GPS World, January 2014

NEWSLETTER EXCERPT Professional OEM UAV Challenges and Your Questions By Tony Murfin I n recent years weve seen explosive growth in the unmanned air vehicle UAV market segment with most on board navigation systems relying on GNSS or GNSS with inertial aiding As military budgets decline interest in civilian commercial applications is growing rapidly The U S Federal Aviation Administration FAA recently released a Roadmap for UAV certification The industry is now poised for the opening of the regulation floodgates to address a growing commercial demand UAV APPLICATIONS OF INTEREST autonomous landing autonomous refueling precise positioning and attitude On November 21 I hosted a GPS World webcast with industry leaders in GNSS based UAV navigation for both military and civilian sectors Heres a quick glimpse You can still view and hear the entire presentation through GPS Worlds Webinar page or read a digest on my newsletter page Olivier Casabianca from Trimble highlighted the FAA Modernization and Reform Act pointing toward integrating unmanned aircraft systems UAS into the National AirSpace System NAS by September 2015 extensive U S and European activity to develop standards all leading to a requirement that GPS GNSS navigation systems for UAVs may need to be FAA Technical Standard Order qualified just as they are now for manned aircraft Eric Brewer of Rockwell Collins which acquired Athena Technologies a specialist in autopilots for unmanned aircraft spoke of solutions combining GPScoupled inertial navigation system INS air data sensing and flight control computing With single string and triplex solutions this product family has amassed more than one million flight hours in operation Neil Gerein provided an overview of NovAtels receivers and capabilities and highlighted some of NovAtels UAV applications NovAtels OEM6 series of receivers comes in a number of different configurations with comprehensive support for all current and upcoming GPS GLONASS Galileo and BeiDou satellite signals Hal Adams from Accord Technologies reviewed the FAAs plans to implement ADS B throughout the U S and indicated that all aircraft operating in the NAS will be required to equip and use ADS B by 2020 The FAA is rolling out the ADS B ground infrastructure and airtraffic operations are already underway using ADS B in Alaska ADS B requires an approved GPS source meeting FAA AC 20 165A providing it with the necessary data and the NexNav products apparently already meet this requirement Finally Howard Loewen president of MicroPilot talked about his companys autopilots for manned and unmanned aircraft using GPS in a number of different configurations including consumer level GPS carrierphase RTK and moving baseline RTK We fielded many audience questions here are just a few Q What are the safety consequences for self navigating self separating unmanned aircraft A No rules yet published but expected that UAS will be required to meet the same flight regulations as manned aircraft Q GPS spoofing has been demonstrated to redirect a drone aircraft What is the industry doing to protect against this A UAVs operated by the U S government and Allied Forces can use SAASM receivers to protect against spoofing For civil user multi GNSS receivers with positioning backups such as inertial technology are also effective against spoofing attacks View the webinar at gpsworld com webinars Read the full column with additional Q A at gpsworld com editorials COPYRIGHT 2014 NORTH COAST MEDIA LLC All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means electronic or mechanical including by photocopy recording or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the publisher Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use or the internal or personal use of specific clients is granted by North Coast Media LLC for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center 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