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Flying again from Miami final week, I put my life within the arms of two strangers, simply because they wore gold epaulets. These industrial pilots, in flip, trusted their onboard computer systems to soundly navigate the passengers house. The computer systems accessed satellite tv for pc information from the International Positioning System to set the course.
This chain of command could be very fragile. The Worldwide Air Transport Affiliation (IATA) reported final month an elevated degree of GPS spoofing and sign jamming because the outbreak of the wars in Ukraine and Israel. This poses the specter of disaster to aviators in all places.
For instance, final September, OPS Group reported {that a} European flight en path to Dubai virtually entered into Iranian airspace with out clearance. In 2020, Iran shot down an uncleared passenger plane that entered its territory. This has made the main airways, avionics producers, and NATO militaries and governments scramble to seek out options.
Locus Lock founder got here out of drone R&D
At ff Venture Capital, we acknowledge that GPS spoofing and jamming are basic issues for aerial, terrestrial, and marine autonomous programs in shifting the trade ahead. This funding thesis is grounded on a easy perception that the deployment of cost-effective uncrewed programs requires the belief of human operators who can’t afford to query the info.
When machines go awry, so does the trade. Simply ask Cruise! This conviction led us to put money into Locus Lock. The company stated it’s taking an revolutionary software program method to GNSS sign processing utilizing radio frequency, at a fraction of the price of comparable {hardware} bought by army contractors.
Final week, I sat down with Locus Lock founder Hailey Nichols, a former College of Texas researcher within the college’s Radionavigation Laboratory. UT’s Lab is greatest recognized for its work with SpaceX and Starlink.
At Aurora, Nichols centered on integrating suites of sensors resembling lidar, GPS, radar, and laptop imaginative and prescient for uncrewed aerial autos (UAVs). Nevertheless, she rapidly grew to become annoyed with the prices and high quality of the sensors.
“They have been bodily heavy [and] power-intensive, and it made it fairly onerous for engineers to combine,” she recalled. “This drawback annoyed me a lot that I went again to grad college to review it additional, and I joined a lab down on the College of Texas.”
In Austin, the roboticist noticed a unique method to sensor information, utilizing software program for sign processing.
“The radio navigation lab was very extremely specialised in sign processing, particularly bringing in superior software program algorithms and strong estimation strategies ahead to sensor expertise,” defined Nichols. “This enabled extra exact, safe, and dependable information, like positioning, navigation, and timing.”
Her epiphany got here when she noticed the market demand for the lab’s GNSS receiver from the U.S. Division of Protection and industrial companions after Locus Lock revealed research on autonomous autos precisely navigating city canyons.
Dependable navigation wanted for dual-use functions
Right now, Locus Lock is able to market its product extra extensively for dual-use functions throughout the spectrum of autonomy for industrial and protection use circumstances.
“Present GPS receivers typically fail in what’s known as ‘city multipath,’” stated Nichols. “That is the place there’s constructing interference and shrouding of the sky may cause positioning errors. This may be problematic for autonomous automobiles, drones, and outside robotics that want entry to centimeter-level positioning to make secure and knowledgeable choices about the place they’re on the highway or within the sky.”
The RF engineer continued: “Our different relevant trade is protection tech. With the rise of the Ukraine battle and the Israel battle within the Center East, we’ve seen an enormous quantity of deliberate interference. So dangerous actors which might be both spoofing or jamming, inflicting main outages or disruptions in GPS positioning.”
Locus Lock addresses this drawback by enabling its GPS processing suite as a software program answer, and in contrast to {hardware}, it’s reasonably priced and intensely versatile.
“The power to be backward-compatible and future-proof the place we will consistently replace and evolve our GPS processing suite to evolving assault vectors ensures that our prospects are given essentially the most cutting-edge and up-to-date processing strategies to allow centimeter-level positioning globally,” added Nichols.
“So our GNSS receivers are software-defined radio [SDR] with a specialised variant of inertially aided RTK [real-time kinematics],” she stated, claiming that it offers a differentiator from competing merchandise. “What meaning is we’re doing a little superior sensor-fusion strategies with GNSS alerts along with inertial navigation to make sure that, even in these pockets of city canyons the place you could not have entry to GNSS alerts … the GPS receiver [will] nonetheless present centimeter-level positioning.”
As Nichols boasted, Locus Lock is an enabler of “subsequent technology autonomous mobility.”
Locus Lock appears to reasonably priced centimeter-level accuracy
Whereas conventional GPS elements price round $40,000, Locus Lock stated its its proprietary software program and a 2-in. board price round $2,000. Right now, centimeter accuracy is inaccessible to most robotic corporations as a result of most suppliers of strong {hardware} are army contractors, together with L3Harris Applied sciences, BAE Programs, Northrop Grumman, and Elbit Programs.
“We’ve particularly made positive to cater our answer in direction of extra low-cost environments that may proliferate mass-market autonomy and robotics into the ecosystem,” acknowledged Nichols.
Nichols added that Locus Lock’s GNSS receiver is ready to pull in information from world and regional satellite tv for pc constellations.
“[This gives] us extra entry to any alerts within the sky at any given time,” stated the startup founder. “Variety can also be more and more essential in next-generation GPS receivers as a result of it permits the gadget to evade jammed or stricken channels.”
Grand View Analysis estimated that the SDR market will climb to almost $50 billion by 2030. As uncrewed programs proliferate, Locus Lock’s value level also needs to come down, asserted Nichols.
“And whereas there are some corporations which have progressed their autonomy stacks to be fairly excessive, they haven’t gotten their costs right down to make sense in a mass-market situation,” she stated. “And so it’s essential to allow this subsequent technology of autonomous mobility at giant to not compromise on efficiency however to have the ability to present this at an reasonably priced value. Locus Lock is offering high-end efficiency at a a lot cheaper price level.”
Nichols even predicted that the corporate might finally get product to beneath $1,000, if not much less, with extra adoption.
Tesla Optimus takes steps towards extra cell programs
Yesterday, Tesla revealed on X the newest video of its Optimus humanoid shifting fluidly at an unimaginable gait for a robotic. Pitchbook just lately predicted that this might be a breakout interval for humanoids, with 84 main corporations now having raised over $4.6 billion.
Tesla’s Optimus Robotic Achieves New Milestones in Mobility and Process Effectivity
Superior Mobility Showcased:
Tesla’s newest clip of the Optimus humanoid robotic demonstrates important developments in fluid mobility, because the robotic is seen taking easy strides inside a testing… pic.twitter.com/hMlq2w3tQ7— Tesla Pablo 🔋⚡ (@pablo9948967714) February 25, 2024
On the similar time, the prospect of such superior machines being hijacked by way of GPS spoofing into the service of terrorists, cybercriminals, or hostile governments could be very actual and horrifying. Fortunately, Nichols and her crew are working with the Army Futures Command.
“Lots of this work has been carried out in spoofing and jamming — not solely detection, but in addition mitigation,” she stated. “We detect the kind of RF surroundings that we’re working in to mitigate it and inform that finish consumer with the situational consciousness that’s wanted to evaluate ongoing assaults.”
“As well as, we will iterate a lot sooner and usher in world-class specialists on safety and encryption to make sure that we shield safe army alerts as a lot as potential,” stated Nichols. “Our software program can discover assured reception that’s demanded by these more and more costly and essential belongings that the army wants to guard.”
In ffVC’s view, our latest portfolio firm is mission-critical to working drones, robots, and different autonomous vessels safely, affordably, and securely in an more and more harmful world.
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