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A Report on Rail User Needs and Requirements, recently published by the European GNSS Agency (GSA), examines user needs and requirements for position, navigation and timing (PNT) solutions in the rail sector. These reports, which are an outcome of the first European GNSS User Consultation Platform (UCP), will help shape the discussion at the next UCP, to be held as part of European Space Week in Marseille on 3-4 December 2018.

GNSS is already widely used for non-safety and non-liability relevant rail applications, such as passenger information systems. However, as GNSS can support solutions for safety relevant applications that have emerged in recent years, rail stakeholders around the world are also investigating the possibilities for GNSS introduction to cover such advanced and technically complex use-cases.

Rail, however, is a highly regulated domain and the introduction of new technologies is a time-consuming process. Understanding rail user requirements as well as their specifications in terms of GNSS is crucial to foster GNSS penetration in this market. Rail and GNSS communities have been working together for many years to increase this understanding.

Watch this: EGNOS and Galileo for Rail

Limitations and development axes

The main limitations for GNSS penetration in rail PNT applications concern Signal-in-Space obscuration, for example at stations, deep cuttings or in tunnels; the very high availability and integrity requirements for train position determination; excessive positioning errors due to local effects such as multipath; and also high accuracy requirements for some specific functions, like train positioning on parallel tracks.

Given these limitations, the main axes of development for GNSS applications in rail are safety relevant and liability relevant applications where EGNSS differentiators can play a key role. Within the context of the European Railway Traffic Management System (ERTMS), GNSS could be used as way of reducing the need for physical balises in the European Train Control System (ETCS). Outside of the ERTMS, GNSS is already being deployed for train control, particularly in Positive Train Control applications in the USA.

Read this: European GNSS contributes to the evolution of ERTMS

In recent years, the rail and GNSS communities have conducted a lot of work to try and understand their respective safety philosophies. However, work is still needed to define user requirements applicable to GNSS and, in particular, to establish quantified requirements. The EGNSS User Consultation Platform is a key tool in this process.

The EGNSS User Consultation Platform

The UCP is a periodic forum organised by the European Commission and the GSA involving end users, user associations and representatives of the value chain, such as receiver and chipset manufacturers, application developers and the organisations and institutions dealing, directly and indirectly, with Galileo and EGNOS. The Platform is a part of the process developed at the GSA to collect user needs and requirements and take them as inputs for the provision of user-driven Galileo and EGNOS services.

The next User Consultation Platform will be held on 3-4 December, during European Space Week in Marseille. The main work of the UCP will be carried out in eight parallel panel sessions grouping users by market segment, with a dedicated session on the rail sector.

This year, European Space Week also has a special session on Infrastructure Management, which will highlight how the Galileo and Copernicus programmes contribute to the operation and monitoring of complex infrastructure networks, including rail networks. Infrastructures around the world also face challenges relating to climate change. Here too, European GNSS offers a solution. This session will showcase potential solutions and best-practices for using Copernicus and Galileo to manage infrastructures, both in Europe and worldwide.

To join the ongoing discussion and to ensure that future European space programme evolutions meet your needs and requirements, you can take part by registering to attend European Space Week here.

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).

LetMeAut, an application that leverages Galileo high accuracy to make everyday tasks easier for people with autism, was declared the winner at the 2nd EU Space Programmes Hackathon, which brought experts and developers interested in shaping the future of location-based services (LBS), the Internet of Things (IoT) and Earth Observation together in Padua, Italy on 24-26 October 2018.

The overload of sensory stimuli in the modern urban environment can make everyday experiences like walking in the park or going to school an extremely daunting task for somebody suffering from autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

There are already apps available on the market that allow people affected by ASD to visualise the tasks that they should accomplish throughout the day and tick them off as they are completed, but they do not give them the possibility of moving autonomously outside, while allowing caregivers to monitor stress and risk levels and to intervene in the event of a crisis.

Timely solution

With over 500,000 people suffering from ASD in Italy alone - a number that is on the increase, putting strain on the Italian healthcare services - the +39 team from the University of Padua saw a clear need for an app that would help make ASD sufferers more autonomous.

At the Padua hackathon, the team started to develop an app that uses precise positioning and other inputs, such as Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) and heart rate sensors, to monitor people affected by ASD as they carry out their tasks or take a journey through town. The app removes the need for constant supervision by a caregiver. However, machine learning and deep learning will enable the solution to recognise falls, panic attacks or other anomalous behaviour and alert parents or supervisors immediately, so they can take action.

Galileo precision

“Galileo is a key component of the application,” team member Cristina Gava said. “First of all there is the speed of time to first fix, which is much faster than with GPS alone. This is important, as the app needs to respond quickly. Secondly, but no less important, is the high accuracy that Galileo offers – if the app is to provide meaningful information on what actions the user should take, then it needs to know exactly what side of the street they are on, for example. Galileo provides this accuracy, especially in urban environments,” she said.

“There are two main stages involved in our work – the first is to develop and build the app, and the second main stage is to teach the subjects and caregivers how to use it,” +39 team member Matteo Stringher said, adding that feedback from users would also be taken on board when fine-tuning the solution.

To receive additional feedback from users, the team hopes to have the opportunity to cooperate with ‘Vivi la città’, an independent project working with people affected by ASD in the Italian city of Pordenone. “This will give us the opportunity to test the app with autism sufferers going about their daily tasks in real-life situations – in schools, at the bakery or in the pizzeria,” Stringher said.

European Space Week

The LetMeAut app was judged to be the winner by a board composed of senior officials from the European GNSS Agency (GSA), European Space Agency (ESA), Unismart and the University of Padua, and the +39 team will now have the opportunity to present their app at the 2018 European Space Week in Marseille, on 3-6 December 2018.

Until then, the team is continuing to work on the app, collecting feedback from parents, doctors, psychologists and autism associations. They will use this information to fine-tune their solution and prepare a working mock-up to present in Marseille.

The Padua Hackathon winners will not be the only ones to receive prizes in Marseille, the event will also see the winners of the Act in Space Hackathon receive their award. All in all, European Space Week will be an excellent opportunity for young talents to showcase their developments, exposing them to potential investors and acting as a springboard to business development opportunities, bridging the gap between ideas and working solutions that people can use.

To register to attend European Space Week, click here.

Space for your App

At the 2nd EU Space Programmes Hackathon, engineers, geologists, economists and sociologists joined with app developers, coders, graphic and web designers, data scientists and marketers to develop ideas that tackle societal challenges, and to discover how space technologies can help transform these ideas into reality.

The assembled hackers focused in particular on applications dealing with smart mobility, augmented reality, geo-marketing, and mapping and GIS. Also targeted were fitness, sport and mHealth, business applications and social networking. The hackers had access to an API provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) that allowed easy access to Earth Observation data. They also had Galileo enabled hardware and GNSS raw measurements to play with.

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).

The high accuracy benefits offered by Galileo were in focus at this year’s INTERGEO conference, which saw more than 19,000 visitors, over 1,400 delegates and 640 exhibitors from 40 different countries come together in Frankfurt on 16-18 October.

At a presentation on the Galileo High Accuracy Service and its importance for mobility applications, Ignacio Fernandez-Hernandez, from the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG Grow), spoke about how Galileo’s high accuracy can offer cost-effective support for autonomous vehicle applications.

Autonomous driving is a safety-critical application, as its failure may have serious consequences for people, property and the environment. Therefore autonomous cars need high-performance positioning engines that make optimal use of a complete set of sensors complementing each other in a tightly merged solution. "Galileo High Accuracy Service and authentication services can provide a cost-effective effective solution with very good performance and much needed redundancy in the positioning system of autonomous cars," he said.

Read this: GNSS a key element of all-purpose, user-driven positioning solutions

Visitors to the joint Galileo-Copernicus stand at the exhibition were enthusiastic about the benefits that Galileo high accuracy has to offer. "Various equipment manufacturers and service providers showed a high level of interest in the Galileo high accuracy service and there is a clear trend towards the penetration of high precision towards the mass market, including autonomous cars," GSA Market Development Officer Reinhard Blasi said, adding that there was also a lot of interest in the possibilities offered by access to GNSS raw measurements in Android based smartphones and tablets.

Trends in surveying

Other GNSS-enabled trends highlighted at the exhibition include Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM), seamless indoor/outdoor mapping, and building information modelling (BIM), particularly within the context of smart cities.

"Feedback from manufacturers indicates that Galileo has become standard in high-end receivers for surveying and is being requested by their customers," Blasi said, adding that several meetings were organised during the conference with GIS and surveying companies to support them in using EGNSS in their services.

And this: Just published: First report series on User Needs and Requirements on Position, Navigation and Time

The conference was also seen as an opportunity to receive feedback from UAV manufacturers and service providers on the added value of EGNSS, and to receive input in a User survey on GNSS requirements for RPAS/Drones and autonomous air systems. Information received in this survey will feed into discussions at the EGNSS User Consultation platform at the upcoming European Space Week in December.

CLGE Young Surveyors Prize

The award ceremony for the seventh edition of the Council of European Geodetic Surveyors’ (CLGE) Young Surveyors Prize, awarded in partnership with the GSA, was held as part of the InterGEO exhibition.

The Young Surveyor’s Prize invited students of topography, GIS, geodesy, mapping and related studies to submit unique and innovative ideas in their field of expertise leveraging Galileo, EGNOS and Copernicus. This year the prize in the Galileo section went to Iuliana Constantinov, from the Technical University of Moldova, who won with the paper "Adjustment of GNSS permanent stations network MOLDPOS".

"We need to look at what added value Galileo can bring to RTK network services, and Iuliana’s project is an excellent example of how to test and compare the performance of Galileo enhanced RTK networks," Blasi 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).