JAVAD GNSS Introduces TRIUMPH-F1 UAV

As reported by GPS World: JAVAD GNSS is introducing its new unmanned aerial vehicle with the dramatic flourish of a video showing the UAV in flight, accompanied by the “Also Sprach Zarathustra” theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The TRIUMPH-F1 unmanned aerial vehicle is based on the JAVAD GNSS TRIUMPH-1. TRIUMPH-1 is the company’s field-tested high-precision geodetic GNSS receiver with 864 channels to track all current and future GNSS signals.

When used on the ground, the TRIUMPH-F1 can function as a TRIUMPH-1 base or rover. The four motor arms (for eight motors) are detachable. There are four screw inserts in the bottom to attach the TRIUMPH-F1 to a pole mount for field use.

The TRIUMPH-F1 features user-friendly mission programming. The four lithium polymer batteries that power the eight propeller motors, arranged in a stacked quad formation, each have a test button and LEDs to indicate the current charge level, as well as accessible ports for easy charging.

The TRIUMPH-F1 also has two micro-SD slots for image storage, a SIM card slot, a USB connector for uploading flight plans and downloading collected images, and indicators for satellite tracking and communications. Other indicators are dedicated to flight status and gyro. It comes equipped with four angled documentation cameras and a downward high-precision camera for photogrammetry.

JAVAD GNSS will exhibit the new device at InterGeo, to be held October 7-9 in Berlin.

Two Galileo Satellites Lose Their Way

As reported by Physics.org: Two European Galileo satellites launched as part of a navigation system designed to rival GPS have failed to locate their intended orbit, launch firm Arianespace said Saturday.

The European Space Agency said an investigation had been launched into what it said were "the anomolies of the orbit injection" but that the satellites were being safely controlled.

The satellites Doresa and Milena took off from the Kourou space centre in French Guiana aboard a Russian-made rocket on Friday after a 24-hour delay because of poor weather.

"Observations taken after the separation of the satellites from the Soyuz VS09 (rocket) for the Galileo Mission show a gap between the orbit achieved and that which was planned," the Arianespace said in a statement.

"They have been placed on a lower orbit than expected. The teams of industries and agencies involved in the early operations of the satellites are investigating the potential implications on the mission," it said.

The 5.4 billion euro ($7.2 billion) Galileo constellation is designed as an alternative to the existing US Global Positioning System (GPS) and Russia's Glonass, and will have search-and-rescue capabilities.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, France's Galileo coordinator, told AFP it would be "complicated" to correct the orbit of the two satellites.

"We are trying to see if we can remedy the situation in the coming hours," he said.

The European Space Agency said both the satellites were being "safely controlled" from its operations centre in Germany.

Initially, Arianespace had said that the satellites had separated from the mothership to enter into free-flight orbit as planned just under four hours after launch.

Factfile on the European global navigation system Galileo

"These two satellites are the first of a new type of satellite that are fully owned by the EU, a step towards a fully fledged European-owned satellite navigation system," the European Commission, which funds the project, said Friday.

'Technical difficulties'

Four Galileo satellites have been launched previously—one pair in October 2011 and another a year later.

They are the nucleus of the constellation orbiting Earth at an altitude of 23,500 kilometers (14,600 miles), and will later be brought to full operational capability.

The launch of the latest pair, named by two European schoolchildren who won a drawing competition, had been delayed for over a year due to what the ESA described as "technical difficulties in the setting up of the production line and test tools".

Arianespace said Thursday it had signed a deal with the ESA to launch 12 more satellites from 2015 onwards.

In March last year, the agency announced the first four test satellites had passed a milestone by pinpointing their first ground location, with an accuracy of between 10 and 15 metres (32 to 49 feet).

For its ninth liftoff from Guiana Friday, the Soyuz rocket carried a total load of 1.6 tonnes, including the two satellites weighing 730 kilos (1,600 pounds) each.

"We are extremely proud to have sent the first two operational satellites in the Galileo constellation into orbit today," Arianespace chairman Stephane Israel had said Friday.

High precision

Two more satellites will be launched at the end of 2014, when initial Galileo services were expected to begin.

It is unclear whether Saturday's "anomaly" will affect this schedule.

The Galileo constellation is scheduled to have 24 operational satellites by 2017, with six backups to join the fleet at a later date.

Operating at a higher altitude than GPS, Galileo's satellites have a stronger signal and higher inclination angle, providing better ground visibility, particularly in built-up areas.

They are also equipped with the most accurate atomic clocks ever used in navigation, with a precision of one second in three million years.

Ultra-precise time measurement is crucial in satellite navigation, as calculations are based on the length of time it takes a signal to reach ground stations. An error of just one billionth of a second can lead to a positioning deviation of several dozen centimeters back on Earth.

GPS is Tracking the West’s Vanishing Water

The San Joaquin River rounds a bend North of Kerman, California.  Just downstream, the river runs dry.

As reported by National Geographic: Throughout the western United States, a network of Global Positioning System (GPS) stations has been monitoring tiny movements in the Earth's crust, collecting data that can warn of developing earthquakes.

To their surprise, researchers have discovered that the GPS network has also been recording an entirely different phenomenon: the massive drying of the landscape caused by the drought that has intensified over much of the region since last year.

Geophysicist Adrian Borsa of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his colleagues report in this week's Science that, based on the GPS measurements, the loss of water from lakes, streams, snowpack, and groundwater totals some 240 billion metric tons—equivalent, they say, to a four-inch-deep layer of water covering the entire western U.S. from the Rockies to the Pacific. (Related: "Water's Hidden Crisis"

The principle behind the new measurements is simple. The weight of surface water and groundwater deforms Earth's elastic crust, much as a sleeper's body deforms a mattress. Remove the water, and the crust rebounds.

As the amount of water varies cyclically with the seasons, the crust moves up and down imperceptibly, by fractions of an inch—but GPS can measure such small shifts. (Related: "California Snowpack Measure Shows No End in Sight for Drought")

Borsa knew all this when he started to study the GPS data. He wasn't interested in the water cycle at first, and for him the seasonal fluctuations it produced in the data were just noise: They obscured the much longer-term geological changes he wanted to study, such as the rise of mountain ranges.

When he removed that noise from some recent station data, however, he noticed what he describes as a "tremendous uplift signal"—a distinct rise in the crust—since the beginning of 2013. He showed his findings to his Scripps colleague Duncan Agnew.

"I told him, 'I think we're looking at the effect of drought,'" Borsa remembers. "He didn't believe me."

The Dry Land Rebounds

But Borsa was right. As he, Agnew, and Daniel Cayan of Scripps report in Science, the recent uplift spike is consistent across the U.S. West, and consistent with recent declines in precipitation, streamflow, and groundwater levels. With a great weight of water removed, the crust is rebounding elastically across the whole region.  

The median rise across all the western GPS stations has been four millimeters, just under a sixth of an inch. But the Sierra Nevada mountains, which have lost most of their snowpack, have risen 15 millimeters—nearly six-tenths of an inch.

The GPS data complements satellite observations from NASA's ongoing Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE. The GRACE satellites measure small changes in the Earth's gravity field caused by the movement of water on and under the Earth's surface, allowing researchers to estimate groundwater and soil moisture conditions around the world. GRACE can operate where GPS networks don't exist—much of Africa and South America, for instance.

But where it's available, as in the western U.S., GPS data can provide a more rapid and detailed picture of drought and its causes.

"We only see the big picture," says Stephanie Castle, a water resources specialist at the University of California, Irvine, and the lead author of a recent study that used GRACE data to quantify groundwater loss in the Colorado River Basin. "The uplift data can point out more specifically where the depletion is happening."

Where the Water Goes

This new precision has big political implications: With more than 99 percent of California still in a severe drought, and rights to its surface water severely overallocated even in a good year, many of the state's farmers are supplementing their water supplies by pumping more water from underground aquifers.

In the Central Valley so much groundwater has been extracted that the ground has subsided more than 30 feet in some places—swamping the much smaller regional uplift caused by the elastic rebound of the underlying crust.

A farmworker shifts a pipe near Huron, California.  The drought has already cost field-work jobs and will likely cost more.

California has some of the weakest groundwater regulations in the nation, and access to its well-drilling records is highly restricted. The GPS data isn't detailed enough to point fingers at individual farmers, but its 125-mile resolution is good enough to identify especially profligate regions.

As climate change worsens water stress throughout the American West and beyond, such knowledge may well be vital. Borsa and his colleagues started out trying to filter the noise of the water cycle out of the GPS data; they ended up showing that the GPS network could help reveal what's really going on with water.

"All of a sudden we've turned the whole thing around," Borsa says. "It's a huge change, and it makes the network useful to whole new branches of scientists and managers."

SpaceX Test Flight Detonated Over Texas Town

As reported by NBC News: A SpaceX prototype rocket automatically detonated after an "anomaly" was detected during a test flight Friday in McGregor, Texas, the company told NBC News Friday night. No one was injured.

John Taylor, a spokesman for SpaceX, said the rocket was a three-engine version of the F9R test vehicle, the successor to the company's Grasshopper, a prototype intended to pave the way for fully reusable rockets that would fly themselves back home. It's tested at the company's rocket development facility near McGregor, which employs 250 people.

"During the flight, an anomaly was detected in the vehicle and the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission," Taylor said in an email to NBC News. A representative of the Federal Aviaton Administration was present, he said.

How to Build a Tesla Supercharger DC Fast-Charging Site

As reported by Green Car Reports: As more public charging stations are built, electric-car drivers have access to increasingly-large areas of the U.S.

Owners of the Tesla Model S plug-in car largely rely on the company's Supercharger network, which can now facilitate a cross-country trip on one route, with more to come.

But what does it actually take to build a Supercharger station? A lot of digging, apparently.

This diagram and photos of Electric Conduit Construction working at a new Supercharger site in Goodland, Kansas, surfaced on Teslarati.

They show a bit of the process of installing DC fast-charging stations--which involves trenching and running high-capacity electric cables well before the charging stations themselves are installed.

The Superchargers are sited in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express hotel; the company had to dig trenches so underground power conduits can be laid by the local utility.

Tesla Supercharger DC fast-charging site, Goodland, Kansas. Photo by Electric Conduit Construction.

These conduits connect the charging stations to a power distribution center, which in turn is connected to a transformer that provides the power for charging cars.

It took 11 days to install the six charging stalls in Goodland, located in the northeast corner of the state.

Since the first Supercharger site opened in 2012, Tesla has steadily expanded the network to make long-distance trips easier for Model S owners.

Supercharger stations could become even more numerous over the next few years if carmakers accept Tesla CEO Elon Musk's suggestion to use the Supercharger as a new fast-charging standard. It's now one of three such standards.

The other two are the CHAdeMO standard currently favored by Nissan and Mitsubishi, and the Combined Charging Standard that is starting to be built into small numbers of vehicles by several U.S. and German manufacturers.

Tesla officials have met with their counterparts from BMW and Nissan to discuss charging back in June, although nothing substantial from these talks has come to light thus far.

Tesla Supercharger DC fast-charging site, Goodland, Kansas. Photo by Electric Conduit Construction.

Less dramatic is the progress with Tesla's other electric-car charging technology: battery swapping.

Over a year after Musk first demonstrated battery swapping, no apparent progress has been made.

Battery-swapping would have originally garnered Zero-Emission Vehicle credits from the California Air Resources Board, but that regulatory body has proposed changing its rules.

Without that financial incentive, it seems Supercharging will remain the preferred way for extending a Tesla's range for the time being.

That means contractors like the ones in Goodland should have plenty of work to come, from the many locations marked "Future" on Tesla's Supercharger maps.

Postal Service Geo-Fence Tech Promising, but Not Quite Ready

As reported by Fedscoop: Geo-fence technology could make the U.S. Postal Service more efficient, but it’s not quite ready for prime time, according to an August 14 report from the USPS inspector general.

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.

According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency.  Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.

With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyse weather or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.
According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency. Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.
With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyze whether or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.
- See more at: http://fedscoop.com/postal-service-geo-fence-tech-promising-quite-ready/#sthash.UHPdrcMD.dpuf

The IG found, however, that the DMS contained a flaw - if a driver takes on additional stops that are not part of his or her normal route, the data obtained by DMS wasn't correct.  The system would interpret the driver's additional stops and route changes as a deviation from a planned route and deem that driver to be behind schedule even if the additional stops and changes were authorized.  The inaccuracy comes with a variance in the scan data of managed service points (MPSs) as the carrier moves through his or her route.

USPS management planned to address the problem by April; however, according to the IG, as of July the flaw still existed.

“The Postal Service’s planned use of geo-fence technology will increase carrier visibility to aid supervisors in performing street management,” the report said. “Our analysis shows that MSP scan variances would be accurate on regular routes, but inaccurate when there are authorized route deviations.”

The report recommended that the Postal Service modify DMS to capture adjustments for time and location projects if a carrier is assigned an altered route before the system goes national.


According to the report, the Postal Service management agreed with the findings and recommendations. The Postal Service plans to update the software to account for route deviation by Sept. 30.

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.
According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency. Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.
With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyze whether or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.
- See more at: http://fedscoop.com/postal-service-geo-fence-tech-promising-quite-ready/#sthash.UHPdrcMD.dpuf

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.
According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency. Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.
With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyze whether or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.
- See more at: http://fedscoop.com/postal-service-geo-fence-tech-promising-quite-ready/#sthash.UHPdrcMD.dpuf

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.
According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency. Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.
With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyze whether or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.
- See more at: http://fedscoop.com/postal-service-geo-fence-tech-promising-quite-ready/#sthash.UHPdrcMD.dpuf

Amazon Prime Air Drone Development Team Makes Notable Engineering, NASA And Aerospace Hires

As reported by TechCrunch: Something big is going on with Amazon Prime Air, the e-commerce giant’s research project focused on delivering packages in 30 minutes or less using unmanned drones. And it’s not the dubious story about drone testing in India, which frankly, doesn't pass the sniff test in terms of accuracy.

Prime Air is shaping up to be more than a marketing stunt, it seems. The company recently scored a few notable hires for this project, including former aerospace engineers, a NASA astronaut, a number of Microsoft researchers and Bing engineers, and even the co-founder of Keyhole, the original developer of Google Earth (prior to the Google acquisition.)

Prime Air’s more notable hires may not be household names, but are indicative of a project Amazon is taking seriously, after all.

Why “after all?”

Well, because many people didn't buy into the Prime Air hype at first.

In case you missed it back then, Amazon made a splashy announcement about its drone project, Prime Air, just before the Christmas holiday in the U.S. On the biggest online shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired an interview with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, which uncritically, we might add, saw veteran reporter Charlie Rose, smiling, exclaim “oh my God!” as he viewed the Prime Air drones for the first time.

Pundits soon were questioning CBS’ credibility, while some in developer community Hacker News scoffed that Prime Air was “vaporware,” – meaning a nice idea, sure, but one that’s a long time from ever being a reality.

That still may be true, of course, despite all the recent hires.

CBS was simply playing a part in Amazon’s agenda to garner public support for Prime Air, some had said, hoping to force the Federal Aviation Administration’s hand. Also possibly true. The FAA is anti-Prime Air to be sure. This June, it grounded Amazon’s plans, banning package-delivering drones using language aimed at Amazon’s Prime Air program directly.

But with the hires Prime Air has been making, the project seems at least somewhat less vaporous today than in the past, despite the FAA’s decision.


Speeding Things Up?
In July, Amazon hired Prime Air VP of Science Paul Viola, an MIT Ph.D. and former Microsoft researcher who led an engineering group at Bing which used machine learning to make dramatic improvements to Bing’s accuracy and precision. As one source told TechCrunch, under Viola’s supervision from 2010-2011, Bing made several jumps in precision both by its own metrics and Google’s. In fact, the source added, Google even started “war rooms” and ran several emergency sessions devoted to the sudden rise of Bing’s precision at this time.

According to his own LinkedIn page, Viola also led a turnaround of the Bing Ads team, which led to increased revenue.  

Another interesting new hire: Avi Bar-Zeev, now a senior manager at Prime Air. Bar-Zeev co-founded Keyhole, Inc., which Google bought and turned into Google Earth. He also previously worked at Microsoft on a variety of VR/AR, 3D and other hardware and software projects, including what became the Bing iPhone app, Kinect and Xbox, and more.

He also did a brief stint at Amazon, helping the company prototype and sell a new tablet computer in late 2012 to spring 2013, before returning to the company in April of this year to join Prime Air.

Prime Air has also been staffing up with hires from the aerospace industry, with recent additions starting this spring and summer who have aerodynamics and aerospace backgrounds from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and MIT’s Space Propulsion Lab. Twenty or so interns hail from MIT with backgrounds in engineering or robotics.

And NASA astronaut Neil Woodward joined as a Technical Program Manager, responsible for Flight Test, Safety, Risk Management and Certification efforts in April.

This is in addition to those we already knew about, like Prime Air VP Gur Kimchi, who also served on Waze’s board before the Google acquisition, and Daniel Buchmueller, profiled by Fast Company. And Prime Air director of software development, Severan Rault, hired back in February 2013, who was also previously an architect at Bing, and describes himself as a Prime Air “co-founder.”

His bio says he’s managing a team of 76 engineers, research scientists, and technical product and program managers. Not too shabby for vaporware.

While it will likely be many years before drone delivery is legalized in the U.S., if at all, that hasn't stopped Amazon from investing in the project for when and if that day arrives.

Amazon, of course, wants to speed things up as best it can. Next month, it will flesh out its public policy team with Ben Gielow, previously general counsel for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a non-profit technology advocacy group.
The Prime Air team this month also added its own communications lead, previously of Microsoft PR firm Waggener Edstrom, and has its own general counsel.

And as of today, Prime Air is hiring in Seattle, Cambridge, and London, with job listings for research scientists, program managers, flight operations engineers, and more. If Prime Air is vaporware like many claimed following CBS’s original report, it certainly will have been expensive.