Kategori: Nyheter

A roundup of recent products in the GNSS and inertial positioning industry from the June 2020 issue of GPS World magazine.

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OEM

GPS Tester

Compact antenna testing for mobile deployments

The ZonuSkyShot is designed for quick testing during the critical installation phase of an antenna at a new site build or small-cell integration. The compact tester is designed for integrating a Zeno GPS solution, but works as a neutral testing device. SkyShot is a compact GPS receiver that detects the presence of a GPS signal, indicated on the top-panel LED. The receiver can be accessed via the USB port on the base unit, allowing the user to see the available satellites by using the app provided with the system and available at the Optical Zonu website. The receiver can simultaneously track up to 16 satellites while searching for new ones. Because of this, a problem can be found and mitigated when a GPS antenna is installed, rather than when hardware is being integrated further down the line. Close-out of projects can be indicated with screenshots of satellite visibility via the micro-USB port to a laptop.

Optical Zonu, opticalzonu.com

Police antenna

Seamless installation on leading 2020 police sport utility vehicles

The Trooper TRP-20INT antenna platform supports the high-speed requirements of complex RF communication systems used for critical communications in FirstNet public safety and intelligent transportation systems. The antennas feature two 5G elements compatible with cellular routers supporting 600-MHz to 6-GHz frequencies. PCTEL’s proprietary high-rejection multi-GNSS technology is included for high-precision tracking and asset management.

PCTEL, pctel.com

Anti-jam unit

Mitigates RF interference

The QR-100 L1/L2 GPS anti-jamming unit mitigates RF interference or jamming signals using a spatial domain of an antenna array reception pattern. Three passive antennas of the customer’s choice can be connected to the QR-100 unit using built-in SMA connectors. The unit default configuration (no jamming signal present) has a 120-degree phase gradient between antenna elements to maximize the reception of GPS right-hand circularly polarized (RHCP) signals. This feature allows the unit to be connected to either RHCP-type antennas or linearly polarized antennas. The default configuration of the unit is designed to connect to passive GPS antennas.

Quantum Reversal, quantumreversal.com

Gyroscopes

Two and three Axis for use in harsh environments.

Inertial Labs’ TAG-200 two-axis and TAG-300 three-axis gyroscopes are developed for electro-optical systems, gimbals, line-of-sight, and pan-and-tilt platforms for stabilization and pointing applications. TAG-200 and TAG-300 use advanced-performance, tactical-grade MEMS sensitive elements to accomplish complex tasks requiring accurate stabilization of assorted platforms. The gyroscopes, designed for use in harsh environments, can withstand extreme shock and vibration in accordance with MIL-STD-810 ground mobile use. They are fully digitized, include built-in test functions and have no moving parts. The gyroscopes include low noise, low latency, wide bandwidth, high data rate, low bias drift, low VRE, high MTBF and are ITAR-free. They are factory calibrated over the operational temperature range and are quality assurance and quality compliance tested and supplied with individual calibration and acceptance test certificates.

Inertial Labs, inertiallabs.com

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SURVEYING & MAPPING

Grade Control

Version 2 of software adds features

Earthworks Grade Control Platform version 2.0 features improvements to enable faster return on investment, increase productivity and decrease training time for operators. Horizontal Steering Control for dozers automatically controls the machine to follow any horizontal alignment such as a back of a curb, breakline, roadway centerline or bottom of slope, without operator assistance. Augmented reality for excavators enables users to understand 3D models, cut/fill information, slope data and other bench points and reference points on the in-cab display in context, without the need to interpret complex 2D plans or stakes. A new mastless motor grader configuration gives operators an improved range of blade motion, allowing for machine control in applications where it previously was not possible. Integrated Trimble Loadrite Payload Management displays grade control and accurate payload data on one screen, increasing mass haul productivity and efficiency by preventing underloading, and improving safety by avoiding overloading. Trimble Earthworks is also now available for compact grading attachments with dual GNSS, single GNSS and total station guidance options. The Earthworks Assistant App provides access to Earthworks learning material and documentation, allowing for a shorter learning curve and less downtime for operators.

Trimble, trimble.com

Tilt function

New feature for automatic excavator

The addition of advanced tilt and rotation functionality allows Automatic Excavator operators to easily swivel or tilt the bucket with automatic boom control for faster and more efficient excavation. If excavator operators are in situations such as at the top of the slope, grading a long incline and not totally perpendicularly lined up, the added feature makes it easier to position the cutting edge of the bucket to the surface. Operators can excavate more quickly, moving the excavator fewer times with less wear and tear on the chassis. It is also beneficial when navigating around manholes, trenches and tight spaces.

Topcon, topcon.com

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TRANSPORTATION

Lidar sensors

For L3/L4 autonomous driving

The Horizon is a high-performance lidar sensor built for Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous driving. It has a long-distance detection range of up to 260 meters, high-density point clouds, and is so small it can be embedded easily into vehicles. The Tele-15 has achieved a reliable detection range of up to 500 meters, offering improved safety for high-speed autonomous vehicles. Both the Horizon and Tele-15 high-performance lidar sensors feature a new scanning method that offers improved sensing performance at a low cost.

Livox Technology, www.livoxtech.com

INS module

1.3°/hr automotive IMU sensor

The IMU383ZA is a high-accuracy, triple-redundant inertial measurement unit (IMU) for guidance and navigation solutions in autonomous machines and vehicles. It integrates triple-redundant, 3-axis micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) accelerometer and gyroscope sensors. The IMU383ZA is pin-compatible with the IMU381ZA and offers high performance of 1.3 deg/hr, 0.08 deg/root-hr. The miniature module is factory-calibrated over the –40° C to +85° C industrial temperature range to provide consistent performance through extreme operating environments for a wide variety of applications.

Aceinna, aceinna.com

Cost-effective, high-performance antenna designed for GNSS networks and monitoring applications

CHC Navigation has released the AT661 geodetic antenna for GNSS networks or monitoring applications. The AT GNSS antenna series is the result of years of expertise in GNSS technologies. The compact geodetic GNSS antenna offers performances rivaling those of high-cost and bulky conventional GNSS choke ring antennas, according to CHC Navigation.

The AT661’s supports all current and future GNSS signals, including GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, IRNSS, SBAS and L-band. The antenna features both high-gain LNA and wide beamwidth to provide excellent flexibility in applications requiring low-elevation satellite reception and high availability of GNSS signals, especially in obstructed situations.

“By further integrating the design and manufacture of GNSS antennas, CHC Navigation is broadening its presence as a global provider of GNSS solutions.” said George Zhao, CEO of CHC Navigation. “Mastering the entire GNSS positioning and navigation value chain allows us to deliver the performance our customers demand at the price they expect.”

The accuracy of the antenna’s phase center reaches the millimeter level with extremely high stability and repeatability to ensure perfect processing of GNSS data regardless of the length of the baselines.

Built to last, the AT661 withstands all types of weather, including high and low temperature fluctuations, and is protected by a waterproof radome.

About the Author: Allison Barwacz

Allison Barwacz is the digital media manager for North Coast Media (NCM). She completed her undergraduate degree at Ohio University where she received a Bachelor of Science in magazine journalism from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. She works across a number of digital platforms, which include creating e-newsletters, writing articles and posting across social media sites. She also creates content for NCM’s Pit & Quarry magazine, Portable Plants magazine and Geospatial Solutions. Her understanding of the ever-changing digital media world allows her to quickly grasp what a target audience desires and create content that is appealing and relevant for any client across any platform.

Javad Ashjaee, founder of JAVAD GNSS, has died in Moscow, Russia. He died on May 30 after a long fight with COVID-19.

The news was first reported by a family member on social media. Ashjaee was born in 1949.

“It is with heavy hearts that we share the news of the passing of our founder Javad Ashjaee, a GPS/GNSS pioneer and visionary, on the morning of May 30, 2020, due to COVID-19 in Moscow, Russia,” reports a statement on the JAVAD GNSS website.

The website continues, “Over the course of 37 years, Javad made an incredible and far-reaching impact in the GNSS community. He pioneered the world’s most advanced GNSS technology through a multi-national effort that combined GPS and GLONASS and established more than a quarter century of partnership between Silicon Valley and Moscow. He was always proud of this ‘success story of cooperation.’ Javad was a true industry disrupter long before the term and concept became popular. His whole way of doing business was challenging and disrupting to the status quo.”

Read more about Ashjaee in his own words on the JAVAD GNSS website, where he describes the founding of his company.

“In 1998 I founded JAVAD Positioning Systems (JPS) and introduced Legacy, Odyssey and Regency products, followed by HiPer. It was a 76-channel geodetic receiver. Other companies later copied HiPer. Today, many of GNSS receivers look like it. I sold JPS to Topcon, who changed its name to Topcon Positioning System and is a very successful company.

“In 2007, after my obligations to Topcon ended and according to the provisions of our agreement, I founded JAVAD GNSS and introduced Triumph products. These were 216-channel receivers, integrated with several communication channels. We also introduced their Alpha, Delta, and Sigma versions. We were again the first to offer European Galileo and Japanese QZSS tracking in mass production. Triumph technology has been shown to have the best signal quality and best multipath reduction capabilities against all others tested by the German Aerospace. We also introduced GLONASS inter-channel (group/carrier delay) calibration to 0.2 millimeter which made GLONASS FDMA as good as GPS CDMA. JAVAD GNSS is growing fast and gaining market share.”

Honeywell has been granted a four-year, $99 million contract to help the U.S. Air Force for the embedded GPS and inertial navigation systems (INS) modernization program (EGI-M). Honeywell will provide engineering, manufacturing and development services to the EGI-M program under the sole-source contract, according to the Department of Defense.

Work will be performed in Clearwater, Florida, through April 19, 2024.

The contract is the result of a sole-source acquisition and only one offer was received. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Position, Navigation & Timing Contracting Branch, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, is the contracting activity (FA8576-20-C-0001).

The COSMIC-1 program ended on May 1, when the last of six tiny satellites were decommissioned. The satellites were launched 14 years ago, and outlived their planned lifespan by 12 years.

COSMIC — the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere  and Climate (COSMIC) mission — uses GPS signals to provide a wealth of accurate atmospheric data and improve weather forecasts, according to Laura Snider, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which ran the COSMIC program.

Meanwhile, the COSMIC-2 program (FORMOSAT-7 in Taiwan) continues. Its six satellites were launched on June 25, 2019, into low-inclination orbits. The mission was launched by NOAA as the agency’s first operational GNSS radio occultation mission.

COSMIC-1 demonstrated the value of GNSS radio occultation (GNSS-RO) to derive vertical atmospheric profiles of temperature, humidity and pressure by measuring the degree to which GPS signals bend as they travel through Earth’s atmosphere.

Weather centers used the high-quality, accurate data to improve forecasts; the data was also used by researchers.

“Throughout its lifetime, COSMIC-1 made an astounding 7 million vertical atmospheric profiles available to the operational forecast centers and research community,” writes Snider. “These data demonstrably boosted forecast accuracy and were referenced in more than 550 peer-reviewed scientific publications. In all, more than 5,000 users from over 100 countries have accessed COSMIC data.

COSMIC-1 was primarily funded by the National Space Organization in Taiwan, where the mission is called FORMOSAT-3. The leading U.S. sponsor on the project was the National Science Foundation. Other U.S. partners included NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Air Force and the Office of Naval Research.

UCAR also led the GPS/MET GPS radio occultation mission in the mid-1990s.

Hexagon | NovAtel has announced released its first purpose-built driver, powered by Robot Operating System (ROS), to support its OEM7 family of GNSS receivers.

The driver, developed by NovAtel engineers, provides an optimized interface enabling users to accelerate autonomous development projects by quickly incorporating NovAtel OEM7 receivers into custom applications.

The driver is available for immediate download through the new NovAtel GitHub repository or as a ROS Binary Package for direct installation.

With the release of a NovAtel-developed OEM7 driver built on ROS, developers can now confidently access the critical data needed to build autonomy algorithms for academic investigations, ride-share programs, and other applications.

Data from numerous sensors can be combined to help move projects into higher levels of autonomy faster without the need to adapt community-developed drivers. Tested using the Hexagon | AutonomouStuff platform, the driver ensures that the data received accurately reflects the output provided by the receiver, while also giving users the ability to record raw data for post-processing.

“We are excited to introduce our first purpose-built driver powered by ROS to the GitHub community. Its development is a result of collaboration between NovAtel and AutonomouStuff in support of Hexagon’s Smart Autonomous Mobility (SAM) initiative, unveiled at CES 2020 in Las Vegas,” said Miguel Amor, chief marketing officer, Hexagon’s Autonomy & Positioning division. “The SAM portfolio is a comprehensive solutions platform that brings together all the necessary sensors, software and services to make autonomous driving possible.”

The new driver is available for download on the NovAtel GitHub repository.

ROS is a trademark of Open Robotics.

The American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS): The Imaging and Geospatial Information Society has withdrawn its ASPRS 2020 Annual Conference Virtual Technical Program from the Geo Week 2020 face-to-face event and will be going virtual because of COVID-19.

Geo Week 2020 is currently scheduled to take place July 27-29 at the McCormick Center in Chicago.

According to ASPRS, all presenters originally accepted for the March event in Washington, D.C., will have the opportunity to share their work in the ASPRS 2020 Annual Conference Virtual Technical Program, a series of online technical sessions taking place June 22-26.

Because the ASPRS 2020 Annual Conference Virtual Technical Program is being hosted, organized and managed by ASPRS alone, there will be a new, separate registration process and fee for all presenters and attendees. Existing Geo Week 2020 conference registrations are not transferable to this new ASPRS event, ASPRS said. Registrants may contact info@geo-week.com if they wish to request a refund for all or part of their Geo Week 2020 registration or transfer their 2020 registration to Geo Week 2021.

Those who register for the ASPRS 2020 Annual Conference Virtual Technical Program will be given access to all of the online technical sessions, as well as live webinars and on-demand recordings, ASPRS said. The full program will e published on the conference website on June 8.

Dewberry has been selected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the agency’s Shoreline Mapping Services contract. The five-year, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract has a ceiling of $40 million and will enable Dewberry and its partners to work with NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey to develop new technologies and initiatives to protect the nation’s coasts.

This is Dewberry’s second consecutive shoreline mapping services contract for NOAA. Over the past five years, the firm completed 30 task orders across the nation, including research studies to analyze bathymetric point tracing, derive bathymetry from satellite data, and apply INSAR data to analyze subsidence.

Task orders also included shoreline mapping in Alaska; creating topobathymetric lidar and shoreline products from NOAA-acquired data in Connecticut, Puerto Rico, the Chesapeake Bay, Florida and Maryland; acquiring and processing topobathymetric lidar data in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Texas and Massachusetts; and developing topobathymetric elevation and shoreline mapping datasets along the Atlantic seaboard from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Long Island, New York.

“We are excited to continue to support and partner with NOAA to update the national shoreline, nautical charts, and provide high-resolution topography and bathymetric data to enhance the National Coastal Mapping Program,” said Amar Nayegandhi, CP, CMS, GISP, Dewberry’s senior vice president and senior project manager for the contract. “We always strive to find the most appropriate technology and solutions for NOAA and its numerous stakeholders. The task orders we received under the previous contract are a testament to the breadth of geospatial, scientific, and technology services we offer to NOAA.”

Dewberry also conducted special initiatives such as supporting the GRAV-D program to assist in developing the new gravimetric geoid model for 2022 and the 3D Nation Requirements and Benefits Study in collaboration with NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The 3D Nation Study documents topographic, coastal, and bathymetric 3D elevation data requirements and benefits across a multitude of geographies, helping to establish a baseline understanding of national business uses, needs and associated benefits for 3D elevation data.

China’s field work for new measurements of Mount Everest — the world’s, highest peak — are now complete. However, it will take two to three months for scientists to calculate and release its exact height, according to CHC Navigation, whose GNSS receiver was used.

The eight-member Chinese survey team reached the summit on May 27. The team erected a survey marker and installed a GNSS antenna on the snow-covered peak. The team also conducted a GNSS survey, snow depth measurement and gravity survey, said China’s Ministry of Natural Resources.

Scientists will use multiple traditional and modern measurement techniques to perform comprehensive calculations of the measurement data. After data analysis and processing, they will carry out theoretical studies and repeated verifications to determine the accurate height. Complex calculations are needed to eliminate errors caused by factors such as temperature, air pressure and the refractive environment.