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Latest Orolia Defense & Security personal rescue beacons deliver Cospas-Sarsat second-generation signaling

Orolia Defense and Security is now shipping its PRSS1b Personnel Recovery Devices to the U.S. Army. The beacon uses a commercial GNSS chipset that can be replaced by SASSM or M-Code-capable receivers depending on customer needs.

Orolia’s PRSS1b PRD provides second-generation Cospas-Sarsat signaling that delivers faster and greater location accuracy than previously fielded tactical location devices.

Cospas-Sarsat is an international, humanitarian search-and-rescue system that uses space-based technology to detect and locate model 406 emergency beacons carried by ships, aircraft or individuals venturing into remote areas, often inaccessible by mobile phone. The system consists of a network of satellites, ground stations, mission control centers (MCCs) and rescue coordination centers (RCCs) that work together when a 406 beacon is activated.

Through collaboration with the Army, Orolia produced a robust, user-friendly and highly reliable device to locate personnel who become isolated, missing, detained or captured.

Orolia conducted a demonstration in October simultaneously on multiple continents, showing its technology working with the worldwide coverage provided by the Cospas-Sarsat infrastructure. The demonstration yielded beneficial data to support the qualification of Orolia’s Personnel Recovery Device and helped inform government stakeholders on the readiness of the second-generation ground and satellite infrastructure.

Also in October, Orolia received Cospas-Sarsat certification for its Ultima-DT ELT emergency transmitter, designed for use on aircraft. All 406-MHz emergency beacons are digitally coded and transmit distress signals immediately upon activation on a proprietary radio wavelength.

The BMW 7 Series rolls out SAE Level 2+ at a speed of 130 km/h in the United States and Canada. HERE also provides the BMW 7 Series with Predictive Routing and Real-Time Traffic information.

BMW Group is using the HERE Technologies HD Live Map to enable hands-free driving in the United States and Canada, starting with its 7 Series.

Following a long-standing collaboration between BMW and HERE on next-generation mapping capabilities, HERE now provides high-definition maps for Level 2+ automated driving capabilities in series production vehicles.

The BMW 7 Series is the automaker’s first production vehicle to launch with SAE Level 2+ automated functionalities at a maximum speed of 80 mph (130 km/h). The function enables hands-free driving on interstates and highways, provided drivers remain focused and ready to take control.

The HERE HD Live Map will be integrated into additional BMW models as automated driving capabilities increase across vehicles, roadways and regions.

The HERE HD Live Map consists of rich, highly accurate and fresh layers of data to support the vehicle in knowing exactly where it is on the road, and what road features lie ahead.

HERE HD Live Map helps a vehicle to proactively adjust its behavior to upcoming road characteristics.The lane-level data serves as a redundant source of information to the onboard sensors, providing additional safety assurances for the system.

The BMW 7 Series is also the first vehicle to deploy HERE Predictive Routing, a cloud-based routing functionality that learns individual driving patterns to propose more personalized journeys.

In addition, the BMW 7 Series uses HERE Real-Time Traffic across 70 countries. The service delivers drivers detailed information on traffic congestion with lane-level precision and potential road hazards ahead, with auto re-routing capabilities, helping drivers stay safe and save time.

TIM Brasil’s partnership with Microchip Technology provides the accuracy needed for high-performance network architectures, enabling more efficient data transmission

Now that it has implemented 5G coverage in all Brazilian state capitals, network operator TIM Brasil has enabled precision time protocol (PTP) in its commercial 5G service.

To accomplish this, TIM has partnered with Microchip Technology, supplier of the TimeProvider 4100 technology, which allows full compatibility and meets the stringent synchronization requirements of 5G mobile network standards.

PTP allows precise synchronization and times that can reach nanoseconds among cellular base stations, with security of the data transmitted, by encryption.

Signal synchronization is essential for a successful 5G consumer experience, ensuring better performance, including reduced latency, more accuracy and better transmission quality.

“The evolution of the 5G offer by the operator does not occur only in the expansion of coverage, but in the possibility of providing the evolution of the service to the consumer,” said Marco Di Costanzo, network director at TIM Brasil. “We want TIM customers to be able to enjoy 5G networks with the best possible experience.”

He added, “We are satisfied with the easiness of management and robustness of the new TimeProvider 4100, perceived during our extensive field trials, and we are confident this is a perfect match for the demanding requirements in our mobile deployments. It’s a robust synchronization platform, with high scalability, capacity and flexibility for future growth needs.”

Tests of the new technology were carried out after TIM’s implementation of 5G networks in Brazilian state capitals, and prove the evolution of the service already used by TIM in its partnership with Microchip for the last 10 years.

The application of the TimeProvider 4100 technology can have a positive impact on the reduction of latency time and can help improve the signal distribution in indoor networks.

“Our TimeProvider 4100 offers a robust solution with the flexibility to deploy in a wide range of environments accommodating standards required for mobile 5G implementations due to its impressive versatility,” said Randy Brudzinski, corporate vice president for Microchip’s Frequency & Time Systems business unit. “The device uniquely provides a 1588 grandmaster supporting these standards with the high-precision, accuracy and reliability requirements needed for leading mobile operators like TIM Brasil.”

Fugro is partnering with Australian drone manufacturer Carbonix to establish a new long-range drone capability. It is Fugro’s first partnership working towards long-range beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) missions, bolstering Fugro’s existing geographic information system (GIS) capability.

Carbonix will supply Volanti and Ottano vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones over the next 27 months, to further enhance Fugro’s remote operations.

Fugro is engaged in the transition to remote and autonomous operations with a global network of nine remote operation centres (ROCs). From these centers, Fugro operates boats and other vehicles, and provides survey, inspection and piloting services to the global maritime industry.

Carbonix will support Fugro’s Australian long-range maritime and land projects from the sky, using aerial surveying and data-capture technology, while integrating with Fugro’s ROCs for the joint development of systems technology and capabilities.

A team of researchers has developed a low-cost sensor that can detect the changes in river height to provide wide-area flood warnings.

The Raspberry Pi Reflector (RPR) was designed by a team of scientists from the University of Bonn, the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and the University of Colorado.

The solar-powered RPR is much less expensive (about US$150) than scientific-grade or geodetic GNSS instruments — the cost of which is “a limiting factor for their prompt and more widespread deployment as a dedicated environmental sensor,” the team writes in their paper.

The Raspberry Pi Reflector (RPR) prototype includes a low-cost and low-maintenance single-frequency GPS module (an Adafruit GPS FeatherWing receiver) and an unspecified GPS antenna connected to an inexpensive Raspberry Pi microcomputer. One such unit has been successfully operating since March 2020 in Wesel, Germany, next to the Rhine river.

The unit on the Rhine provides sub-daily and daily water levels retrieved using spectral analysis of reflection data, or GNSS-reflectometry. The river level measurements from the RPR are compared with a co-located river gauge.

By changing the orientation of the antenna from upright to sideways facing the river, which was done in August 2021, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) was lowered to from 7.6 cm to 3 cm (sub-daily) and 6 cm to 1.5 cm (daily), the team said.

“While satellite radar altimetry techniques have been utilized to monitor water levels with global coverage, their measurements are associated with moderate uncertainties and temporal resolution,” the team states. “Therefore, such low-cost and high-precision instruments can be paired with satellite data for calibrating, validating and modeling purposes.”

Information about the RPR is available on GitHub.

Advanced Navigation, a developer of AI robotics and navigation technology, has raised $68 million in a Series B funding round. The Series B round was led by global investment firm KKR.

The funding round includes participation from new investors such as deep learning venture firm AI Capital and existing investors, including Main Sequence, the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull AC, In-Q-Tel, and Our Innovation Fund, bringing Advanced Navigation’s total amount raised to more than $85 million.

Advanced Navigation supplies solutions to some of the world’s largest tech companies, such as Fugro, NASA, Tesla, Google and Boeing. The funding will be used to develop AI technologies and expand autonomy beyond its current scope, including solutions to help guide driverless vehicles, flying taxis, space crafts, drone deliveries, autonomous farming and deep sea robotics. The company will also assess inorganic growth opportunities to incorporate new technologies and products into its suite which complement the company’s existing products and areas of expertise.

Louis Casey, KKR’s growth technology lead in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, said, “Advances in autonomous navigation technology that leverages AI to reduce sensor cost while improving performance can rapidly increase enterprise and consumer applications globally. We are very pleased to work alongside the Advanced Navigation team to support the company’s growth.”

In addition, Louis Casey and Vance Serchuk, Executive Director of the KKR Global Institute, will join Advanced Navigation’s board of directors. General David Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.), Partner, KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, will chair a new advisory committee that targets to support the company’s global expansion efforts.

The new platform is designed to provide fresh data on nearly every road across the U.S. at a reduced cost

Nexar, an artificial-intelligence (AI) computer vision company, has released CityStream Live, a real-time mapping platform.

CityStream Live enables the mobility industry, including connected vehicles, maps, mobility services, digital twins or smart city applications, to access a continuous stream of fresh, crowdsourced road data. Only with real-time data can vehicles really know what’s coming their way, react to varying speed limits, avoid work zones, find parking and someday drive themselves. Thanks to Nexar’s massive network of “eyes on the road,” edge AI and change-detection capabilities, CityStream Live is already available to industry design partners.

Today’s digital maps often fall short of the freshness and precision that software-driven auto OEMs, autonomous vehicles, and mobility players require. Standard mapping methods — SD, HD and traffic maps — fail to provide accurate, up-to-date and cost-effective solutions, Nexar said.

To solve this problem, CityStream Live provides real-time mapping technologies at the edge of the network, enabling detection of work zones, road sign changes, potholes and free parking spaces. The platform is designed to provide fresh data on nearly every road across the United States at a dramatically reduced cost.

CityStream Live uses a crowdsourcing network and edge AI software to provide developers with a live data feed to increase situational awareness, enhance driving capabilities, increase safety, add comfort and help solve everyday mobility challenges.

More than 700,000 vehicles are in in Nexar’s camera network, which captures 94% of U.S. roads each month. Nexar collects 3 billion miles of road vision data per year.

A free trial version of CityStream Live can be accessed here.

Swift Navigation has expanded the capabilities of its Skylark precise positioning service to several product tiers. With new services providing real-time kinematic (RTK) and differential GNSS (DGNSS) options, Swift meets the broadening needs of its growing customer base.

In addition, new BeiDou signal support and regional coverage has been added.

Skylark is Swift’s cloud-based GNSS corrections service designed to deliver affordability, high accuracy and fast convergence, eliminating the complexity of deploying and maintaining GNSS networks. The expansion of Skylark’s capabilities makes it possible for customers across industries to benefit from seamless corrections to applications across the globe, the company said.

Skylark RTK delivers Swift’s highest tier of performance to third-party GNSS receivers. Compatible with leading RTK receivers on the market, Skylark RTK delivers corrections for applications that require sub-2 cm accuracy, including agriculture, machine control, drones and robotics in the United States, Europe and select Asian countries.

Skylark DGNSS is suitable for mobile applications, delivering real-time, high-reliability differential GNSS corrections to mobile handsets, positioning engine modules and mass-market applications. Skylark DGNSS enables lane-level location accuracy, in turn enabling new consumer location experiences and improving location-based services to increase efficiency on a global basis.

With BeiDou coverage already available across the United States, Japan and Korea, Swift has now added BeiDou signal support for the European Union, supplementing existing support for Galileo and GPS by providing corrections for GPS L1/L2/L5, Galileo E1/E5b/E5a and BeiDou B1/B2a. In addition, support for BeiDou B1C has been added to all regions.

These additions help support newer mass-market RTK-enabled receivers to achieve high-accuracy performance in difficult GNSS environments and continue to push the envelope for positioning accuracy.

“Swift was founded on the notion of improving GNSS positioning performance for mass-market applications,” said Holger Ippach, executive vice president of product, Swift Navigation . “We are pleased to expand the functionality of Skylark to improve the positioning functionality for many more customers across the globe.”

The suite of Skylark products was built from the ground up for scale, resilience and ease of integration. Skylark delivers seamless corrections to continents and countries across the globe including the United States, Europe, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Australia.

Asset and vegetation management applications help utilities minimize risk and improve the reliability of electric distribution networks

Geospatial data firm NV5 Geospatial is applying remote-sensing data analysis to improve the way utilities manage their distribution networks. The company mapped more than 5.5 million miles of utility distribution networks in the United States using a combination of lidar and orthoimagery sensors on mobile and airborne platforms to acquire data for both asset and vegetation management.

Analysis of this geospatial data enables electric utilities to minimize risk and maximize reliability, while increasing efficiency.

“An aging grid, workforce shortages, increasing energy demands and an uptick in major weather events are combining to create a perfect storm that could impact reliability, customer service and safety for electric utilities across the country,” said Eric Merten, vice president, Commercial Group at NV5 Geospatial. “A boots-on-the-ground approach to management cannot keep up with demands related to aging equipment, compliance, pole loading and vegetation encroaching on infrastructure.

“NV5 Geospatial’s innovative remote-sensing applications and data analysis tools give utilities the power to proactively address problems in their distribution network before they impact operations or customers,” Merten said.

Built on the success of its remote-sensing applications for utility transmission networks, NV5 Geospatial’s distribution management solutions offer end-to-end capabilities — from acquiring accurate, high-quality geospatial data to data analysis and visualization using custom viewers and enterprise geospatial information systems (GIS) — and can be customized to meet the use cases and budgets of utility companies.

Using NV5 Geospatial’s tools, distribution network asset managers can achieve compliance with National Electrical Safety Code (NESC) clearance guidelines, and get clear visibility into joint use of poles to prevent pirating.

The NV5 Geospatial remote-sensing data also can help quantify vegetation with distribution rights-of-way and determine risk based on proximity to wires and poles.

EHang will deploy its EH216 autonomous aerial vehicle in a European Union-funded project that is assessing how the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) could be used for electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft operations.

The fully autonomous, all-electric vehicle will be used for flight trials at Lleida-Alguaire Airport in Spain as part of the Satellite Based Augmentation System Adoption in Multicopter VTOL Aircraft (SAMVA) program.

As part of an initiative of the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), the SAMVA project is tasked with establishing how EGNOS could support planned air mobility services, including eVTOL air taxi flights. It is also intended to prepare for uncrewed vehicles to use the new U-Space concept for managing autonomous or remotely piloted aircraft.

Aeroports de Catalunya will help China-based EHang to establish an operational center at its Lleida-Alguaire facility in the Catalonian region of northeast Spain. The EH216 will use the EGNOS technology to conduct unmanned traffic management (UTM) tasks and to demonstrate how eVTOL aircraft could operate in urban environments, including to and from airports.

EHang is working to achieve Chinese certification for the two-seat EH216, which it intends to deploy with partners and customers for services such as air taxi and sightseeing flights. It also aims to get approval for its aircraft to operate in Europe and has been active in other air mobility partnerships in Europe, where it has provisional customers in places like Norway.

In October, EHang completed its participation in the European Union’s Air Mobility Urban-Large Experimental Demonstration (AMU-LED) with a series of flight tests in Spain. The company — one of 16 consortium members in the AMU-LED program — demonstrated the EH216 at the Rozas Airborne Research Center, which is part of Spain’s National Institute of Aerospace Technology.

“The SAMVA project will unleash EGNOS capabilities aboard EHang’s EH216 AAV to provide precise and integral navigation guidance and support U-Space airspace integration,” said Victoria Jing Xiang, the company’s chief operating officer for Europe and Latin America. “Our participation in this project reflects the meaningful progress we’ve made overseas with our strong technologies as our global footprint expands.”