War fighters depend on the GPS satellite signal to know where they are and where they\u2019re going. But how do they know where they are when they\u2019re in a GPS-denied environment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Department of Defense interest in alternative positioning, navigation and timing solutions, including those that can verify or replace GPS, has been growing in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s certainly a lot of people looking into the problem of assured PNT,\u201d Col. Nickolas Kioutas, the Army\u2019s project manager for PNT, told C4ISRNET at the the 2019 meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army Oct. 15. Kioutas works out of the Program Executive Officer for the Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors. \u201cI really like some of the software approaches that I\u2019ve seen because I think that we\u2019ve really been focused on hardware, but what are some of the algorithms that we can look at to really exploit the sensors that we already have?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leidos, a contractor for the Department of Defense and intelligence community, is one company working on one solution that might fit the bill, which they call the Assured Data Engine for Positioning and Timing (ADEPT). The Defense Department is incorporating into the RQ-7 Shadow and the MQ-1C Gray Eagle for the Army and the MQ-9 Reaper for the Air Force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At AUSA, Leidos representatives described how the system works on a drone, as well as how they\u2019re trying to push the system to work with dismounted war fighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn a nutshell, you\u2019ve got a sensor on the bottom of your aircraft, and it can either be your ISR sensor ball that\u2019s looking around, looking for bad guys or whatever, or it can be a dedicated camera looking down, and it\u2019s taking an image,\u201d explained Scott Sexton, a robotics navigation engineer at Leidos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe run it through an image-processing algorithm that pulls out key features from the image and it\u2019s all automated, and so the algorithm knows what\u2019s interesting and what\u2019s not,\u201d he added. \u201cThat creates a unique thumbprint.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The system then takes that thumbprint and scans geotagged satellite imagery to find a match. If a match is found, the Leidos system can then use the direction the aircraft is headed and the angle of the sensors to triangulate the aircraft\u2019s position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Representatives note that the technology includes the error in the position data it provides so operators know how accurate the data they\u2019re being fed is, whether it\u2019s accurate to within 10 meters or 100 meters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts envision the system as remaining on during aircraft operations, working to verify or augment GPS data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you have GPS you\u2019re just going to keep using that […] because it\u2019s the best sort of information we have,\u201d said Sexton. \u201cAs soon as it\u2019s deviated by 500 meters, well, let\u2019s start trusting [ADEPT].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Leidos officials are touting that the system can also serve as a check on GPS information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf someone is, say, spoofing you, the two solutions are going to start to diverge. So, if our solution coming out of ADEPT is telling you one thing to a high certainty, then that\u2019s a pretty good clue that your GPS is inaccurate,\u201d said Scott Pollard, vice president and business area manager. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty hard to spoof this. You\u2019d have to literally rearrange the landscape to fool this or blind the sensor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ADEPT can also geotag objects in midflight, giving the aircraft a frame of reference to use in navigation in places where GPS is denied and no mapping match is found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing street-level image matching,\u201d said Troy Mitchell, Leidos navigation program manager. \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re taking satellite images and what they\u2019ve done is they\u2019ve made 3D point clouds of buildings and landscapes and stuff like that. We\u2019re taking that as a reference.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Essentially, the program takes that 3D point cloud to generate what a street level view would look like. Then by taking a street-level sensor, say a camera attached to a helmet or uniform, the system can match actual imagery with what it expects a street level view to look like in order to find they\u2019re location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe holy grail would be, can you drop yourself somewhere in the world in a random location and just open your eyes, look out at the landscape and say, \u2018I\u2019m here,\u2019\u201d said Pollard. \u201cThat\u2019s a tough problem.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leidos’ ADEPT system uses overhead imagery to provide position, navigation and timing information in areas where GPS is blocked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":47536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":14,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,162,14,36],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3385],"class_list":["post-31483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-digital-show-daily","category-land","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"Z4NYWEO3SZACRHE6WCR7WLLMXE","arc_canonical_url":"\/show-reporter\/ausa\/2019\/10\/16\/without-gps-will-algorithms-and-sensors-help-soldiers-know-where-they-are\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n