AUSTIN, Texas—A drone without a GPS signal is virtually useless, drifting listlessly with the wind until connection is re-established or it crashes. But a geospatial intelligence company has developed software to overcome that problem, using 3D mapping to create what they say is jam-resistant navigation.
Peter Wilczynski, Maxar’s chief product officer, showed Defense One a demo of how the company generated a “global 3D map” from “basically taking our satellite images and putting them together.”
Maxar has been tinkering with the GPS-alternative customizable software suite, called Raptor, for the past year.
The premise is to stitch together high-resolution satellite images of objects and terrain from different angles to create a three-dimensional map that aligns with a drone’s video feed. The map, which includes about 90 million sq. km. of terrain data, can be ingested into any uncrewed platform via the drone’s onboard camera.
“GPS gives the drone a point, and it says, ‘Hey, you’re here.’ We give the drone the map and it can look using its sensors to figure out where it is,” he said.
A GPS-enabled platform can also use Raptor software as a backup in the event of a jammed signal, since it lives onboard the craft.
“That’s much more important for autonomous swarming, coordinating missions—making sure you’re able to fly to where you want to go and doing it in a way where you can fly at really low altitude and fly at night,” he said.
Maxar tested one of its software kits, Raptor Ace, in an active operational environment and ground coordinates were accurate within 3 meters while under electronic attack, the company said.
The Defense Department has been looking for technologies that don’t rely on satellites or other space-based capabilities so troops can be ready even without connectivity. For example, the U.S. Space Force is working on a satellite constellation that would provide resilient, GPS-lite functions.
“That’s important, because we’ve seen a lot of talk over the last year, specifically around concerns about a nuclear anti-satellite capability Russia could be putting into space that could make parts of space not usable for a period of time,” said Clayton Swope, the deputy director for aerospace at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “That could threaten access to satellites and call for a need to have other services that are not necessarily reliant on space to provide [positioning, navigation, and timing].”
Tech that uses images for positioning “could operate in an environment where you don’t even have access to space, you don’t have access to satellites,” Swope said. “You’re in a GPS-jammed or spoofed environment and you could potentially have another way to gain access to that positioning and navigation information.”
The use of drones and electronic warfare in Ukraine has raised awareness about the risks that come with GPS.
“Right now, everything depends on GPS, but in light of the threat environment, the counter-space threat environment, it’s worth looking at other capabilities that could complement GPS,” Swopes said. “You look at Ukraine, you look at the Middle East, and you see in those conflicts, environments where GPS jamming and spoofing was very prevalent, and you want to have a capability that potentially could operate in environments like that, and the military is working towards that with a modernized GPS, but it’s still important to maybe have a backup, another tool in your toolkit, if for whatever reason those types of systems still have trouble getting access to GPS for positioning and navigation.”
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