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The Launch Readiness Review on Nov. 26 confirmed that the satellites, the supporting ground installations, and the early operations facilities and teams are ready for lift-off on the early hours of Thursday morning, central European time.

Galileo satellites 27 and 28 are scheduled to be launched by a Soyuz launcher from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Dec. 2 at 01:31 CET (Dec. 1 at 21:31:27 local Kourou time).

These satellites are the first of Batch 3, comprising 12 additional first-generation Galileo satellites commissioned in 2017 to bring the constellation to full operational capability. They will be used to further expand the constellation up to 38 satellites and act as backups and spares for satellites that reach their end-of-life.

Follow the launch live on ESA Web TV Two starting at 0104 CET.

“Friday’s Launch Readiness Review confirmed that the first two satellites in this final batch of 12 Galileo first-generation satellites, are good to go, provided no external circumstances come up between now and the night of 1-2 December,” said Bastiaan Willemse, ESA’s Galileo Satellite manager, from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. “Meanwhile the preparation for the launch campaign of the next two satellites has already started.”

The Launch Readiness Review is an ESA-led review with participation of the satellite manufacturer OHB, the launch service provider Arianespace, the Galileo operator SpaceOpal, the EU Space Programme Agency (EUSPA) and the European Commission, as well as the programme’s Security Accreditation Board.

Friday’s review was the last before the Arianespace-led RAL (Revue d’Aptitude de Lancement) takes place next week when the latest status of the launcher, the launch facilities and site, the global launch tracking facilities, the satellites and supporting ground infrastructure will be reviewed, most likely resulting in approval for launch countdown.

The satellites arrived in French Guiana in early October, kicking off a busy launch campaign, including initial dispenser fit checks and the filling with the hydrazine fuel that will be used to maneuver them during their 12 years of working life.

The two satellites will add to the 26 satellites of the Galileo constellation already in orbit and delivering Initial Services around the globe.

This week’s lift-off will be the 11th Galileo launch in 10 years. Two further launches are planned for next year, to allow Galileo to reach Full Operational Capability in its delivery of services, to be followed by the launches of the rest of the Batch 3 satellites — all undergoing final integration at OHB facilities in Bremen and on-ground verification testing at ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands.

In parallel to Batch 3’s completion of Galileo First Generation deployment, the new Galileo Second Generation satellites, featuring enhanced navigation signals and capabilities, are already in development with their deployment expected to begin by 2024.

The Kremlin warned it could blow up 32 GPS satellites with its new anti-satellite technology, ASAT, which it tested Nov. 15 on a retired Soviet Tselina-D satellite.

Russia then claimed on state television that its new ASAT missiles could obliterate NATO satellites and “blind all their missiles, planes and ships, not to mention the ground forces,” said Russian Channel One TV host Dmitry Kiselyov, rendering the West’s GPS-guided missiles useless. “It means that if NATO crosses our red line, it risks losing all 32 of its GPS satellites at once.”

The International Space Station (ISS) Flight Control team was notified of indications of a satellite breakup, causing 1,500 pieces of debris to threaten the station. “Due to the debris generated by the destructive Russian Anti-Satellite (ASAT) test, ISS astronauts and cosmonauts undertook emergency procedures for safety,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“With its long and storied history in human spaceflight, it is unthinkable that Russia would endanger not only the American and international partner astronauts on the ISS, but also their own cosmonauts,” Nelson said. “Their actions are reckless and dangerous, threatening as well the Chinese space station and the taikonauts on board. All nations have a responsibility to prevent the purposeful creation of space debris from ASATs and to foster a safe, sustainable space environment.

“Russia has demonstrated a deliberate disregard for the security, safety, stability and long-term sustainability of the space domain for all nations,” Gen. James Dickinson, commander of U.S. Space Command, said. “Russia’s tests of direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons clearly demonstrate that Russia continues to pursue counterspace weapon systems that undermine strategic stability and pose a threat to all nations.”

“The tasks of paleontologists and classical historians and archaeologists are remarkably similar — to excavate, decipher and bring to life the tantalizing remnants of a time we will never see.”
— Adrienne Mayor

Heatwaves rose up from the dusty, dry, cracked ground. Tiny black flies buzzed around the team’s eyes and faces. The only shade was under a canopy erected across the shallow open trench where half a dozen people gently brushed away the layers. Dirt is time; the deeper one digs, the further back in time one goes.

A layer 23,000 years old is exposed at nearly two feet down, revealing footprints of a female and a toddler. It tells a story of her mile-long journey through the soft clay mud. Roaming nearby was a giant sloth and a herd of mammoths. This discovery forces science to re-adjust the timeline of humans living on the North American continent, pushing it further back into the Pleistocene era at least 10,000 years.

Discoveries like this are the treasures archeologists search for. Archaeologists are scientists — part treasure hunters and part storytellers. They add context to history.

Ground-Penetrating Radar

Advanced technologies are aiding new discoveries of the past. Even though the footprints were buried beneath two feet of dirt, they were discovered without physically seeing them. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) made the discovery possible. GPR has made significant advancements in recent years, along with improvements in other types of remote sensing applications.

The resolution of GPR has improved along with the depths that GPR can detect objects. Computers can process the GPR data into 3D images providing a depth profile of the scanned area. This is how the footprints were detected.

In addition to GPR, the researchers used magnetometers that verify disturbances in the sediment, which can also be imaged in 3D, albeit with a much lower resolution.

“The sediment itself has a memory that records the effects of the animal’s weight and momentum in a beautiful way. It gives us a way to understand the biomechanics of extinct fauna that we never had before,” said Thomas Urban, the Cornell University research scientist who led the team making the discovery.

Usually, archeological findings are of bones and artifacts. Fossilized “ghost” footprints of humans and other creatures brings them to life, providing glimpses of the living past.

Under ideal conditions, GPR can reach depths of 30 meters (98 feet). The accuracy and range of GPR depend on sediment type, moisture content and other geologic morphologies. Underlying GPR technology and magnetometry are robust geospatial information systems (GIS) that preserve a digital record of the discovery, allowing for further geospatial analyses. Advances in machine learning will improve future detection.

Elsewhere in the Americas, a project has been ongoing in Mexico since the 1990s using GPR to map the cenotes and underground aquifers used by the Mayans. A 215-mile-long underground water cave system — the longest in the world — has been mapped in the Yucatan peninsula. Divers exploring these cenotes found remains of Ice Age animals, including a sabertooth tigers and mammoths.

Lidar and ALS

Lidar (light detection and ranging) is making even more discoveries possible with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning. For instance, in the jungles of Guatemala, lidar revealed the unknown ancient Mayan city of Tikal.

Lidar  is an active sensor that measures ground height. Using an airborne laser scanning (ALS) system mounted to a plane, helicopter or UAV, the lidar device’s laser beams scan the landscape. The system calculates the time it takes for the beam to reach an object on the ground and bounce back.

The result generates one point for each ground object the laser touches, calculating the distance the beam traveled. Billions of points are collected during a scan. Geospatial archeologists then process the collected points into a point cloud (Figure 1). Selecting only points classified as ground and water, the points are converted to a raster image, and archeologists are provided a perspective of the bare earth under tree canopy and vegetation (Figure 2).

In this way, lidar serves as a non-destructive way to identify earthwork formations, even in dense jungle.

Object-Based Imagery Analysis

The challenge with lidar and imagery is the sheer volume of data, beyond the scope of what a human can manually review. Because of how faint archaeological features can be, the search often requires manipulating imagery datasets by combining multispectral bands, and then merging them with topographical data. To assist this huge endeavor, artificial intelligence is applied to pixel-based classification and object-based imagery analysis (OBIA) to highlight areas of interest for further study.

Dylan Davis, a Ph.D. candidate at Pennsylvania State University, spearheaded the use of OBIA for finding earthworks such as circular mounds, stone walls,and roadways in Beaufort, South Carolina. He took advantage of high-resolution NOAA imagery taken of the coast before the hurricane season of 2008. Using artificial intelligence for object-based imagery analysis, 160 previously undetected mound features were found.

On the local level, archeologists apply the same approach to finding headstones in unmarked cemeteries. A pixel-defined object-based classification system helped one researcher automatically identify potential headstones in a densely vegetated cemetery.

The technology used for OBIA is also used for visual-inertial odometry (VIO). NASA is experimenting with VIO techniques to help astronauts navigate the lunar surface (see NASA’s Artemis program will need lunar spatial reference system). For Artemis, VIO will use the Moon’s craters as a reference system to derive an accurate position.

Virtual 3D Worlds

Perhaps one of the most significant uses of technology for archaeological research and exploration is the use of virtual 3D immersive worlds. Exploring ancient worlds as they might have looked gives archaeologists additional insights and the public a chance to experience their discoveries, connecting us with history.

The mile-long journey of a young female carrying a toddler across an Ice Age landscape 23,000 years ago seems so distant, yet so familiar to any parent. The image breathes life into our common ancestry. Through the power of GIS and modern technologies, she walked right into the 21st century.

“The man who knows and dwells in history adds a new dimension to his existence…He lives in all time; the ages are his, all live alike to him.”
— William Flinders Petrie

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Special thanks to Stephanie Clark, a geospatial archeologist with Integrated Environmental Solutions, LLC, of Phenix City, Alabama. Stephanie provided technical advice and collaboration, and the lidar studies for Figures 1, 2 and 3.

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William Tewelow is a senior aeronautical information specialist for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is a 2016 graduate of the FAA’s management fellowship Program for Emerging Leaders and a mentor with the FAA’s National Mentor Program. He served on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Transportation and led a national strategic geospatial initiative under the authority of the White House Open Data Partnership.

Tewelow is a designated Geographic Information Systems Professionals (GISP), with degrees in geographic information technology and Intelligence Studies. he is currently earning his master’s degree in organizational leadership with a focus on performance management.

Tewelow retired from the U.S. Navy after serving 23 years as a geospatial and imagery intelligence specialist, a naval aviator, a meteorologist and a tactical oceanographer earning three achievement medals. He was among the first in the nation to earn a Geospatial Specialist Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor while working at NASA Stennis Space Center. He is married, enjoys traveling, connecting people, solving problems, and interested in new technology. His favorite quote is, “A man’s mind changed by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

AnimaMundi Ocean Data Solutions, DJI and Lagoon are using drones to build a comprehensive database of plastic waste on coastlines throughout the world.

AnimaMundi is a not-for-profit organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its proprietary technology interprets photo and video records to extract a single-use plastic bottle count. The information can be captured via an app using still photography as well as images from drones. The data is automatically uploaded, processed and stored on the company’s servers. The data will enable decisions to facilitate environmental investments and measure the impact of waste-management initiatives.

The process begins with DJI drones piloted by sailors taking place in the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), which started from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, on Nov. 21. DJI provided drones to Lagoon, a sailing catamaran cruiser maker, to measure plastic waste on beaches around the Caribbean.

Of the more than 300 million tons of plastic produced every year, at least 8 million tons end up in the ocean, making up 80% of all marine debris, from surface waters to deep-sea sediment. About 33,000 single-use plastic bottles are dumped in the ocean every minute of every day, affecting every coastline.

Matt Cooper, founder and CEO, AnimaMundi is driven by the need for accurate real time data to ensure investment decisions are made correctly with measurable impact. “Just before COP26 began, world leaders admitted that an annual $100-billion climate finance goal will not be reached until 2023,” Cooper said. “The need for urgent climate action is met with the need to ensure adequate and effective financing solutions. Big data like this will help to determine priorities for action.”

Lagoon has been a partner of the ARC rally since 2005. Through its Club Lagoon, the company encourages its owners to sign up to this program aiming at reducing plastic waste in our oceans thanks to data collected by drones.

“Lagoon is proud to be partnering with AnimaMundi in this exciting data collection initiative using our ‘Club Lagoon’ as part of the solution,” said Thomas Gailly, Lagoon brand director. “We have more than 6,000 of our catamarans sailing around the world, and we can feel that our customers are more and more willing to play a role in such initiatives. It’s stimulating to think that the Lagoon owners’ community could be involved in capturing this much needed data in a highly efficient way. This partnership is the perfect complement to our own policy of respect for the environment and all the work undertaken to reduce the environmental impact of our activities.”

DJI, the global leader in developing and manufacturing civilian drones and aerial imaging technology for personal and professional use, has provided repurposed drones to capture images of the Caribbean coastline that would otherwise be out of reach. “Our drones and cameras empower people to capture amazing photos, video, and high-end professional imagery in every corner of the world,” said Olivier Mondon, senior communication manager at DJI Europe. “Each day, we learn how drones benefit society as a whole, and we are proud to have our drones embark on this environmental journey with experienced sailors who will be able to work using repurposed products to enable invaluable data capture.”

Initially targeting the Caribbean islands, AnimaMundi is also finalizing a partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and its Plastic Waste-Free Islands (PWFI) initiative to generate weekly total island coastal plastic waste profiles covering Grenada, St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda.

In 2019, with the support of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, IUCN launched the PWFI project in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Oceania, seeking to promote a circular economy and demonstrate effective, quantifiable solutions to address plastic leakage from small island developing states.

Construction of the New National GNSS Frame Network of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) has been completed. The new network, built by e-GEOS, will provide up-to-date, high-precision geodetic information via GNSS signals for the scientific community and professional and entrepreneurial operators. E-GEOS is a company belonging to Telespazio (80%) and an investee of ASI (20%).

There are 46 stations distributed evenly across the Italian peninsula that will acquire the signals from GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo.

ASI’s GNSS network, which was designed and developed to provide indispensable support for the global geodetic networks—such as the International GNSS Service (IGS) and the EUropean REference Frame (EUREF)—will produce data for the management of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF).

It will make a variety of products and services possible, such as determining the orbits of GNSS satellites with an accuracy to the nearest centimeter. It will also time-synchronize the satellites to better than one nanosecond, useful both for on-site applications as well as to support satellites equipped with GNSS receivers.

The new network will enable ASI and e-GEOS to intensify and fine-tune the joint scientific and operational development underway for the last 25 years at the ASI Space Center in Matera in the field of meteorology, as well as the study of climate change and space weather.

Specifically, the network will enable the provision to the national supply chain—from research centres to SMEs, universities and major corporations—of products and services useful for developing innovative, high-precision positioning applications, which can be implemented in a wide variety of sectors, such as precision farming.

To contribute to scientific activities, some stations in the new GNSS network have been installed in significant locations where purpose-designed structures are already present.

All the data acquired by the New National GNSS Frame Network will be received, processed and stored at ASI Space Centre in Matera and provided to all interested users.

Integrated solution combines and consolidates valuable telematics data for Geotab and GM customers in Canada

Geotab Inc. has announced the availability of the Geotab Integrated Solution for General Motors in Canada. With no additional hardware installation required, the offering provides Canadian customers with a simplified fleet management platform to help businesses make better informed decisions.

With this integration, data from compatible GM vehicles, 2016 or newer, with OnStar embedded factory-first hardware can be securely transferred into Geotab’s web-based fleet management software, integrating all vehicle data into one platform, offering businesses and fleets a seamless user experience.

By enabling fleet managers to access rich proprietary vehicle data, they can generate safety reports, activity reports and measure other key metrics on one platform to help optimize fleet performance.

Users can expand the functionality of the solution further with access to the Geotab Marketplace, a growing portfolio of mobile apps and software and hardware add-ons to enable customers to tailor their fleet management solution to help meet all of their connectivity needs including improved safety, productivity and efficiency.

Percepto, an Israel-based company specializing in autonomous inspection with industrial robotics, has launched its 2022 Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) platform and Air Mobile drone.

Recently listed in TIME magazine’s 100 Best Inventions of 2021, Percepto offers an end-to-end solution powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to collate and streamline all visual data for accurate actionable insights.

Percepto AIM 2022 has a new Insight Manager to deliver AI-powered packaged solutions for sector-specific use cases, such as solar, mining, energy, oil and gas and other industries. The company drew on tens of thousands of hours collected by autonomous robot missions at industrial facilities to create it.

Percepto’s AI change-detection framework offers unified visual data and critical business insights for each of the sector-specific solutions. AIM 2022 can be integrated with autonomous drones and robots as well as other visual data collectors, now including DJI drones, and fixed cameras.

Reports and insights are automatically generated based on the combined visual data. Disseminated to relevant stakeholders on any mobile device, issues and faults are geotagged and displayed on a map, enabling effective action before escalating into more serious problems.

Percepto also introduced its new Percepto Air portfolio to support the enhanced platform, which will address the diverse needs and increasing demands of various markets.

Percepto Air Max. The next generation of Percepto Sparrow, the Percepto Air Max is a field-proven solution that operates in the largest mining, oil and gas, and energy companies on six continents. It has a top-grade, versatile payload for specific use cases. Designed to inspect and map complex industrial environments where the highest accuracy and durability are critical, Air Max also has an optical gas imaging (OGI) camera.

Percepto Air Mobile. This option is a more compact and lighter weight model for smaller sites or organizations taking their first steps with a drone-in-the-box program, or larger sites that need greater deployment flexibility. It is designed for linear inspections, such as pipelines and power lines, and can monitor short-term projects across multiple sites, such as construction sites.

Percepto Air Max and Air Mobile drones are stored permanently onsite within their respective Percepto Bases. The Air Mobile’s base is light and easy to relocate while maintaining high levels of durability. These encasements are designed for infrequent maintenance and protection against extreme environmental phenomena, such as hurricanes. Percepto’s drones are safe and regulation ready, and ensure all operational aspects meet corporate standards.

“Percepto AIM 2022 and the new Percepto Air line of drones, together with the most advanced change detection solution, alert and prevent failures and downtime within diverse use cases across many industries,” said Percepto CEO Dor Abuhasira. “Percepto AIM provides the most advanced and comprehensive enterprise inspection software that offers a complete data workflow — from capture to insight. With Percepto Air Max and Percepto Air Mobile, companies have a range of options to choose from depending on the size of their facilities and the flexibility needed to deploy drones.”

“The real power of Percepto’s system is how data collection and analytics are integrated for a holistic view from both a technical and management perspective,” said Tim Shanfelt, director of Operations Transformation, Koch Ag & Energy. “Our workers are connected to high-level information that helps them make the right decisions while keeping them safe and free to pursue higher value activities. Our goal is to eliminate hazardous, wasteful, and mundane tasks from our operators’ day. For example, instead of an employee climbing an icy ladder in the winter, a robot or drone can perform the same task while still obtaining accurate measurements. We see Percepto playing a significant role in helping make our facilities more safe, secure, efficient, and profitable.”

Terry Moore is the first British academic to take home the John Harrison Award for outstanding contributions to navigation.

Terry Moore, a positioning and navigation expert at the University of Nottingham and longtime GPS World Editorial Advisory Board member and author, has become the first British academic to win a prestigious international award in the field.

Terry Moore is an Emeritus Professor and former director of the Nottingham Geospatial Institute at the University’s Faculty of Engineering.

The International Association of Institutes of Navigation (IAIN) awarded Moore with its John Harrison Award for outstanding contributions to navigation. The award ceremony took place during a special session of the Navigation 2021 Conference in Edinburgh, which took place Nov. 16-18.

HRH The Princess Royal (Princess Anne) attended via Zoom to present the award, and had a one-to-one conversation with Professor Moore.

The John Harrison award is a premier global award in the navigation field and Professor Moore is its first British winner.

“It’s a great honor to be recognized by the global navigation community, and I feel quite humbled,” Moore said. “John Harrison was a simple country carpenter in the 18th century who solved the major problem of measuring longitude at sea, through his remarkable marine chronometers. Despite his genius, he struggled for acceptance by the scientific establishment, and it took many years until he received the recognition (and financial reward) he deserved. It is sad that over 200 years later we are still fighting for improved equality, diversity and inclusion throughout scientific disciplines. I am absolutely delighted to receive the award in his name.”

A professor of satellite navigation for 20 years at the university, Moore’s association with Nottingham goes back to his undergraduate degree starting in 1979. During his distinguished career, all of it spent at Nottingham, he has taken a leading role in national and European initiatives aimed at integrating academic research and teaching activities in GNSS. He has also interacted closely with industry throughout that time.

He was the founding director of GRACE — the GNSS Research and Applications Centre of Excellence — which was jointly funded by the University and the East Midlands Development Agency and has now been extended to cover all geospatial applications as the Geospatial Research and Applications Centre of Excellence.

Moore has overseen numerous research projects funded by industry, research councils, the European Space Agency and the European Commission, and has supervised almost 40 successful PhD students.

He is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow and the Immediate Past President of the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) and also a Fellow and a Member of Council of the Institute of Navigation (ION) in the United States. He was recently elected as the Chair of the European Group of Institutes of Navigation (EUGIN), and is an Honorary Member of IAIN. In 2013 he was awarded the RIN Harold Spencer-Jones Gold Medal. He received RIN’s J E D Williams Medal and the ION Johannes Kepler Award, both in 2017.

Professor Moore is a member of the U.S. National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board and is a Member of the European Space Agency (ESA) GNSS Science Advisory Committee. He was an expert contributing to the UK Government Blackett Review on GNSS Vulnerability and has worked extensively on the UK’s PNT Strategy.

He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and an Associate Fellow of the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society, and is a Member of the Editorial Advisory Council of The Journal of Navigation.

“Many congratulations to Terry on this outstanding achievement,” said Stuart Marsh, director of the NGI. “It is fantastic to see our former director, who has spent so many years of his career in our faculty, serving in many different capacities, receive such a high honor.”

On Nov. 15,  the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) opened the Galileo Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA) Public Observation test phase for the secured signal.

The OSNMA is a freely accessible data-authentication function for the Galileo Open Service worldwide. OSNMA provides receivers a first-level of protection against spoofing the Galileo Open Service, assuming that the receiver meets requirements. This is realized by transmitting authentication-specific data in previously reserved fields of the E1 I/NAV message.

Galileo OSNMA improves confidence on the user side by enabling the user to verify the authenticity of the Galileo navigation parameters required for positioning, navigation and timing. In particular, it will allow the user to authenticate geolocation information of the Open Service:

• the ephemerides and clock corrections
• the ionospheric corrections
• the status flags
• the Broadcast Group Delay
• the GST to UTC parameters

TeleOrbit quickly authenticates with Goose

In late 2020 and the first half of 2021, TeleOrbit GmbH and Fraunhofer IIS worked on a project to implement the Galileo OSNMA capabilities onto its powerful and compact GNSS receiver lab “Goose”. This project, completed in May, successfully authenticated simulated OSNMA signals.

For the new phase, the team at Fraunhofer IIS adapted the setup to the newly published Interface Control Documents (ICDs) and receiver guidelines, and was able to authenticate the live signal on Nov. 16.

The screenshots below show snapshots of the Goose user interface with enabled OSNMA and successfully authenticated satellites, indicated by the green circle surrounding the blue Galileo satellites in the skyplot.

Access Now Available

Interested users can sign up for this OSNMA test phase on GSC website. The site provides access to all corresponding documents and information, including the current ICD, receiver guidelines, OSNMA public key and Merkle Tree Root — both needed for the authentication process.

To learn about using GOOSE for your own tests and projects, contact sales@teleorbit.eu.

When I saw that there was a plan for a whole bunch of unmanned, semi-autonomous racecars to compete at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Indy, or IMS) racetrack, I initially thought we might be headed to one significant mess of broken-up machines and potentially a lot of damage. I tracked the various announcements of the competition as things progressed, especially when a prize of $1 million dollars was put up by the Lilly Endowment in Indianapolis, and the majority of the field appeared to be potentially staffed by undergrad university teams.

However, this isn’t the first time we’ve had unmanned, autonomous road vehicles in competition — we’ve seen highly instrumented SUVs in desert settings in Nevada and California, initially with pretty poor results, which began to improve significantly for the second time round, then vehicles in some simulated street settings with some mixed and also some pretty good results.

So, as the competition date grew closer for the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC), the number of published progress reports began to increase, and we began to better understand how the initial 40 teams might take on this seemingly impossible task — how on Earth will they replicate a regular Indy (also a class of racecar) race? Surely many unmanned racecars on the same track at the same time doing more than 150 mph would be catastrophic!

When you take a look, however, at the advances we’ve seen, which have enabled unmanned cars, trucks, taxis and such – surely this tech could stretch to meet these major objectives? But Dallara AV-21 Indy Light racecars avoiding hurtling walls passing by, cornering, getting in and out of the pits, coping with vehicles behind, ahead and overtaking — even a superior-equipped unmanned racecar at >150 mph — well that’s something we would really need to see.

Then you have to take a look at the outfits involved, providing support to the IAC teams – companies including Cisco, and motor sport units such as ADLINK, Ansys, Aptiv, Bridgestone, Luminar, Microsoft and Valvoline and the non-profit Energy Systems Network. The University teams from around the world themselves appeared to also have significant heritage and skill-levels.

As the 40 University teams started the long trek to get over the hurdles that this challenge presented, members from 21 of those institutions were actually able to make it to Indy, grouped into nine “national” teams. By October 23 the nine teams, with only one car each, were ready to test their autonomous vehicles on the actual track.

Clemson University established the baseline Dallara AV-21 vehicle and technology to be used by each team for the race, with sensors monitoring chassis motion, suspension, tires and powertrain. Each team would install its own guidance and avoidance system, with each vehicle equipped with six cameras, four lidars, RTK GNSS, associated radios and bags of computing running each team’s customized control system software. The object being for cars to exit pit-lane, accelerate, brake, establish an optimum line for each corner and flat, avoid obstacles, evaluate the track conditions and establish tolerable limits.

The teams were required to complete several stages of selection, from submission of initial proposals through demonstration of existing vehicle automation capability, simulated race performance, qualification testing at the Indy track — all leading to an anticipated head-to head race against the other qualifiers.

Then 20 days of planned testing stretched to 50, and three months of preparation passed with students working intensely throughout, curing the glitches, experimenting with how to increase lap speed, and pushing the limits while still keeping the cars intact.

Energy Systems Network managed the rules of the final competition in a way that reflected Indy qualification days prior the main race — they judged that the technology was not yet at a stage where multiple cars on the track at the same time would have been such a good idea. So, each car was to individually run a number of practice/qualification laps and the quickest car would be the winner.

During the first stage of live competition, cars were required to exit the pits and run a warmup lap, followed by two laps that were timed and a slow-down lap that required navigating around inflatable barriers on the front-stretch, and then return successfully back around the track into their pit-stop locations. There were several spins in the corners and several crashes, but the four surviving cars/teams were able to optimistically post speeds of more than 130 mph.

The final phase involved the four teams taking their cars around a number of warm-up/practice laps, followed by four timed laps. Only the car from Germany’s Technical University of Munich was able to complete all laps with an average speed of ~136 mph, so that team ultimately won the $1 million prize. Even so, all teams were able to successfully mature their systems’ performance through the many months leading up to the IAC and their progress through the various qualification stages. Even the other three final qualifiers had much to celebrate as a result of the competition.

The sponsors supporting the various teams as they progressed through the Challenge may have spent more than $120 million, so that high-pressure development work will be invested back into many vehicle automation opportunities. After all, that was the main objective for the whole undertaking. We should hopefully begin to see safer, more capable self-driving vehicles emerge in the months to come as the technology is applied to more production vehicle automation.

Tony Murfin
GNSS Aerospace