Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
xOEM500Oxford Technical Solutions Ltd. (OxTS) has announced its first inertial navigation OEM board set with integrated GNSS — the xOEM500, which the company is promoting at this week’s (October 7–9, 2014) Intergeo trade show in Berlin, Germany.
By Inside GNSS
VectorNav VN-300 GPS/MEMS IMUVectorNav Technologies, now based in Dallas, Texas, offers the VN-30, a miniature dual GPS-aided inertial navigation system that combines MEMS inertial sensors, two high-sensitivity GPS receivers, and an onboard extended Kalman filter algorithms to provide estimates of position, velocity, and orientation for industrial applications.
By Inside GNSS
One of 12 magnetograms recorded at Greenwich Observatory during the Great Geomagnetic Storm of 1859
1996 soccer game in the Midwest, (Rick Dikeman image)
Nouméa ground station after the flood
A pencil and a coffee cup show the size of NASA’s teeny tiny PhoneSat
Bonus Hotspot: Naro Tartaruga AUV
Pacific lamprey spawning (photo by Jeremy Monroe, Fresh Waters Illustrated)
“Return of the Bucentaurn to the Molo on Ascension Day”, by (Giovanni Antonio Canal) Canaletto
The U.S. Naval Observatory Alternate Master Clock at 2nd Space Operations Squadron, Schriever AFB in Colorado. This photo was taken in January, 2006 during the addition of a leap second. The USNO master clocks control GPS timing. They are accurate to within one second every 20 million years (Satellites are so picky! Humans, on the other hand, just want to know if we’re too late for lunch) USAF photo by A1C Jason Ridder. 
Detail of Compass/ BeiDou2 system diagram
Hotspot 6: Beluga A300 600ST
1. STOP THE CAR!
Las Vegas, Nevada USA
My favorite bumper sticker this month: “Oh, no! Not another learning experience!”
After 20 years of putting together a European GNSS program, disappointment over the skewed launch of the first fully operational Galileo satellites is palpable and widely felt. For end users, it is uniformly bad news, and no system provider that sincerely wants to achieve interoperability and robustness in a system of GNSS systems can relish the European program’s current difficulties.
By Inside GNSS
Aviation officials Thursday (September 25, 2014) for the first time approved the use of unmanned aircraft for commercial filming in the United States, opening the door to what is expected to be a slow-building gold rush to the skies.
Six companies received exemptions from the existing rules, which generally ban the commercial use of unmanned aerial systems or UAS. The exemptions were granted to RC Pro Productions Consulting LLC dba Vortex Aerial, Aerial MOB LLC, Astraeus Aeria, HeliVideo Productions LLC, Pictorvision Inc., and Snaproll Media LLC.
By Inside GNSS
Editor’s Note: An exclusive interview with Gen. Hyten is available here with more details.
Details are emerging about another restructuring of the contract for the new GPS ground system, a deal that pushes completion of the project back another two years and recasts the remaining work to fit within the Air Force’s strained financial profile.
By Dee Ann Divis
Gerald Mader, National Geodetic SurveyIn August, a group of scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported that the severe drought gripping the western United States in recent years is causing a “uplift” in the western United States.
About the same time, governmental agencies were reporting widespread cases of land subsidence in California’s central San Joaquin Valley caused by overpumping of water from wells there.
By Inside GNSS
Eugenia Acosta, an intern with Clearpath Robotics, unloads a Kingfisher unmanned vessel in preparation for a mission (top photo), the Kingfisher components and controller (bottom photo).“Our products are robotic research platforms,” says Clearpath’s Meghan Hennessey. “These can be configured and programmed so that our customers can explore their particular areas of interest without all the cost and troubleshooting involved in actually building robots themselves.”
Hennessey says Clearpath platforms — which include the all-terrain Husky, the larger, tractor-like Grizzly and the waterborne Kingfisher — can be thought of as project kits.
By Inside GNSS
Q: How do you trust centimeter level accuracy positioning?
By Inside GNSS
Sidescan image of Norbit SeahorseSensonor has announced new features for its STIM300, a small, lightweight micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) inertial measurement unit (IMU) that provides non-GPS–aided positioning in multiple domains.
The STIM300 — which can be used underwater, on land and sea, and in aeronautic and astronautic applications — now has real-time g-compensation in al axes and supports rates of up to 2000 degrees/second.
By Inside GNSS
Graham Purves, new Veripos CEOIn his role as president of Hexagon Positioning Intelligence, Michael Ritter has announced the appointment Graham Purves as president & CEO of Veripos, effective September 9.
“Graham has amassed a tremendous level of experience in all aspects of our industry during his over 25 years at NovAtel,” said Ritter, who also serves as president and CEO of the Calgary, Canada–based NovAtel Inc. “This experience and especially his dexterity for sales, marketing, and business development are ideal prerequisites for this next step in his career.”
By Inside GNSS
Available now, the XDL Rover 2 is equipped with Bluetooth wireless communication for ease in configuration and operation, including use with Android devices in the field. UHF data can be transmitted via Bluetooth to a paired host device for operational efficiency.
By Inside GNSS copy.jpg)
NovAtel GPS-702-GG-HVNovAtel Inc. has introduced the GPS-702-GG-HV to its line of high-performance Pinwheel antennas. Tracking L1/L2 GPS and L1/L2 GLONASS frequencies, customers can use the same antenna for GPS-only or dual-constellation applications, reducing equipment costs and need for future redesign. With the same form factor and choke ring performance as the company’s other Pinwheel antennas, the GPS-702-GG-HV has been enhanced to provide the robustness needed for use under high vibration conditions.
By Inside GNSS
