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As urban populations grow, cities will have to become smarter to provide the same level of services to their residents, while tackling growing environmental and logistical challenges. A dedicated session at the recent Munich Satellite Navigation Summit discussed the future needs of smart cities and how synergies between GNSS and other emerging technologies support the applications that will meet these needs.

Modern society is already totally dependent on GNSS, and this dependence is set to increase as the world’s cities strive to become smarter to meet the demands of their growing populations. In his presentation at the Munich summit, Dr Igancio Fernandez-Hernandez, Galileo Authentication and High Accuracy Service Manager at the European Commission, highlighted some of the challenges ahead.

“According to some estimates, in the coming decades 75% of the world’s population will live in cities, so cities will need to become smarter,” he said, adding that, with smart technology targeting IT connectivity, water and waste management, electricity grids, transport and mobility, and citizen participation, cities will be able to improve people’s lives and the urban environment. “GNSS contributes to all of these solutions,” he said.

Underpinning smart city networks

“GNSS timing is essential for the synchronisation of communications networks and smart power grids and positioning is essential for the geolocation of transmitters. Essentially, all of the networks that underpin the smart city depend to one extent or another on GNSS,” Fernandez-Hernandez said.

Read this: Galileo provides boost to smart transport systems

However, GNSS will not have to bear this burden alone. Miguel Mantiega Bautista, GNSS Evolutions Programme Manager at the European Space Agency, who moderated the session, said that interoperability between systems will be crucial to meet the future requirements of smart cities.

Likewise, Fernandez-Hernandez described GNSS as one technology among many. “But it is nevertheless an essential element of the smart city, as the location of physical assets and the synchronisation of signals in various smart applications are all underpinned by GNSS,” he said.

Fernandez-Hernandez stressed that, as our dependence on GNSS increases, it becomes more important to have redundancy and regional independence and better signal availability in cities. “Galileo brings this. It brings more independence, redundancy, accuracy and security to smart cities,” he said.

Roberto Prieto Cerderia, GNSS Evolutions R&D Principal Engineer at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands noted that GNSS in combination with 5G will provide the synergy that urban areas need. He said that GNSS will not only complement 5G in supporting smart city applications, GNSS is also an enabler of 5G, supporting network synchronisation and, in particular, meeting the stringent timing requirements for aspects such as massive mining.

Three technology pillars

European GNSS Agency (GSA) Market Development Officer Reinhard Blasi noted that that the vast majority of data supporting smart applications contains a location component. He said that smart cities are built on three technology pillars – ubiquitous location, ubiquitous sensing and ubiquitous communications.

“The role of GNSS is different for each pillar – for location it obviously plays a key role, but GNSS also provides critical services for the sensing and communications pillars, with timestamping of sensor data and synchronization of communications networks,” he said.

And this: European GNSS and the environment

Likewise, GNSS plays a role in all the major technology trends and emerging apps within the smart city, from the Internet of Things and augmented reality, to autonomous cars, drones and Mobility as a Service (MaaS). “The reality today is multi-constellation, multi-frequency, high accuracy,” he said, adding that Galileo brings all of these to the table.

Looking to the future, Blasi outlined some of the things on the table for the next generation of Galileo that can support the smart cities of 2030 and later. These include features such as new signals, high accuracy services including real integrity, an Emergency Warning System, increased robustness supported by ARAIM deployment beyond aviation, chipsets with very low energy per fix, and hybrid 5G-GNSS PNT.

Dr Bruno Bougard, R&D Director at Septentrio said that 5G and high accuracy GNSS complement each other perfectly and bring the assured and accurate positioning needed for smart mobility. “The challenge is to make them work together seamlessly,” he said.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

A team from the Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Control (RISC) lab at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia were the lucky winners of the GSA Special Prize at this year’s ERL Emergency Local Tournament, which took place in the fields surrounding the ‘Hacienda de Oran’ in Seville on 18-23 February.

The ERL Emergency Service Robots is a Horizon 2020-funded civilian robotics competition that promotes the development of multi-domain robotic systems for emergency response within the robotics community. The competition requires international teams to survey a scene, collect data, search for specific elements and identify critical hazards, all in a race against the clock.

On February 18-23, teams from international universities and research centres met in Seville to participate in the second ERL Local Tournament, hosted by the Advanced Centre for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC). At the competition, teams of engineers and scientists linked to robotics and unmanned systems presented their latest innovations in the application of these technologies in emergency situations, such as rescue operations, firefighting or natural disasters.

“CATEC was responsible for hosting and organizing this international competition, which was held for the first time in Spain, thanks to its leadership and experience in the development of new technological applications in this field,” said Dr Francisco Javier Pérez Grau, Head of the CATEC Perception & Software Unit. “This event has once again made Andalusia a benchmark for applied research and new innovative developments in robotics and unmanned systems, with a view to their real application in the market.”

A rewarding experience

The GSA special prize targeted robots that make use of solutions based on Galileo and EGNOS. For air robots, the challenge involved both horizontal accuracy in landings and vertical accuracy while hovering at specific geographic coordinates. Land robots were judged on horizontal accuracy during waypoint-based navigation.

The KAUST team, with principal investigator Prof. Jeff Shamma, participated in the air robot challenge and found the experience to be very rewarding. “I am very happy that we made the effort to take part in the tournament. On a personal level it was a very enjoyable experience. But it was also extremely rewarding on a technical level, as the team gained valuable experience in quickly resolving complex problems in the field,” said team leader Kuat Telegenov. “Even preparations for the event were rewarding – as we had to think outside the box to deal with all the issues that arose.”

He said that, initially, the team wasn’t sure if they would participate, because they didn’t have a Galileo-enabled receiver. “But we checked on the UseGalileo.eu website to see which receivers we could use and, in the end, went with a u-blox MAX-M8.”

The team acknowledged the edge that they received from Galileo in terms of accuracy. “We hit our waypoints with an accuracy of around 2.2 meters. We believe that, with GPS alone the accuracy would be about 2.5-3 meters, so we had a significant accuracy gain from Galileo,” Telegenov said.

Prize partnership

For its Special Prize, the GSA partnered with GNSS receiver manufacturer Septentrio, which offered an AsteRx-i S receiver to the winning team. With its size, weight and power consumption, the AsteRx-i S is ideal for applications such as inspection with UAV's, UAS photogrammetry, automation, robotics and logistics.

“Septentrio is proud to support the ERL emergency 2019 competition,” said Septentrio Product Manager Francesca Clemente. “We are driven by a strong customer focus and deep understanding of applications and use cases. Our professional products are not only able to provide reliable and precise positioning but are also easy to integrate and utilise thanks to intuitive web UI, tools and interfaces,” she said, adding: “This makes it ideal for young university teams where performance and ease of use are key to develop new solution in a short time.”

“We congratulate the winning team and we are eager to see the AsteRx-i S integrated their innovative robotics and unmanned solutions!”

About the tournament

The European Robotics League (ERL) is an innovative robot competition that stems from its predecessors - the euRathlon and RoCKIn competitions - and focuses on tasks that robots must execute in realistic emergency situations. The competition is composed of multiple local tournaments, held in different locations across Europe, in addition to a number of major events.

Teams participate in a minimum of two tournaments (local and/or major) per year and get scores based on their performances. Each team’s top two tournament scores are then added together and the teams are ranked based on their cumulative score. Prizes for the top teams are awarded at the following year’s European Robotics Forum (ERF).

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

A team from the Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Control (RISC) lab at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia were the lucky winners of the GSA Special Prize at this year’s ERL Emergency Local Tournament, which took place in the fields surrounding the ‘Hacienda de Oran’ in Seville on 18-23 March.

The ERL Emergency Service Robots is a Horizon 2020-funded civilian robotics competition that promotes the development of multi-domain robotic systems for emergency response within the robotics community. The competition requires international teams to survey a scene, collect data, search for specific elements and identify critical hazards, all in a race against the clock.

On March 18-23, teams from international universities and research centres met in Seville to participate in the second ERL Local Tournament, hosted by the Advanced Centre for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC). At the competition, teams of engineers and scientists linked to robotics and unmanned systems presented their latest innovations in the application of these technologies in emergency situations, such as rescue operations, firefighting or natural disasters.

“CATEC was responsible for hosting and organizing this international competition, which was held for the first time in Spain, thanks to its leadership and experience in the development of new technological applications in this field,” said Dr Francisco Javier Pérez Grau, Head of the CATEC Perception & Software Unit. “This event has once again made Andalusia a benchmark for applied research and new innovative developments in robotics and unmanned systems, with a view to their real application in the market.”

A rewarding experience

The GSA special prize targeted robots that make use of solutions based on Galileo and EGNOS. For air robots, the challenge involved both horizontal accuracy in landings and vertical accuracy while hovering at specific geographic coordinates. Land robots were judged on horizontal accuracy during waypoint-based navigation.

The KAUST team, with principal investigator Prof. Jeff Shamma, participated in the air robot challenge and found the experience to be very rewarding. “I am very happy that we made the effort to take part in the tournament. On a personal level it was a very enjoyable experience. But it was also extremely rewarding on a technical level, as the team gained valuable experience in quickly resolving complex problems in the field,” said team leader Kuat Telegenov. “Even preparations for the event were rewarding – as we had to think outside the box to deal with all the issues that arose.”

He said that, initially, the team wasn’t sure if they would participate, because they didn’t have a Galileo-enabled receiver. “But we checked on the UseGalileo.eu website to see which receivers we could use and, in the end, went with a u-blox MAX-M8.”

The team acknowledged the edge that they received from Galileo in terms of accuracy. “We hit our waypoints with an accuracy of around 2.2 meters. We believe that, with GPS alone the accuracy would be about 2.5-3 meters, so we had a significant accuracy gain from Galileo,” Telegenov said.

Prize partnership

For its Special Prize, the GSA partnered with GNSS receiver manufacturer Septentrio, which offered an AsteRx-i S receiver to the winning team. With its size, weight and power consumption, the AsteRx-i S is ideal for applications such as inspection with UAV's, UAS photogrammetry, automation, robotics and logistics.

“Septentrio is proud to support the ERL emergency 2019 competition,” said Septentrio Product Manager Francesca Clemente. “We are driven by a strong customer focus and deep understanding of applications and use cases. Our professional products are not only able to provide reliable and precise positioning but are also easy to integrate and utilise thanks to intuitive web UI, tools and interfaces,” she said, adding: “This makes it ideal for young university teams where performance and ease of use are key to develop new solution in a short time.”

“We congratulate the winning team and we are eager to see the AsteRx-i S integrated their innovative robotics and unmanned solutions!”

About the tournament

The European Robotics League (ERL) is an innovative robot competition that stems from its predecessors - the euRathlon and RoCKIn competitions - and focuses on tasks that robots must execute in realistic emergency situations. The competition is composed of multiple local tournaments, held in different locations across Europe, in addition to a number of major events.

Teams participate in a minimum of two tournaments (local and/or major) per year and get scores based on their performances. Each team’s top two tournament scores are then added together and the teams are ranked based on their cumulative score. Prizes for the top teams are awarded at the following year’s European Robotics Forum (ERF).

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).