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Kongsberg Geospatial has released TerraLens 9.3, the latest version of its real-time software development toolkit for geospatial visualization. In this release of TerraLens, the product development team has focused on improving performance for 3D visualization for large viewports and on multi-domain visualization features for joint all-domain command and control applications. Leveraging the power of modern GPUs and multi-core processors, the latest release of TerraLens is significantly faster, with new presentations focused on enhancing situational awareness.

With increased multithreading in its map handling, TerraLens can load and display vector, raster, and elevation formats smoothly without pre-processing. This is ideal for applications that have disk size constraints or for customers that have a short turn-around time between receiving map data updates and needing to use them. For applications with stringent start-up constraints or map formats that are not optimized for quick runtime access, the pre-processing option still exists, to help ensure minimal time for an initial map display.

The rendering of maps and dynamic presentations has also been optimized with increased threading in the graphics kernel, and the minimization of costly graphics state changes with batched rendering calls. Improved data culling ensures that only visible items will be rendered. These improvements are especially noticeable when displaying large numbers of dynamic tracks and objects, and frequently projected information.

This release of TerraLens also includes a slate of new tools and features, including support for OGC 3D Tiles, which can be used to create a high-resolution 3D view that is especially suited to cityscapes, while a new API to control the resolution of the terrain mesh allows applications to balance runtime performance with higher resolution terrain over which to drape map imagery. Elevation warnings can now be displayed using color ramps on both terrain and OGC 3D Tiles, as well as on primitive lines and area fills.

TerraLens continues to evolve to meet the latest map and symbology standards. Support has been added for the latest military symbology, providing MIL-STD-2525D and App-6B symbol sets. The SDK also features new mapping updates including enhanced support to discover WMS and WMTS map layers as well as monitoring the status of web requests. Support has been added for DAFIF 8.1 and S-57 Inland ENC levels. Developers will be able to track when maps have completed loading in the TerraLens viewport. TerraLens 9.3 also continues to support the latest development environment needs, including Visual Studio 2019, CLI .Net Core, and Linux RedHat8.

TerraLens has been fielded in some of the most demanding applications in the world including AEGIS, Global Hawk, THAAD, NATO AWACS, and the Joint Battle Command-Platform.

Based in Ottawa, Canada, Kongsberg Geospatial creates precision real-time software for air traffic control and UxS and situational awareness. The company’s products are primarily deployed in solutions for air-traffic control, command and control, and air defense. During nearly three decades of providing dependable performance under extreme conditions, Kongsberg Geospatial has become the leading geospatial technology provider for mission-critical applications where lives are on the line. Kongsberg Geospatial is a subsidiary of Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace.

Cepton, a provider of automotive lidar solutions, will showcase its automotive-grade, long-range Vista-X90 lidar device at two upcoming tradeshows in Europe: IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany (September 7-12) and AutoSens in Brussels, Belgium (September 15t-16).

Vista-X90 combines high performance, auto-grade reliability and low cost to meet the critical requirements for mass-market automotive applications. During both events, Cepton representatives will be available to talk about Cepton’s lidar offering for a range of smart mobility applications, including advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), autonomous vehicles (AV) and smart infrastructure.

With a compact and embeddable design, Vista-X90 is optimized for ease of vehicle integration, offering multiple placement options, such as in the headlamp, in the fascia, behind the windshield, or on the roof. Featuring Cepton’s next-generation ASIC technology, the Vista-X90 supports AUTOSAR and over-the-air (OTA) functionality, with advanced capabilities for functional safety, cybersecurity, and extrinsic calibration.

Visitors to the Cepton booth at IAA and AutoSens will also be able to learn about Cepton’s award-winning lidar solutions portfolio that extends beyond automotive and supports smart infrastructure applications such as smart roads and rail, electronic tolling, and more.

Cepton provides intelligent, lidar-based solutions for a range of markets such as automotive (ADAS/AV), smart cities, smart spaces, and smart industrial applications. Cepton’s patented MMT-based lidar technology enables reliable, scalable and cost-effective solutions that deliver long-range, high-resolution 3D perception for smart applications.

Founded in 2016 and led by industry veterans with more than two decades of collective experience across a wide range of advanced lidar and imaging technologies, Cepton is focused on the mass market commercialization of high performance, high quality lidar solutions. Cepton is headquartered in San Jose, California, USA, with a presence in North America, Germany, Japan, India, and China, to serve a fast-growing global customer base.

SPH Engineering and AirData UAV have partnered to offer pilots a way to track and manage their fleets by automatically synchronizing flight data from SPH Engineering’s UgCS to AirData.

SPH Engineering and AirData have worked closely to provide an automatic method to synchronize flight logs with AirData. The new integration will transmit detailed and comprehensive flight information from UgCS and will leverage AirData’s crash prevention algorithms, pilot and equipment alerting, as well as maintenance tracking with no manual steps required.

UgCS by SPH Engineering is a tool for enhanced UAV mission planning and flight control software solution. Today, it is used in more than 150 countries in a wide range of areas including environmental, archeological, engineering and mining, agricultural and biological. The UgCS Educational program aims to support universities with a safe and efficient tool to test innovative ideas involving surveying and inspecting with a drone. SPH Engineering is a multiproduct drone software company and UAV integration services provider.

AirData is an online drone fleet data management and real-time flight streaming platform, serving more than 200,000 users with 19 million flights uploaded to date, processing an average of 20,000 flights a day, with high-resolution data stored per each flight. It is used by large fleet operators around the world not only as a logbook, but also as a comprehensive flight safety data analysis and crash prevention platform, with advanced maintenance, pilot tracking and live streaming.

Three decades after it first entered popular culture during the Gulf War, even a cursory review of articles about GPS aimed at a mass audience still will reveal a plethora of inaccuracies and misunderstandings, ranging from the trivial to the fundamental. Among my pet peeves, some for 20 years, are statements to the effect that GPS:

1. is a tracking technology

2. is the only such system

3. is responsible for routing errors

4. can operate indoors

5. receivers “talk” to the satellites

6. relies on triangulation

7. has 24 satellites in orbit 

(For those of you picking up this magazine who are new to satellite navigation, the correct versions of those statements are below.)

Additionally, GPS is taken for granted, with hardly any recognition for the engineers, technicians, U.S. Air Force service members and others who make the miracle happen, and for the fact that U.S. taxpayers foot the nearly $2 billion annual bill for the system, which is offered free to users worldwide. (All GPS program funding comes from general U.S. tax revenues. The bulk of the program is budgeted through the U.S. Department of Defense, which has primary responsibility for developing, acquiring, operating, sustaining and modernizing GPS. The U.S. Department of Transportation is responsible for funding the extra costs associated with new, civilian GPS upgrades beyond the second and third civil signals, and agencies with unique GPS requirements are responsible for funding them.)

While not as deadly as those about vaccines or as consequential as those about elections, misstatements about GPS lead to public confusion about threats to privacy and threats to the system. To help secure GPS, it behooves those of us who understand it the most to help educate the rest about it and correct misstatements, misunderstandings and misperceptions.

Matteo Luccio | Editor-in-Chief
mluccio@northcoastmedia.net

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1. Tracking a person, vehicle or other object requires pairing a GPS receiver with a transmitter, typically a cellular phone.
2. It is one of four complete global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), the other three being the Russian GLONASS, the European Galileo and the Chinese BeiDou-3. There are also two regional systems, one Indian and one Japanese.
3. Routing errors are caused by bad map data or bad routing algorithms.
4. It requires a clear view of at least four satellites, unimpeded by terrain, buildings, roofs or even dense tree canopies.
5. GPS receivers are just that and have neither the need nor the ability to transmit messages back to the satellites.
6. Triangulation determines position by measuring angles. By contrast, GNSS determine position by measuring distances (between receivers and satellites), which is called trilateration.
7. The are currently 30 operational GPS satellites and the number varies as some satellites are temporarily removed from service, older ones are decommissioned, and new ones are placed in orbit. Find the current status of the constellation here.

TRX Systems was awarded funding through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Public Safety Innovation Accelerator Program (PSIAP) to test, validate and harden the TRX NEON Personnel Tracker solution to support wide-scale public safety deployment. TRX is partnering with the Arlington County Fire Department (ACFD) to conduct extended testing during which the TRX 3D location technology will be used by all personnel at Station 5, serving Pentagon City and Crystal City, to validate usability and performance and to better align the solution with first responder needs.

Through a previous NIST PSIAP award, TRX improved the accuracy and capabilities of its NEON Personnel Tracker solution. With this subsequent Technical and Business Assistance (TABA) award, TRX will take the next steps toward wide-scale deployment by validating and tuning the NEON solution in a challenging live environment. Combined, these projects aim to accelerate the availability of improved 3D location accuracy, easy to use 3D map data tools, and actionable 3D visualizations for first responder use cases.

Over the course of this program, TRX will partner with ACFD to conduct an 8-month field trial that exercises the TRX NEON Personnel Tracker solution 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a fully operational environment. The key objectives of this extended deployment are to identify and close any gaps that could inhibit widescale deployment, validate usability and tracking accuracy, and demonstrate the operational feasibility and value of the solution.

First responders typically operate in environments that are indoors, underground, or in other areas where reliable access to GPS signals is impeded. TRX’s NEON Personnel Tracker system delivers reliable and real-time 3D location in these GPS-denied environments by using patented mapping and tracking algorithms that fuse inertial sensor data to compute the user’s path and position. This solution lets on-scene and remote commanders track the real-time location of personnel during an incident, helping them to ensure the safety of their teams and improve the efficiency of their response.

Hemisphere GNSS has announced its new Outback Guidance MaveriX Precision AG Solution.

The new MaveriX Precision AG solution, built around the new MaveriX agriculture application software platform, provides  guidance, steering and application control.

The MaveriX application software includes a new user interface that provides a tablet-like user experience with 3D graphics. The included adjustable widgets give users the freedom to customize their UI experience.

Included with MaveriX, the new M7 and M10 terminals with 7- and 10-inch form factors are the centerpiece of the solution. The M-series terminals deliver the latest display technology and provide an enhanced situational awareness for users and preferred features like auto-scaling and pinch-to-zoom capabilities.

The MaveriX solution provides centimeter-level performance via the new eDriveM1 steering controller.

The eDriveM1 offers AB Straight, AB Contour, Freeform Contour, and Circle Pivot guidance modes and supports Shuttle Shift, Reverse Steer, and the Outback Guidance eTurns feature for automated headland turns. The eDriveM1 can be paired with the ESi2 Electric Wheel, existing OEM Steer Ready, or hydraulic retrofit interfaces. Outback Guidance continues to offer machine specific installation kits for more than 1,500 machine models.

The A631 GNSS Smart Antenna delivers unmatched GNSS performance at scalable accuracy levels using RTK, SBAS, and Hemisphere’s Atlas L-Band service. The A631 supports RTK Base functionality when paired with the Outback RTK radio option.

The MaveriX technology platform supports the AC110 Rate and Section control to maximize your implement functions during planting, spraying and application tasks.

Hemisphere GNSS designs and manufactures heading and positioning products, services, and technology for use in agriculture, construction & mining, marine, OEM, L-band correction service markets, and any application that requires high-precision heading and positioning.

Volvo Group Venture Capital AB has announced a new investment in a company in the field of measurable safety for driver assistance and autonomous vehicles. Foretellix Ltd was founded in 2018 by a team of verification and validation pioneers whose mission is to make automated driving systems safe and efficient.

One of the main challenges of autonomous systems is deciding when a product is safe enough to commercialize. This is what Foretellix is tackling with its verification platform.  It uses intelligent automation and big data analytics tools which coordinate and monitor millions of driving scenarios to ensure that the autonomous vehicle behaves correctly under all possible driving conditions, including edge cases.

In addition to the Volvo Group Venture Capital investment, Volvo Autonomous Solutions formed a closer partnership with Foretellix earlier this year with the aim of jointly creating a coverage-driven verification solution for autonomous driving that operates both on public roads and in restricted areas.

The role of Volvo Group Venture Capital is to make investments that drive transformation by facilitating the creation of new services and solutions and to support collaborations between start-ups and the Volvo Group.

Against the background of the trends shaping the future of transportation and the strategic priorities of the Volvo Group, the key areas of investment for Volvo Group Venture Capital are logistics services, site solutions and electrical infrastructure. The organization has a global scope and focuses on Europe and North America.

Raven Industries, Inc., a manufacturer of driverless ag technology, showcased and demonstrated its OMNi suite of technology at the recent Farm Progress Show, one of the largest public farm shows in the United States. At the show, Raven featured its technology in the event’s Autonomy Zone, where the company debuted OMNiDRIVE on Case IH Magnum and showcased OMNiPOWER performing autonomous missions.

Raven’s OMNiDRIVE is the first driverless ag technology for grain cart harvest operations. The company launched OMNiDRIVE in May 12, 2021, with a year one limited release of 75 aftermarket systems. Today, all systems have been committed to by founding dealers. Through the remainder of the summer, the company is holding OMNiDRIVE demonstration events at its Founders Club dealers, where participants get a first-hand view of OMNiDRIVE controlling a driverless tractor pulling a grain cart and commanding it to sync with a harvester.

OMNiDRIVE is Raven’s aftermarket technology solution that transforms existing tractors into driverless machines. The technology connects, manages, and safely operates autonomous agricultural machinery and is compatible with:

• Case IH Magnum CVT (2014-2020 models): M250 / 280 / 310 / 340 / 380 (available in October 2021)
• New Holland CVT (2014-2020 models): T8.320 / 350 / 380 / 410 / 435 (available in October 2021)
• John Deere 8Rs Powershift and IVT (2010-current models)

OMNiPOWER is a self-propelled power platform that easily interchanges with farm implements, allowing the ag professional to perform multiple farming operations.

Raven Industries makes precision agriculture, high-performance specialty films, and aerospace and defense solutions.

The U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command recently declared the eighth GPS III satellite as “Available for Launch.” This significant accomplishment officially marks the third space vehicle within the GPS III program to be declared available for launch in the past three months.

GPS III SV06, SV07, and SV08 are now awaiting official call up for launch in Lockheed Martin’s GPS III Processing Facility in Waterton, Colorado.

“SV06, SV07, and SV08 AFL milestones in just three months prove that GPS III production continues to benefit from efficiencies with each satellite delivery,” said Col. Edward Byrne, chief of SSC’s Space Production Corps’ Medium Earth Orbit Space Systems Division.

The first of the three recently completed satellites, SV06, is scheduled to launch in 2022 and will join the operational constellation of 31 GPS satellites.

GPS III satellites deliver enhanced performance and accuracy through a variety of improvements, including increased signal protection and improved accuracy. GPS III also expands the civilian L5 signal, dubbed the “safety-of-life” signal, currently broadcast by the 12 GPS IIF satellites, but not yet operational, and delivers a new L1C signal designed to grant interoperability to similar international space-based positioning, navigation, and timing systems around the world.

Space Systems Command, located at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, California, is the U.S. Space Force’s Center of Excellence for acquiring and developing military space systems. SSC’s portfolio includes space launch, global navigation satellite systems, military satellite communications, a defense meteorological satellite control network, range systems, space-based infrared systems, and space domain awareness capabilities.

Maxtena has introduced a new multi-frequency antenna shaped for high-precision applications featuring L-band corrections.

The design will offer simultaneous GNSS reception on L1: GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, L2: GPS L2C, Galileo E5B, and GLONASS L3OC, and L5: GPS + L-band corrections in a rugged, compact, and ultra-lightweight form factor. The antenna is well suited for high precision applications. The M9HCT-A-SMA is a great fit for the UAV markets, where high performance and low weight are driving features in antenna selection.

The new rugged active helix antenna is designed and manufactured using automotive grade electronics for GIS, RTK and other GNSS applications.