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GSA support aimed at fostering the adoption of EGNOS and Galileo in aviation was presented at a European Helicopter Association (EHA) info day on EU funding opportunities for the helicopter sector, in Brussels on June 6.

EGNOS based operations for rotorcraft are increasingly being implemented and the GSA is committed to continuing its work with the European Helicopter Association to support this user community in reaping the safety and economic benefits from European GNSS programmes.

Three of the European GNSS Agency’s (GSA) funding tools aimed at fostering the adoption of EGNOS and Galileo in aviation – the Aviation Grant Programme, the relevant Horizon 2020 calls and Fundamental Elements – were presented at the EHA event in the European Parliament.

Speaking at the forum, GSA Market Development Officer and Horizon 2020 Coordinator Carmen Aguilera highlighted that EGNOS leads to a substantial reduction in the decision height, making helipads accessible in poor weather conditions, thereby enhancing safety, which is of particular importance for medical and emergency operations. She reminded that the Aviation Grant Programme was designed by the GSA to support projects that enable users to equip and use their aircraft or rotorcraft fleet with EGNOS-enabled avionics and to allow air navigation service providers and aerodromes/heliports to implement EGNOS-based operations. A first call in 2014 saw 12 projects funded with a total of EUR 6 million and a further 14 projects received the same amount of funding under a second call in 2015. A third call will be published in October 2017; with proposals to be submitted by March 2018 (more details can be found here).

Read this: EGNOS for aviation in acceleration mode

In addition to this specific grant programme, the GSA is also implementing the GNSS application calls in Horizon 2020 under delegation from the European Commission, within the Space work programme. Three calls in 2014 and 2015 saw 40 projects, including 10 aviation projects, receive funding totalling EUR 65 million. The 2017 call, worth EUR 33 million, is currently under evaluation and the next calls are being developed.

Fundamental Elements is the third grant programme being implemented by the GSA. This programme is aimed at supporting the development of EGNSS-enabled chipsets, receivers and antennas. A project has already been funded to develop a DFMC SBAS dual frequency multi-constellation receiver for the future version of EGNOS. This project kicked off last month. In addition, the GSA is about to start evaluating projects in other calls relevant for the aviation community – one to develop an Advanced Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (ARAIM) system and another to develop a MEOSAR beacon.

EHA Executive Director Elisabetta Dalla Benetta said that the EHA was very proud to have been able to offer to the rotorcraft community an opportunity to have a useful insight into the EU funding system. “Lack of knowledge and complexity has often prevented our sector from fully exploiting the possibilities available for them to use EU funds to modernise their operations. But examples of success stories presented by AB Corporation, PRISM and the GSA, have demonstrated that use of EU grants is more within reach than expected,” she said.

Success stories

GSA triggered the very first helicopter PinS LPV in Europe to Insel Hospital in Bern in June 2014, which is now used by Swiss Air Ambulance (REGA) in its daily operations. A number of operators have already received support in acquiring EGNOS-enabled avionics, with 23 Points in Space (PinS) LPV, 14 low level routes (RNP 0.3) and 29 rotorcraft retrofits ongoing. Citing some success stories, Ms Aguilera gave the example of Caproni Airport in Italy, which is developing performance-based navigation (PBN) procedures for Trento region. This project involves both the upgrade of rotorcraft for EGNOS operations and the development of PinS procedures and low level routes connecting several hospitals in the area.

Watch this: EGNOS for Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS)

Another example of a success story are the PIONEERS I and II projects, which also combine the upgrade of helicopters and the implementation of low-level routes – this time in Norway, Austria and the UK. As part of this project, a first helicopter LPV approach has been approved for Trondheim Hospital in Norway, allowing air ambulances to land in all weather conditions. Also, NorksLuftambulance recently obtained operational approval for RNP 0.3 operations within a GSA funded project, preparing to fly PinS LPV.

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).

Geo IoT World (Geo-location – Internet of Things) announces four award winners for innovation in geolocation technologies. GeoIoT is leading the way in showcasing the latest cutting-edge developments in this growth sector. The European GNSS Agency (GSA) sponsored one of the awards for ‘IoT Solutions Empowered by GNSS’.

The Internet of Things enables manufacturers and service providers to exchange data and improve customer services, business performance and much, much more. In some ways we have only scratched the surface of what can be offered.

Constant improvements in the available technology, sharp reductions in cost reaping high returns on investment and better performance mean that you can manage a road haulage company from a smartphone, improve the lives of people who suffer from disabilities or drive-down costs in a company by reducing waste. The possibilities are almost limitless and as the technology reaches a wider audience new innovations and ideas are emerging.

Read this: Superlatives abound for Galileo Hackathon 2017

To raise awareness of the integral role that GNSS plays in IoT and to celebrate the launch of Galileo Initial Services available since December 2016, GSA sponsored the award for ‘IoT Solutions empowered by GNSS’.

And the winner is…

The prize went to the CROWDLOC Platform. CROWDLOC is a business-to-business software-as-a-service provider, offering affordable, low-power location tracking services for consumers and enterprises. CROWDLOC could bring an end to loss and theft. Their mission is to solve this global problem. The disruptive service is based on a low-power mobile software development kit embedded in the apps of an alliance of Bluetooth devices manufacturers. This mutualised network (the crowd) can geo-locate the asset 24/7.

The start-up was founded in 2016 by a duo of French and German entrepreneurs. The company is supported by European business angels, seasoned executives with past and present experience in the location technology, navigation and Telecom industries.

The runner-up in this category was Polymorph. Polymorph has developed a technology to enable those working in logistics to track and trace goods. CEO Richard Barry described his technology as ‘Uber for trucks’.

Other categories

Three other categories looked at different aspects of geolocation.

The Geo IoT award for Location & Proximity Services was presented to TRACKO by Onyx Beacon. TRACKO allows companies to track and trace assets on the go using beacons and mobile technology. The solution links beacons attached to each asset to other beacons placed around a premises to create a high-precision indoor and outdoor tracking grid.

Also read: Happy Beacon Awareness Day!

The Geo IoT Award for Location Intelligence was presented to Stockholm-based Wittra. Wittra overcomes the limitations of existing technologies in addressing the Internet of Moving Things. The technology has already been adopted by shipping companies and is also used in the management of homes for the elderly.

The Geo IoT Award for IoT Networks was awarded to Sewio Networks. Sewio developed a market-proved Ultra-Wideband Real-Time Location Platform. Using highly precise indoor tracking and rich data analytics, the platform brings a new level of understanding of work-flow processes across a broad array of disciplines, allowing companies to optimise the flow of intra-logistics, reduce staff injuries and observe the behaviour of customers.

The three-day conference demonstrated that the Internet of Things geolocation is becoming an ever evolving area. More and more public and private organisations are turning to these technologies to improve services and reduce costs.

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 multinational European team, fronted by France’s Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), is among the winners at this year’s European Inventor Awards. Their project, which ensures that satellite signals do not interfere with each other, allows users and developers alike to benefit from the next-generation positioning technology that Galileo offers.

The project Radio signals for better satellite navigation was declared the winner in the Research category at the European Patent Office’s European Inventor Awards, Europe’s most prestigious prize for innovation. The results of the awards were announced at a 15 June ceremony held in Venice, Italy. The project created modulation and spread-spectrum signal technologies that strengthen some of Galileo's core components: enhanced accuracy and ensured interoperability with GLONASS and GPS (including possible upgrades), along with saving on satellite power.

Watch this: Radio signals for better satellite navigation

The team was led by French engineer Laurent Lestarquit and his Spanish colleague José Ángel Ávila Rodríguez and included France’s Jean-Luc Issler, German Günter Hein and Belgian Lionel Ries. Quoted on the EPO website, Lestarquit said he was proud of the teamwork and of what the team had achieved. Co-inventor José Ángel Ávila Rodríguez also noted that the project was something that Europeans could feel proud of. "When the nations of Europe work together, the whole world benefits," he said.

How it works

Lestarquit developed a patented modulation technique called Alternative Binary Offset Carrier modulation (AltBOC), which effectively packs four signals into one large one: two highly accurate signals from Galileo's Open Service and two signals from its Safety-of-Life service.

The result is that AltBOC not only offers extremely high accuracy for specialised receivers, it also helps save satellite power.

In addition, the team developed an innovative spread-spectrum technique that creates a new single waveform via what is called Composite Binary Offset Carrier (CBOC) modulation. Not only will this signal allow high-end receivers to accurately calculate positions, it is also compatible with older, lower-end devices and other GNSS signals. The CBOC patent includes a novel concept allowing for the combination of open CBOC and secured Public Regulated Service (PRS) signals in a single frequency. PRS signals are designed to be used by civil authorities, such as police, coastguards and customs agencies. PRS is encrypted and includes anti-jamming mechanisms.

European Inventor Award

Now in its 12th year, the European Inventor Award is presented annually by the European Patent Office (EPO) to recognise outstanding inventors from Europe and around the world who have made exceptional contributions to social development, technological progress and economic growth.

Also watch: European Inventor Award 2017 - News

The finalists and winners in five categories (Industry, Research, Non-EPO countries, Small and medium-sized enterprises and Popular Prize) are selected by an independent jury consisting of international authorities in the fields of business, science, academia and research, who examine the proposals in terms of their contribution towards technical progress, social development, and wealth and job creation in Europe.

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 GSA-funded mapKITE project has created an advanced surveying tool by combining terrestrial mobile mapping systems with Unmanned Aerial System mapping capabilities.

Geo-information is fundamental in any modern society, with many infrastructures and services depending on it. However, it is also expensive to create and update. As a result, European, national and local government agencies must balance a growing demand for high-resolution, up-to-date geo-information against decreasing budgets.

The Horizon 2020 mapKITE project responds to this market need by combining terrestrial mobile mapping systems (TMMS) with Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) mapping capabilities. The resulting tool is a tandem terrestrial vehicle (TV) and unmanned aircraft (UA) equipped with remote sensing instruments that cooperate in collecting geo-data. The system integrates E-GNSS capabilities into drones and proposes a novel geo-data post-processing concept to provide surveyors and mappers with an end-to-end solution for 3-D high-resolution corridor mapping.

Also read: Network providers enthusiastic about Galileo at CLGE General Assembly

The GSA-funded project has now concluded after two years of development and validation, executed by a consortium of 10 companies from six different countries and coordinated by GeoNumerics. Recently, the project gathered over 40 industry specialists from world-leading mobile mapping integrators, European mapping service companies and cartographic and infrastructure management agencies to officially introduce – and demonstrate – the mapKITE system.

Introducing mapKITE

“While terrestrial mobile mapping systems are becoming a standard surveying tool, their use is restricted due to their limited and insufficient view from the ground,” said Project Coordinator Pere Molina during the event. “On the technology side, mapping of small areas via small unmanned aircraft has become a reality, with many of the big geomatic technology companies already including UAS systems in their product portfolios.”
mapKITE combines the best of both worlds by incorporating aerial and terrestrial components. The aerial component consists of a UA equipped with remote sensing instruments and a navigation guidance and control system. The terrestrial component consists of a human-operated TV that is equipped with remote sensing instruments and a TMMS.

This tandem system operates with the TV, computing a real-time trajectory by means of its real-time navigation system. By doing so, a set of waypoints are generated as route inputs for the UA by converting terrestrial navigation (time, position, velocity and attitude parameters) into UA time and space commands. This process produces a virtual tether by which the UA always follows the vehicle.

Watch this: mapKITE for total 3D mapping

As the UA follows the vehicle at a constant flying height, both can simultaneously collect geo-data. This is then post-processed via an orientation-calibration concept, resulting in the delivery of high-resolution, oriented-calibrated and integrated 3D images of corridors and their surrounding environment.

One of the system’s main benefits is that it lowers surveying budgets. “The mapKITE system does this by means of its Kinematic Ground Control Points (KGCPs), which are obtained directly from the TMMS navigation solution, entailing the elimination of expensive traditional Ground Control Points (GCPs),” explained Molina. “What this means for the user is the longer the corridor mapping mission, the higher the savings are while also keeping similarly accurate results.”

Benefiting from EGNOS and Galileo

The mapKITE system’s combination of both ground and aerial based surveying systems provides users with an integrated and powerful solution. To accomplish this, the project fully exploits such GNSS technology as EGNOS and Galileo. “As an enabling component of mapKITE, EGNOS provides the desired level of accuracy for the terrestrial navigation solution and for the UA guidance,” said GSA Market Development Officer Alina Hriscu, who spoke at the launch event and demonstration, providing the latest insights about European GNSS and its uses for mapping and surveying applications. Hriscu also noted that the Galileo E5 AltBOC signals, which are superior to existing and planned GPS signals, are of particular interest to the mapKITE system because of the robustness they provide against multipath errors at the ground level. This makes them essential for accurate mapping in natural or man-made corridors, something that was confirmed during tests of mapKITE.

“This is a brand new way of acquiring geo-data and processing it in order to derive geo-information that would not make sense without E-GNSS,” added Molina. “We also must highlight the critical role of GNSS timing, due to the need to synchronise the TV’s trajectory solution to the central time of exposure of the UA remote sensing instruments.” 

A game changer

Due to its operational simplicity and cost savings, mapKITE is positioned to be a game changer – a fact clearly on display at the launch event. Here, surveyors saw first-hand how they can cut costs by eliminating the need to independently operate terrestrial and aerial systems. “What we witnessed today was the launch of a new era of drone information technology that will prove to be a game changer in the development of our digital society,” said Jan Skaloud of the Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne. “The mapKITE system has answered the challenge of linking mobile mapping technology with the airborne mapping technology that is now accessible to users via drones.”

Watch this: Presenting a new mapping paradigm to the world

“If we think about the Internet of Things and Smart Cities, it’s really geospatial data that will become the heartbeat of a city, allowing one to measure and assess what’s going,” added Trimble’s Christian Hoffmann. “Systems like mapKITE, which offers specific vertical applications for corridor mapping or asset management, for example, is the answer to getting this data.”

Engemap, a Brazilian road mapping company and early-adapter of mapKITE, presented a case study of its success using the system. Antonio Lira, project and business manager in Engemap, presented the key features of the Brazilian corridor mapping requirements and market and highlighted how mapKITE absolutely fits as an all-in-one solution. During the two trials, Engemap used a mapKITE prototype to successfully map several kilometres of road, achieving satisfactory levels of efficiency.

“Simply put, the mapKITE idea of combining a mobile system with a classic system of aerial image acquisition is quite brilliant,” concluded Senior Mapping Expert Josep Lluis Colomer.

As mapKITE now turns its focus towards marketization, it has been patented by GeoNumerics in Spain and the US, with patent applications in Europe and Brazil pending.

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).