver and associated geodetic post-processing software was an accurate relative positioning satellite survey system. This facilitated the use of GPS for incorporating geodetic control in the NSRS. As mentioned above, GPS surveys exposed many inconsistencies between existing NAD83 (1986) control. Organizations such as NGS and state transportation departments that performed control surveys used GPS as soon as equipment met the federal testing requirements because it was more efficient and cost-effective than classical techniques. This led individual states to perform statewide geodetic network projects to upgrade their NAD 83 (1986) coordinates. These surveys were ultimately designated as High Accuracy Reference Networks (HARN).
In the beginning, the attitude of the individual surveyor accepting GPS was one of “trust after verifying.” Many surveyors considered it to be a “black box” that could not be trusted. Surveyors were accustomed to having angles and distances they could write down and check the results. Also, there were some key challenges and limitations of using GPS for surveying in the early days. This included the cost and size of the equipment, the peripheral devices required, the power requirements (including 12v car batteries and generators), “black box” computer processing software, obstructions near monuments, and limited visibility of GPS satellites.
Prior to GPS becoming fully operational, some surveys had to be performed in the middle of the night to have four or more satellites visible during the observing session. This required a significant amount of technical planning, which sometimes required complicated logistics for coordinating observing sessions. Also, at that time, most private surveyors did not perform control projects, so even though GPS may be more accurate, it was not more cost-effective than classical techniques for their typical projects.
Over time, after GPS became operational, more surveyors (and other professionals) embraced using GPS after the cost of receivers decreased, user-friendly processing software became available (e.g., NGS OPUS), Continuously Operating Reference Stations were densified (e.g., NOAA CORS), and statewide Real-Time Networks (RTN) were established (e.g., North Carolina RTN). GPS technology now underpins many sciences, large areas of engineering (such as driverless vehicles and UAVs), navigation, and precision agriculture. GPS (today GNSS) and its applications have changed the way surveyors and geospatial users perform their work, and the world has seen the development of applications that were not ever imagined 50 years ago.
The Air Force was initially opposed to GPS. How did that change?
Between 1978 and at least the mid-1980s, maybe even the late 1980s, the Air Force tried several times to cancel the program. At the time, I was a Capitol Hill staffer for the House Intelligence Committee. In one of those efforts to cancel GPS, Tom Cooper, who was a lead staffer for the House Armed Services Committee, came to me and said, “Can you guys give any reason for keeping GPS?” And I said, “Yes, it greatly improves the accuracy of SIGINT [signals intelligence] locations. It makes a very big difference.”
So, Tom used that, along with other arguments, for why we should keep GPS. The Committee and Congress ultimately decided they would, despite the Air Force’s resistance.
The Air Force’s resistance came from the Strategic Air Command, which in the 1980s believed it would never use satellites. They were concerned about the satellites being shot down. I found this amusing because they were flying around in aircraft at a few thousand feet and were concerned about satellites flying at 11,000 miles. But they were, so they were laggards.
Image: USAF/Staff Sgt. Kyle Johnson
Which service adopted GPS first and why?
The service that by far led the way was the Army. It spent $100 million a year absorbing NRO capabilities. They also spent money on GPS, though not as much. By the time we got to the first Gulf War, in 1991, we had a partial GPS constellation — I think of 18 satellites of the 24 required — and that meant that you didn’t have 100% coverage all day long. So, coverage maps of their areas of interest were generated every day to let people in the field know when they would have service. Most of them didn’t have receivers either. Most of the receivers they did have were Precision Lightweight GPS Receivers (PLGR), knows as “pluggers”, which were the first “handheld” receivers, but they were pretty big.
Once the fight got going, many of the troops wrote home and asked their moms and dads to send them civilian receivers.
Yes! Thousands and thousands of them showed up in theater. Some troops taped them to the windscreens of their helicopters or jet aircraft. They were just jury-rigged into everything because, despite their limitations at the time, they were very, very useful, unlike anything else. So, now everybody realized, “Oh my goodness, this is really a big deal. This is a game changer!”
Then we got more modern receivers, integrated receivers, the whole thing. However, at the end of the Gulf War, the Air Force still had no plan to equip any of its aircraft with GPS. As Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, I was called over to the Armed Services Committee and asked, “What is your plan for integrating GPS receivers into your aircraft fleet?” I said, “There is no plan.” and they were incredulous. They looked at me like “Well, you’re an idiot.”
It wasn’t me, however, and the staff knew my story before I gave it. As a result, Congress mandated it. They put it in that year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Within less than 10 years you had Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) and other GPS-guided weapons. So, that got it moving quickly.
By the end of the 1990s, the Air Force was fully on board and were equipping their aircraft with many weapons that depended on GPS. Meanwhile, GPS had moved to a full constellation of 24 satellites. Full operating capability was declared in 1995. The Navy proceeded similarly, but they were somewhat less affected. So, the Army remained a leader in using space.
The Chief of Staff of the Air Force asked me about Air Force use of GPS. I said, “Chief, the Air Force builds a lot of space stuff, but it doesn’t use it.” Of course, a short time later it was using it extensively. So, this ramp-up was very rapid — just a few years from “I don’t give a darn about these things” to “I can’t live without them.”
Brad Parkinson and his successors as JPO directors designed and built the system but had no role in its adoption, right?
No. They were going turn it over to the production house, if you will, and they did. Once the Air Force got on board with GPS guided weapons, adoption proceeded rapidly.
What about the Navy?
I don’t recall the Navy particularly. I do not at all accuse them of being laggards. I think they did what they needed, whatever that was.
Did later NDAAs expand that mandate to the other services?
I don’t know. I was out of the government by that time, so I lost track. I don’t think it was necessary. What people didn’t understand immediately was that you could do anything with this system. At the end of the day, it is a super accurate timing signal. There are many things you could do with that and people have done them. It quickly became evident that it was so pervasively useful, that anything you could think of involves GPS, from the era of the first Gulf War onward. By 10 years later, many weapons systems in all the services were GPS-guided. I later served on the board of ATK and we were building GPS-guided artillery rounds. I am pretty sure that the ATACMS [Army Tactical Missile System] you hear about today is GPS guided.
So, in a couple of years, all the services wanted to integrate GPS in all their platforms and weapons.
Well, except that the amazing thing was, despite all the things that people had done with GPS in the Gulf War — starting with those helicopters that went in the first night and took out the command and control system, which were guided by Army-provided pluggers taped onto the windscreens by their pilots, and downed pilots using GPS to give their coordinates to the rescue teams — at the end of the war the Air Force still didn’t have a plan to put them on its aircraft! That’s when Congress mandated it. It was amazing.
Despite that, once they got going, particularly once they got going with GPS-guided weapons, everything changed. I don’t know whether the Air Force became leaders, but they were certainly aggressive integrators of the program into the service. There was no more, “We won’t use satellites” and all that.
That was after my time. I left government in early 1993. There were other big fish to fry at the same time. As important as I realized it was, I still didn’t realize how important it was, and I was way ahead of most everybody else, in the Air Force anyway.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) chief scientist at the time said, “The great thing about GPS is that it is a tool around which you can build myriad capabilities.” He outlined a few for the FAA, many of which they have since done. The same thing began to happen in the services, particularly in the Air Force, in which GPS-guided weapons were pervasive within 10 years.
Part of Brad’s motto for JPO was “The mission of this program office is, number one, to drop five bombs in the same hole.”
Yeah. By the way, one mistake that people make a lot is they think there were GPS-guided weapons during the first Gulf War. That was not the case. There were none by then. There were precision guided munitions that were guided by maps and lasers and a variety of means. But, despite the belief of many authors, there were no GPS-guided weapons at that time.
So, which was the first conflict in which GPS was used?
It was the Iraq War, in 2003. It was a major user of GPS-guided weapons.
Any other thoughts on the 50th anniversary from the military side of things?
It is impossible to overemphasize the importance to military operations and, frankly, to civilian life as well, of being able to easily and accurately navigate or have highly accurate time.
You can do it with a $100 receiver, whereas it used to require a $10,000 receiver and you had to have it re-initialized from a standard. So that’s what everybody does. Now, this has created probably more dependency than is healthy and many nations have backup that we don’t have.
Such as Loran-C. That’s a big subject of debate these days, as you know.
Well, it’s been a subject of debate for 20 years. Everybody agrees, but nobody moves.
The Department of Transportation recently released an action plan on the adoption of complementary PNT systems. So, there’s some movement.
As a one-time government bureaucrat, what you do when people are on your back is launch a study and say, “Well, it will be done in a year or two.” They have done this time, after time, after time.
“I know where we are. I do not need a satellite system to tell me!” In the 1970s and 1980s, this was the number one military and civilian response to what GPS does. The existing military hardware included navigation systems and the defense industry had a vested interest in keeping its business. Civilian interest in GPS was low because of the program’s uncertain funding. The armed services saw no reason to add a new program to their budgets and were opposed to GPS.
The military program approval process was also inconsistent with the rapid changes in digital technology. The first GPS satellite was launched in February 1978, the first PC was released in August 1981, and the first Mac in January 1984. GPS went through a development process to build user equipment, test it to make sure it met military requirements and then build the limited-rate production equipment with a design about six years old.
Early GPS Manipack worn by JPO Army deputy Lt. Col. Paul Weber. This photo graced the cover of the first ever GPS brochure. (Image: GPS World archives)
My favorite joint service story is that our low cost, 19-lb, $55,000, hand-carry man pack flunked its first testing sequence. The Army placed it into an alkaline bath in September 1985, that ate the o-ring and caused it to fail the bio/chem decontamination requirement. The o-ring was an Air Force requirement because at 60,000 ft without venting the device would become a potential bomb. Yet, pressure relief failed to meet the Navy Seals’ requirement for underwater operation. The fixed man pack was now our limited rate production set. Developments in digital technology during the process made it overweight, over cost and unsuitable. To get hand-carry receivers, it became necessary to purchase modern civilian sets at the unexpected outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1990.
JPO ran a competition for 200 civilian receivers that had no military requirements to send them to the operational forces for training. Trimble won the competition and when the war came the following year with only 12 GPS satellites operational, JPO asked Trimble to deliver as many sets as it could produce at the price bid for the competition to augment the deliveries of the limited rate production military set. Talk about an operational education! The Army tank drivers who did not want GPS because “The war comes to us, so we do not need GPS” instantly demanded GPS receivers when they began to get lost by more than 10 miles on the featureless desert. The deployed troops began asking their parents for GPS receivers for personal use. The war integrated GPS into all military operations.
Realizing the value of GPS inter-service integration of forces, the military believed the civilian signal should only have degraded accuracy. But in May 2000, President Clinton decided the civilians also should have good accuracy and ordered that the degradation of the civilian signal (called Selective Availability) should cease. Today everybody is aware of what GPS provides. You never hear anyone say, “I know where I am, I do not need satellites to tell me.”
Point One Navigation has integrated Ordnance Survey base stations into the Polaris Network, which is designed to improve accuracy, precision, reliability and interoperability in the UK. The solutions aim to aid in applications such as advanced driver assistance (ADAS), robotics, mapping and more.
Polaris is a real time kinematic (RTK) corrections network that offers cm-level accurate GNSS positioning. Polaris’ global RTK network now includes the entire United States, EU, Australia, Canada and the UK.
Existing Polaris customers can utilize the UK integration immediately, at no additional cost.
This technology is complemented by the company’s FusionEngine software, which further integrates inertial measurement, wheel odometry and additional sensors to achieve the desired level of precision, even in the absence of satellite signals.
Polaris supports all major GNSS constellations and has a dense global network of base stations, which offers improved precision acquisition time in more places, the company says. The network supports all modern navigation signals across all mobile networks.
According to Point One, it is the first localization service with a modern GraphQL-based API, which aims to improve the integration of Polaris RTK into developer-built applications. It can be used by software developers to integrate RTK into demanding applications, including industrial autonomy, precision agriculture, logistics and delivery, robots and ADAS.
It will support State Space Representation (SSR) corrections delivered by L-band satellites in early 2024, the company says, which will allow for operations to continue in the absence of cellular networks or in bandwidth constrained applications.
GPS turns 50 this year, marking five decades of transforming the world in ways that have profoundly impacted society. Since its approval as a program on December 17th, 1973, GPS has revolutionized the way we navigate and comprehend our world, often in ways few realize.
To honor this achievement, a special event will be held at the South Shore Harbor Resort and Conference Center in Houston, Texas, on December 5, at 6:00PM. This event aims to be a historic tribute to GPS’s journey and its impact on the global community.
At the special event, Matteo Luccio, editor in chief of GPS World, will lead an engaging discussion with Brad Parkinson, the original chief architect of GPS, shedding light on the system’s early days, its far-reaching impacts on humanity, and exciting prospects for the future.
Members of the press, federal employees, Resilient Navigation Timing Foundation members, PNT Advisory Board members, and presenters may attend the event for free. Others can secure their attendance for $75, which includes an optional one-year membership in the RNT Foundation.
To reserve your spot, RSVP at [email protected] no later than November 27.
The President’s National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board, which advises the government on GPS and related issues, will meet the following two days in the same location. Members of the public are welcome and encouraged to attend. Click here for more information on that event.
