Spotlight

“Engineers at the University of Texas at Austin have now made a small, cheap GPS system for mobile devices that gives centimeter-precision positioning accuracy. Such centimeter precision could let drones deliver packages to your porch, autonomous vehicles navigate safely, and be used in precision farming. It could also allow for some neat virtual reality tricks and games if coupled with a smartphone camera.

Continue reading the IEEE Spectrum article, which features an interview with Dr. Humphreys.

“AUSTIN, Texas—Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a centimeter-accurate GPS-based positioning system that could revolutionize geolocation on virtual reality headsets, cellphones and other technologies, making global positioning and orientation far more precise than what is currently available on a mobile device.

Continue reading the UT press release, which features an interview with Dr. Humphreys.

“AUSTIN – If you use your smartphone for directions, you know how annoying it can be when the tracking device gets your locations wrong. Now a team of researchers at the University of Texas’ Cockrell School of Engineering say they may have fixed that problem.  But there’s more: They also think they’ve brought a science fiction dream closer to reality.  In the space adventure series Star Trek canon, the holodeck was a room where the characters could create virtual worlds and interact within them.

Continue reading the KUT article, which features an interview with Dr. Humphreys.

“AUSTIN – In this Tech Tuesday, a tool we use all the time is getting better and it’s all thanks to research at the University of Texas. “We use GPS in a variety of ways including getting around, but the University of Texas is about to make GPS systems much more valuable. ‘We have developed a way to get low-cost, very precise locations, centimeter precise locations,’ said Todd Humphreys, Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas.

Continue reading the KVUE article, which features an interview with Dr. Humphreys.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx was hosted by the Radionavigation Lab and other members of WNCG and CTR for a discussion on the future of transportation.  The discussion covered secure perception for autonomous systems and also centimeter-accurate low-cost positioning for intelligent transportation systems and for virtual reality.

Read more about Secretary Foxx’s visit in a WNCG article.  

Dr. Humphreys testified at a hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, titled “Unmanned Aerial System Threats: Exploring Security Implications and Mitigation Technologies,” on March 18, 2015.  View the oral and written testimony at the website of the Committee.  The full video is accessed from the upper right hand corner of the page.

The hearing was discussed in a CNN article and an Inside Unmanned Aerial Systems article.  Dr. Humphreys authored an op-ed in the Star-Telegram on the same subject. 

“Mysterious, middle-of-the-night drone flights by the U.S. Secret Service during the next several weeks over parts of Washington — usually off-limits as a strict no-fly zone — are part of secret government testing intended to find ways to interfere with rogue drones or knock them out of the sky, The Associated Press has learned. A U.S. official briefed on the plans said the Secret Service was testing drones for law enforcement or protection efforts and to look for ways, such as signal jamming, to thwart threats from civilian drones. The drones were being flown between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.

Access the NBC news article and video, which includes an interview with Dr. Humphreys