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.

The Institution of Navigation (ION) is asking for abstracts for ION GNSS+ 2020, which is set to take place Sept. 21-25 in St. Louis.

ION GNSS+ 2020, themed “GNSS + Other Sensors in Today’s Marketplace,” will feature two tracks: commercial and policy tracks and research tracks. The commercial and policy tracks will include high performance and safety critical applications; status and future trends in GNSS; and mass market and commercial applications. The research tracks will include multi sensor and autonomous navigation; algorithms and methods; and advanced GNSS technologies.

In addition, authors whose abstracts are accepted in these sessions (either as a primary or as an alternate presenter) will have the option to have their paper peer reviewed.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is March 5. Submit your abstract here.

Carlson Machine Control has introduced the Vsx7 multi-frequency position and heading receiver. The Vsx7 is a multi-GNSS receiver designed specifically for machine control and can be installed on excavators, drills, pile drivers and more.

Paired with the Carlson A45 antennas, the Vsx7 features high-precision positioning in Athena RTK, Atlas L-band and SBAS and heading accuracy of up to .01 degrees. The whole Vsx7 system is designed to operate in harsh conditions from -40 degrees Fahrenheit to 158 degrees Fahrenheit. It can be mounted either by bolts or with magnets depending on the application and external environment.

The Vsx7 is primarily used in the mining and construction industries but can be adopted into similar industries with its companion software, Carlson Grade. Field data can be collected and viewed in real-time both at the machine with either, the MC8 or MC10 control box as well as in the office with Carlson Command.

“Our customers are able to operate day after day with complete confidence in their machine guidance,” says Tim Jones, director of Machine Control. “The Vsx7 is a perfect form factor for our customers and to Carlson Grade and Carlson Command as a ruggedized GNSS receiver.”

Carlson Grade is a machine guidance software solution that can be adapted to any heavy machine for grading, excavating, mining, shoveling, drilling, pile driving and landfill operation. Carlson Grade provides real-time field reporting and allows operators to view where they are in the project and at all times.

Carlson Command is a site management software solution that provides multiple viewing options of multiple and single machines in real-time. Command allows machine positions to be viewed as well as cut/fill and elevation. Managers can also remote into machines and transmit messages directly to an operator.

Stan incorporates the Trimble BX992 dual-antenna enclosure for accurate, available and reliable localization

The Stanley Robotics team has called on Trimble to equip Stan, their autonomous parking and valet robot, with accurate localization.

To achieve centimeter-level localization, Stanley Robotics needed to combine perception algorithms and intelligent management software with reliable GNSS technology.

“The robot must move fast to handle high traffic flow and precisely to park cars as densely as possible,” said Anthony Troublé, robot team manager at Stanley Robotics. The team selected the Trimble BX992 dual-antenna enclosure and two Trimble AV59 GNSS antennas.

The BX992 is installed inside the robot and the two antennas are mounted on the robot’s head with maximum separation between them. For the robot to attain centimeter-level localization, a Trimble BX992 base and a Trimble Zephyr antenna are installed at the drop-off cabins where customers leave their cars until robots move them to a more permanent location.

The Trimble BX992 base broadcasts real-time kinematic (RTK) corrections over a Wi-Fi link to the robots.

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What Stan Does

With the Stan robotic valet, passengers no longer waste time looking for a free space or trying to locate their vehicle, according to Stan’s creators. After booking their parking space in just a few clicks on the Lyon Airport website, passengers drop off their vehicle in dedicated cabins and make their way to the terminals using the shuttle bus located just a few steps away.

The robot takes care of the car, parking it in the secure car park. When they return, passengers pick up their vehicle, which is waiting for them in one of the cabins.

“The service offers security, simplicity and time savings. With this new technology, parking becomes a no-fuss experience that takes only a few minutes of passengers’ time, leaving them free to travel in a relaxed state of mind,” Stanley Robotics said in a press release.

The system also constitutes a new way of arranging vehicles in a car park and makes excellent use of space since cars can be parked in dense blocks.

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In addition, the robot uses two lidar scanners and four cameras. Stan relies on lidar-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) techniques to locate the robot and build a map. The lidar-based SLAM system is always running and is fused with the GNSS localization and odometry.

“The lidar is mostly critical in the cabins where the GNSS availability and reliability is not sufficient,” Troublé said. “The full integration with our localization system, especially the transition from indoor-to-outdoor when the robot enters a cabin was a challenge. We have tuned and improved our localization fusion algorithm to get the best out of each component and deliver a consistent confidence index.”

Stan is equipped with three levels of safety to ensure operational effectiveness.

• First, Stanley Robotics continuously monitors the accuracy, availability and consistency of the RTK GNSS, SLAM and odometry localization signals. “If these signals are too inconsistent or if the overall confidence is too low, the robots are stopped and a site supervisor is alerted,” Troublé said.
• Further, the site is monitored through lidars and cameras on the robot to prevent any collision with obstacles.
• Finally, a trained Stan maintenance worker is assigned to every parking lot. These individuals wear a safety badge. Every robot is equipped with a safe-stop feature that will trigger if the operator gets within a defined proximity to the robot.

The first outdoor car park managed by robots opened to the public in 2018 at Lyon Saint-Exupéry airport. Since testing started in 2017, four Stan robots are now fully operational in the Lyon Saint-Exupéry airport car park, which can accommodate up to 500 vehicles.

Stanley Robotics announced in January 2019 that they will open 2,000 spaces at Lyon in the summer of 2020. The airport is looking to eventually expand this system to up to 6,000 spaces in total.

In 2019, Stanley Robotics signed a contract with Gatwick Airports, the first UK airport to use robots that valet park passengers’ cars. The Stanley Robotics team is gearing up to begin work at another airport to be announced soon.

Telecom, technology and aviation industry leaders join forces to create the HAPS Alliance to connect more people, places and things by using the stratosphere

A group of global industry leaders is forming the HAPS Alliance, an association of world-leading telecommunications, technology, aviation and aerospace companies united in promoting the use of high-altitude vehicles in the Earth’s stratosphere to eliminate the digital divide and bring connectivity to more people, places and things worldwide.

Members who have committed to join the HAPS Alliance include

• SoftBank Corp.’s HAPSMobile Inc.
• Alphabet’s Loon LLC
• AeroVironment Inc.
• Airbus Defence and Space
• Bharti Airtel Limited
• China Telecom Corporation Limited
• Deutsche Telekom AG
• Intelsat US LLC
• Nokia Corporation
• SoftBank Corp.
• Telefónica S.A.
• Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson

The HAPS Alliance is being created so member companies can

• collectively advocate for High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) business development with the relevant authorities in various countries
• build a cooperative HAPS ecosystem
• develop common product specifications and promote the standardization of HAPS network interoperability

All of these activities will be key to the Alliance’s aim of addressing diverse social issues and creating new value by providing telecommunications network connectivity worldwide through the utilization of high altitude vehicles.

The Alliance, originally an initiative from HAPSMobile and Loon, will have members from participating leading companies across the aerospace, technology and telecom industries to carry out the Alliance’s activities.

The launch of the HAPS Alliance follows an April 2019 announcement between HAPSMobile and Loon where the companies formed a strategic alliance to advance the use of high-altitude vehicles.

High-altitude network connectivity platforms operate in the stratosphere — above ground infrastructure but below satellites — allowing for near ubiquitous coverage that avoids ground clutter and significant latency issues.

These advantages make such vehicles a promising solution for expanding mobile coverage to areas where connectivity is lacking — mountainous terrain, remote islands, marine regions and developing countries — as well as for IoT and 5G use-cases. The HAPS Alliance seeks to create an ecosystem to support next-generation global connectivity needed to revolutionize the world’s mobile networks.

The Institute of Navigation (ION) has published its Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Software Defined Radio Metadata Standard document.

According to ION, The standard is the product of a three-year long effort of the ION GNSS SDR Standard Working Group and defines parameters and schema to express the contents of SDR sample data files. The standard promotes the interoperability of GNSS SDR data collection systems and processors, ION added.

“In recent years there has been a proliferation of software defined radio data collection systems and processing platforms designed for Global Navigation Satellite System receiver applications or those that support GNSS bands,” ION said in a press release. “For post-processing, correctly interpreting the GNSS SDR sampled datasets produced or consumed by these systems has historically been a cumbersome and error-prone process. This is because these systems necessarily produce datasets of various formats, the subtleties of which are often lost in translation when communicating between the producer and consumer of these datasets. This specification standardizes the metadata associated with GNSS SDR sampled data files and the layout of the binary sample files.”

The standard is free and can be found here.

Semtech Corporation, supplier of high-performance analog and mixed-signal semiconductors and advanced algorithms, has launched LoRa Edge, a versatile and low-power software defined LoRa-based platform.

Semtech said LoRa Edge will enable a wide portfolio of applications for indoor and outdoor asset management, targeting industrial, building, home, agriculture, transportation and logistics markets.

The first product from this portfolio is a geolocation solution for development of internet of things (IoT) devices for asset management applications. It features low-power Wi-Fi and GNSS sniffing capabilities combined with LoRa Cloud geolocation and device management services to significantly reduce the cost and complexity of locating and monitoring IoT assets.

“Semtech continually delivers internet of things (IoT) solutions that simplify and accelerate the development of LPWAN applications,” said Pedro Pachuca, director of IoT Wireless in Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group. “LoRa Edge and LoRa Cloud geolocation services enable customers to develop ultra-low power applications for a variety of industries and will expand the mass adoption of LoRa in the IoT ecosystem.”

Over the next decade, 500 billion devices are expected to connect to the internet (according to Cisco), as organizations continue to shift towards a more IoT-focused business strategy, and the majority of those IoT devices require some form of localization capability either at point of install or through the assets life.

The LoRa Edge geolocation platform will enable solution providers to leverage the unique localization capabilities of LoRa as well as GNSS and Wi-Fi scanning capabilities from a single chip solution, allowing customers to choose the best localization tool for the application task they are addressing.

By removing the need for incremental GNSS and Wi-Fi components, LoRa Edge reduces the bill of material (BOM) costs of devices and significantly reduces design and procurement complexity, Semtech said.

The first LoRa Edge chipset targeted with geolocation (LR1110) is available today; more products from this portfolio will be released in the first half of this year.

Product Features

Multi-Purpose Radio Front-End

• 150 – 2700 MHz continuous frequency synthesizer range
• GPS/BeiDou scanning
• Wi-Fi passive scanning

Low-Power LoRa/(G)FSK RF Transceiver

• Worldwide frequency bands support in the range 150 – 960 MHz
• High power PA path +22 dBm
• High efficiency PA path +15 dBm
• Fully compatible with the LoRaWAN standard

Cryptographic Engine

• Hardware support for AES-128 encryption/decryption based algorithms
• Handling device parameters such as DevEUI and JoinEUI
• Protects confidential information such as encryption keys
• Stores NwkKey, AppKey, as defined in the LoRaWAN standard

Quectel Wireless Solutions is collaborating with Microsoft and Qualcomm Technologies to integrate its new LPWA module BG95 with Microsoft’s Azure Device SDK.

The integration will provide direct and secure connections to Azure IoT Hub and provide full support for Azure device management capabilities.

Targeting global markets, the BG95 module is a cost-optimized, highly-integrated variant supporting integrated GNSS, Cat M1, Cat NB2 and EGPRS (also called EDGE). The module complies with 3GPP Release 14 and delivers improved capabilities in power consumption, data rates and hardware-based security.

The BG95 cellular module is based on the Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem, to be integrated with Microsoft’s Azure Device software development kit (SDK). As a result, customers can connect their BG95 devices to the Microsoft Azure cloud where they can build, manage and deploy internet of things (IoT) solutions at scale, significantly accelerating time to market.

By integrating RAM/flash, an ARM Cortex A7 processor supporting ThreadX, the BG95 is engineered to reduce power consumption significantly in idle mode.

By doing this, the BG95 has the potential to support decade-plus battery life, which is critical for IoT devices serving long life spans, such as asset trackers, smart meters, smart city sensors, home security and wearable trackers.

Additionally, Azure IoT is built for security. It simplifies the complexity of IoT security solutions with built-in protection at each stage of deployment (including cloud services and devices) and minimizes security weaknesses wherever they exist. Leveraging Azure IoT security features, Quectel BG95 will offer IoT devices end-to-end security capability in order to prevent potential risks.

“We’re excited for the Azure edge device ecosystem to continue to grow. Our partnership with Quectel and Qualcomm Technologies will deliver what our customers need — bringing together ultra-low power cellular modules and Azure to drive their digital transformation,” said Roanne Sones, corporate vice president at Microsoft.

“The BG95 module is the first Qualcomm 9205 platform to support IoT Plug and Play, accelerating LPWAN solution deployments like smart meters and asset trackers that connect seamlessly to our IoT Central offering,” Sones said.

“With its cutting-edge performance and power-saving capabilities, the Qualcomm 9205 LTE Modem is the gold standard for multimode IoT modules looking to offer NB-IoT, Cat-M1, GPRS, and GNSS connectivity,” said Jeffery Torrance, vice president, business development, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We are proud to continue our long-standing collaboration with Quectel to jointly drive the IoT forward.”

“We are happy that the BG95-M3 has been verified on Microsoft Azure IoT Plug and Play. This validates our ability to jumpstart customers’ IoT projects with pre-tested modules and operating system combinations. Leveraging our close relationship with Microsoft and Qualcomm Technologies, we will jointly provide more integral ‘Device-Cloud’ solutions to customers,” said Doron Zhang, Chief Operation Officer, Quectel. “As one of the first wave Azure IoT PnP partners, Quectel has worked with Microsoft on LTE Mobile Broadband (MBB) modules, which have been widely adopted by top laptop OEMs. In the future, we will extend the partnership to more fields, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Edge, in order to help the Microsoft partner ecosystem connect their devices even more intelligently.”

Robotic Research LLC, a leading provider of autonomy and robotic technologies, will begin testing fully autonomous low-speed shuttles that are totally unmanned in the second quarter of this year.

Current commercial applications of low-speed shuttles use onboard safety attendants to monitor the safety inside and outside the vehicle. Robotic Research plans to start testing without onboard attendants.

The first step is to have the attendants in fixed on-site locations, with the future goal to move attendants to an offsite safety monitoring facility.

“Through our work with the U.S. government over the past four years, we have already demonstrated that fully autonomous trucks are a reality. We are committed to making our shuttle and bus manufacturing partners successful by accelerating state-of-the-art technologies for unmanned vehicles ahead of regulatory agencies’ progress,” said Alberto Lacaze, president of Robotic Research.

“The level of safety certification and redundancy necessary to drive fully autonomous vehicles is a significant undertaking that needs to be designed from the top down. Just adding more ADAS is not a reasonable or cost-effective pathway to full autonomy,” Lacaze said. “The advancements driven by the Robotic Research team will provide a product that significantly reduces the cost of operation and therefore improves market size.”

Current local, state and federal regulations for most commercial shuttle operations require the safety attendant to be inside the cab of the vehicle. However, many transit operators are seeking to change these regulations to allow remote attendants to oversee system safety operations. The change is integral to the viability of low-speed shuttles, which are an innovative solution to the first/last mile problem, which is the distance between a traveler’s origin or destination, and a transit station or stop.

Robotic Research has been developing and testing unmanned, autonomous operations for a wide range of vehicles for nearly a decade. The company currently provides autonomy kits that fully automate logistics convoy trucks for the U.S. government and several of its allied nation partners. Nearly 100 trucks have already been delivered. The tests for these vehicles have included operations with no safety attendants on board, with a single operator monitoring three unmanned vehicles.

Robotic Research’s AutoDrive autonomy kit is platform agnostic and can be retrofitted to vehicles of all sizes, from small, portable robots to large trucks and buses. The system provides autonomous functionality on surfaces ranging from urban-improved roads to off-road terrain, all while the vehicle is collecting and analyzing data to better enhance the future of autonomous vehicles and transportation.

Robotic Research’s technology provides automation to one of the largest international shuttle providers as well as to the largest U.S. manufacturer of commercial buses. The company’s AutoDrive kit also supports various autonomy programs in commercial and government sectors and is currently operating in communities and cities around the globe, including 30 states and four continents.