The Optech CL-360 has joined the ranks of Lidar USA Snoopy systems.

The Snoopy CL-360 has been meticulously designed for integration on backpack, vehicle and UAV applications. Weighing 5 kilograms fully assembled, the Snoopy CL-360 is capable of delivering highly accurate results, up to +/-0.01 feet on paved surfaces from a vehicle.

The system has a scan line rate of 250 Hz with a 500-kHz data rate, giving a uniform result along and across track. The systems are easily configurable with multiple scanners (similar to internet of things applications) to avoid occlusions.

“We are pleased to again partner with LidarUSA in their innovative approach to UAV integration with the addition of our CL-360 to their product portfolio. Featuring true 360-degree scanning without blind spots, CL-360 integrated by LidarUSA will provide an exciting addition to the UAV marketplace,” said Optech Executive Vice President and General Manager Michel Stanier.

Users can also benefit from a UAV deployment, achieving scans with usable data as much as 60 degrees off nadir (widths of more than 1,100 feet while scanning at the 400-foot ceiling). The small beam size of 0.3 mrad allows the CL-series to reliably collect ground points (such as on or near the dirt through vegetation) while also providing better detection of fine linear features such as power lines and railroad tracks.

The integration of the CL-360 into the Snoopy series of systems from Lidar USA is expected to be a huge plus to the mapping community in 2020, according to Lidar USA. Users can expect to see the benefit of decreased field-collection effort and increased product quality resulting in a growing and profitable business.

“As more technologies embrace lidar collection to reduce their field time, we expect to see the CL-series become the ‘go to’ solution for many of them,” said Jeff Fagerman of Lidar USA. “The CL-series provides the accuracy and point density often necessary to meet the client’s every growing demands for more, more, more. By designing the system for car and UAV, as well as multiple configurations (two or more systems running together), our users will greatly benefit where they feel it most — the bank.”

L3Harris Technologies has reached a major milestone in the U.S. Air Force’s Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3) project — passing the preliminary design review that defines the spacecraft’s path to delivery and allows the program to move to the next phase of development.

NTS-3 is an experimental program examining ways to improve the resiliency of the military’s positioning, navigation and timing capabilities. It will also develop key technologies relevant to the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation, with the goal of future transition to the GPS IIIF program.

In collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Space and Missile Systems Center, and United States Space Force, L3Harris is combining experimental antennas, flexible and secure signals, increased automation, and use of commercial command and control assets.

“The NTS-3 vanguard is an experimental, end-to-end demonstration of agile, resilient space-based positioning, navigation, and timing,” said Arlen Biersgreen, Air Force NTS-3 program manager. “It has the potential for game-changing advancements to the way the Air Force provides these critical capabilities to warfighters across the Department of Defense. The commitment demonstrated by United States Space Force to partner with AFRL and support technology transition was a key element in NTS-3 being designated as an Air Force vanguard in September 2019.”

The Space Enterprise Consortium selected L3Harris for the $84-million contract in 2018 as the prime system integrator to design, develop, integrate and test NTS-3, including ground mission applications.

“We have moved from contract award to finishing an early design review in under one year, which is an amazing accomplishment for a satellite development program that normally takes twice that amount of time,” said Ed Zoiss, President, Space and Airborne Systems, L3Harris. “We have proven we can move quickly to support the Air Force’s go-fast mission requirements.”

L3Harris has more than 40 years of experience transmitting GPS navigation signals. The company’s technology has been onboard every GPS satellite ever launched.

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 Fourth Antarctic Expedition of Turkey began on Feb. 9 under the coordination of the Scientific and Technological Research Council (TUBITAK) Polar Research Institute. The GNSS station operates on Dismal Island, 73 kilometres (45 miles) from Horseshoe Island, where the temporary Turkish science base is located.

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.

On Feb. 12, the White House released an “Executive Order on Strengthening National Resilience through Responsible Use of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Services.”

It is gratifying to see White House attention to this issue. The increase in public awareness it brings will benefit individual users and the nation as a whole.

The order also hints at market driven solutions that could quickly improve America’s PNT resilience.

Needless delays

Unfortunately, the order fails to direct immediate action on this critical national and economic security issue. Instead it needlessly pushes most action and responsibility off for a year or more to do “more study.”

This is hard to understand as most of the “more study” has already been completed. For example, the order tells the Department of Commerce to take up to a year to examine PNT use in various sectors, and identify vulnerabilities and user needs. The Department of Homeland Security has already completed a National Risk Assessment and, according to congressional staff, has recently completed a report on user requirements mandated in 2017’s National Defense Authorization Act.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy is given a year to develop a plan to test robust and resilient non-GNSS PNT services (but is not required to actually do any testing). Congress mandated such a test program in 2017 and funded it with $10 million in 2018. After much delay, the Department of Transportation will complete the testing in May of this year.

The order gives the Department of Commerce six months to make available a time source to support critical infrastructure. For more than 60 years, the nation’s master clock has been available to users at the department’s NIST Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

Note the challenge has not been the clock, but that the nation has no way — other than vulnerable GPS signals — to distribute time at the needed level of accuracy to millions of critical infrastructure nodes. Government studies in 2007 and 2014 determined that the best way to do this was with a ground-based system. The Department of Transportation’s ongoing testing program is examining this issue again.

Market-driven solutions

Aside from increasing public awareness, the best thing the Executive Order does is to point a way forward for market-driven resilient PNT solutions.

The order calls for federal contracts to (in 21 months, if everyone does their jobs on time) require that vendors use existing and new resilient PNT sources.

If this eventually happens, the government could leverage its enormous influence in the market and stimulate creation of one or more commercial distribution systems for resilient, non-GNSS PNT. This is a great concept, and very much in keeping with America’s tradition of letting market forces solve some of its biggest problems.

But this solution will not spring into life on its own.

No commercial entity will invest tens of millions of dollars, or more, in a PNT system without assurance in advance of an income stream. Especially since federal contracting officers can and will waive the requirement if offerors cannot reasonably meet it.

If stimulating a market solution is the administration’s intent, it must stay actively involved and encourage the process for some time to come.

This includes complying with the 2018 law that requires establishment of at least one wireless, terrestrial, difficult-to-disrupt source to back up the timing signals provided by GPS.

Fortunately, this can be done by leveraging the free market at minimal cost and with little administrative effort.

By contracting to subscribe to a commercial service that will provide resilient PNT signals, the government need only invest a relatively small yearly sum using a fairly simple contract vehicle. Such a contracting technique has been used before with great success.

In 2007 the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did this as a way to establish its ADS-B aviation tracking and safety network. Once the subscription contract was let, the commercial provider was able to get financing and quickly build out the system.

Today, the FAA gets the information it needs, doesn’t have the headache of owning and maintaining a large network, and even shares in the revenue the system owner earns from selling data to other companies.

Additional leadership needed

It is important to remember that, regardless of the issue, presidential pronouncements are not enough.

In 2004, President G.W. Bush directed a number of actions to protect the nation’s critical PNT, including establishment of a GPS backup capability. While 16 years later his directive is still official executive branch policy, that mandate and many others from his order are still unexecuted.

Real improvements to PNT resilience and our nation’s security depend not on one-time pronouncements, but continued leadership focus and engagement.

This is always a challenge for initiatives driven by the White House. It will be doubly so in this case as there is no clear department leader for civil PNT issues the administration can rely on while it attends to the next issue of the day.

The UK’s emergency service responders and other critical services could be set for more resilient time systems through the National Timing Centre.

The United Kingdom has established a new timing center to reduce reliance of public services and its economy on GNSS satellites. The center uses a network of atomic clocks housed at secure locations, and consists of a team of researchers based at sites across the UK.

The National Timing Centre will provide additional resilience for accurate timing, which underpins many everyday technologies including emergency response systems, 4G/5G mobile networks, communication and broadcast systems, transport, the stock exchange and the energy grid — all of which depend on precision timing from GNSS.

A large-scale GPS failure would cause a £1 billion a day economic impact to the UK. Loss of this accurate data would also have severe and life-threatening effects, such as on getting ambulances to patients or getting power to homes around the country. The center’s land-based technologies will improve the UK’s resilience and provide important back-up.

The UK’s current dependence on satellite technologies has been identified by the government as a potential security risk if a satellite were to experience a failure. The Blackett Review in 2018 looked at the UK’s vulnerabilities to over-reliance on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).

National Timing Centre to add resilience

The government is investing £36 million to create the National Timing Centre, which will ensure the UK economy and public services have additional resilience to the risk of satellite failure. The investment will build a resilient network of clocks across the UK. It includes £6.7 million which will be made available via Innovate UK funding calls to SMEs and industry to innovate around timing and clocks.

Science Minister Amanda Solloway announced the center on Feb. 19. “Our economy relies on satellites for accurate timing,” she said. “Without satellites sending us timing signals, everything from the clocks and maps on our phones, to our emergency services and energy grid would be at risk. I’m delighted that this world-first centre will see our brightest minds, from Surrey to Strathclyde, working together to reduce the risks from satellite failure.”

“The failure of these systems has been identified as a major risk, and The National Timing Centre programme will help to protect both vital services and the economy from the disruption this would cause while delivering considerable economic benefits,” said UK Research and Innovation Chief Executive Professor Sir Mark Walport.

“We are proud to be leading the way in providing trusted and assured time and frequency,” said National Physical Laboratory CEO Pete Thompson. “The work undertaken by the team here has ensure the National Timing Centre programme will provide huge benefits to society, whilst underpinning secure applications in the future.”

The center also includes researchers at the University of Birmingham, the University of Strathclyde, University of Surrey, BT Adastral Park, Suffolk, BBC, Manchester, and the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington.

The £76 million investment furthers the government’s commitment to significantly boost R&D investment across every part of the UK, including funding transformational technologies and increasing the number of researchers.

The funding is provided through the Strategic Priorities Fund, which supports high-quality discipline research and development priorities, with investment also going towards autonomous systems and national collections.

Alongside investment in the new center, the UK government is investing a further £40 million in a new research programme, Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics.

Total investment through the National Quantum Technologies Programme is set to pass £1 billion since its inception in 2014.

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.

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.

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.

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…

Tony Murfin
GNSS Aerospace

The new Nova MS60 MultiStation combines upgraded, faster 3D laser-scanning capabilities, GNSS connectivity and digital imaging with a high-end total station. According to Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon, the multi-station brings sensor fusion to the “next level.”

The MS60 features several laser scanning updates, including an fast scanning speed of up to 30,000 points per second, optimized scan area definitions, adapted scan managements, and an improved scanning path for zenith scans.

It is also equipped with the unique AutoHeight feature, enabling users to save time by automatically measuring the instrument’s height with a simple button press. Measurement professionals can make decisions directly in the field, performing point-cloud analysis such as flatness analysis and as-built checks in the Inspect Surface app of the MS60.

“Scan data combined with traditionally measured points, whether it’s from the total stations or the GPS receivers, is one of those immediate deliverables that help our clients see what we’re doing. With the scan data of the Leica Nova MS60 MultiStation, we can graphically show — the same day it is collecting — the locations in the field to any person,” said Donald Smith, senior land surveyor and principal at BL Companies. “When you deliver on time and provide customers with a deliverable they can see, you’ve just got yourself a recurring client.”

The MS60 speeds up workflows by combining technologies in this all-in-one instrument. The MultiStation  total station offers advanced imaging, scanning capabilities and GNSS connectivity. With Leica Captivate field software, all measurement and scanning data can be visualized in 3D for quality and completeness checks.

MS60 users can seamlessly transfer all data into Leica Infinity software to manage, process, analyze and perform a quality check. The MultiStation helps users deliver projects on time, save money and have high flexibility in the field.

“The MS60 merges data in a multi-level process — total station measurements are complemented by 3D point clouds, which are automatically registered and coloured by the image information. All data perfectly fits within the same coordinate system, globally referenced by GNSS measurements or by measuring known points,” said Falko Henning, senior product manager at Leica Geosystems.

“Unlike other measurement devices, the MS60 offers familiar total station capabilities and scanning functionality to fulfil job requirements on site.” Henning said. “The operator can use the red laser pointer to perform reflectorless measurements for direct remedial work on-site or stakeout points and use the field controller even while a scan is performed.”

Earlier this month, Apple applied to the Federal Communications Commission for to a license to install GPS testing equipment on its headquarters campus.

This may be related to an application filed by Apple Inc. with the U.S. Patent Office in August 2019, which describes the company’s “Machine Learning Assisted Satellite Based Positioning.”

From the patent application:

MACHINE LEARNING ASSISTED SATELLITE BASED POSITIONING

A device implementing a system for estimating device location includes at least one processor configured to receive an estimated position based on a positioning system comprising a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellite, and receive a set of parameters associated with the estimated position.

The processor is further configured to apply the set of parameters and the estimated position to a machine learning model, the machine learning model having been trained based at least on a position of a receiving device relative to the GNSS satellite.

The processor is further configured to provide the estimated position and an output of the machine learning model to a Kalman filter, and provide an estimated device location based on an output of the Kalman filter.

In 2015, Apple acquired the small enhanced-GPS company Coherent to aid the speed and accuracy of its devices’ location services. Presumably, Apple intends to incorporate its machine-learning positioning method into its navigation software.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) will co-host the 5th Annual FAA Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Symposium June 16-18 in Baltimore. The event will take place at the Baltimore Convention Center.

The symposium will bring together representatives from the FAA, other government agencies, the industry and academia. According to the show organizers, the presenters and panelists will discuss the latest information and advancements related to the diverse uses of unmanned aircraft, and how these new entrants are being safely integrated into the National Airspace System.

The show will include four primary educational tracks, including public safety, technology and innovation, international and policy. The public safety track will explore topics such as addressing community concerns, security, and using drones to conduct safer and more effective public safety missions. The technology and innovation track will cover how drones and drone technologies are innovating rapidly and fundamentally changing aviation. The international track will feature discussions on how national and international UAS experts, industry representatives, civil society stakeholders, non-governmental organizations and policy makers are working to integrate and use drones across the globe. Finally, the policy track will allow attendees to hear directly from policy decision makers and get their thoughts on regulatory, operational and technical concerns.

In addition, the FAA will operate as an on-site resource center to answer questions from UAS owners and operators. Subject matter experts will be on hand to answer questions about airspace authorizations, waivers, the Part 107 small UAS rule, changes in hobbyists’ drone operations, the Remote Identification rulemaking, and other policies and regulations, the organizers added.