Spotlight – Page 17 – Radionavigation Laboratory

Scientific American: Dr. Humphreys talks about Drone Drop-Offs

“Amazon badly wants to deliver packages of DVDs and Cheez-Its to your doorstep in a matter of minutes—and it wants to use drones to do so. At a NASA convention in July, Amazon Prime Air’s vice president proposed the company’s vision for how unmanned aircraft could one day safely navigate our skies. And NASA recently began testing its first version of an air traffic management system for drones—the agency is partnering with companies including Amazon and Verizon to develop the system.”

“For now, regulations and technical issues make widespread drone deliveries impossible, which means an army of flying machines probably will not fetch your holiday gifts this year or even the next. Here’s what experts note as the major challenges to resolve before delivery by drone becomes a reality.”

Continue reading the article at Scientific American, which features comments by Dr. Humphreys.

Ken Pesyna to receive the 2015 Marconi Society Young Scholar Award, August 2015

Mountain View, CA—Ken Pesyna, a doctoral candidate at The University of Texas Electrical Engineering School, has been selected to receive the 2015 Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award. The 28-year-old researcher will receive the award at the Royal Society in London on October 20, 2015.

“Ken’s work on centimeter-accurate and power efficient GPS may have turned conventional wisdom about this field on its head,” says Bob Tkach, a Marconi Fellow and chairman of the Young Scholar selection committee. “His ability not only to develop a new theory but to prove it in practice was truly impressive. Ken is on track to make breakthrough contributions in our field.”

Continue reading the announcement from the Marconi Society.

Dr. Humphreys speaks on GPS Navigation Message Authentication before the U.S. National PNT Advisory Board, June 2015

The National PNT Advisory Board invited Dr. Humphreys to speak at their “GPS toughening” working group meeting on June 10 and then to present before the full Advisory Board on June 11. His presentation concerned GPS navigation message authentication as a means of “toughening” GPS receivers against unintentional and intentional GPS spoofing. As part of the presentation, Humphreys offered a categorization and an ordering of spoofing attacks and defenses that will be a good starting point for a proper civil GPS threat assessment.

See the meeting agenda, the posted slides (pdf) for “Toughening Techniques for GPS Receivers: Navigation Message Authentication,” and the full presentation (pptx).

Dr. Humphreys receives 2015 Outstanding Faculty Award for ASE/EM Department, April 2015

The Cockrell School of Engineering and the Student Engineering Council (SEC) presented Dr. Todd Humphreys with the 2015 Outstanding Faculty Award for the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics on April 30th, 2015. Awardees are selected within each department by the SEC on the basis of nominations from undergraduate students. The Radionavigation Lab’s Deep Mukherji presented Dr. Humphreys with the award at the annual SEC awards banquet.

Apple acquires Coherent Navigation, May 2015

Apple confirmed on May 16, 2015 that they have acquired the startup Coherent Navigation, which Dr. Humphreys co-founded in 2008 together with Clark Cohen (CEO at founding), Bill Bencze (VP of Engineering), Brent Ledvina (VP of Business Development), Mark Psiaki, and Mike Eglington. Dr. Humphreys left Coherent Navigation in 2009 to join the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, but continued to collaborate as a private consultant and sub-contractor until the acquisition. Congratulations to the Coherent Navigation team for their hard work over the years — especially to Brent Ledvina and Bill Bencze, the two co-founders who shepherded the venture all the way through acquisition. Congratulations also to other key players: Paul Lego (CEO of Coherent Navigation at the time of acquisition), Isaac Miller (CTO of Coherent Navigation), and Rob Brumley (COO of Coherent Navigation). Never in recent memory has there been assembled such a concentration of position, navigation, and timing expertise in a single startup as in Coherent Navigation.

The acquisition was covered by MacRumors, the New York Times, and other news agencies.

IEEE Spectrum: Cheap Centimeter-Precision GPS For Cars, Drones, Virtual Reality, May 2015

“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.

UT: New Centimeter-Accurate GPS System Could Transform Virtual Reality and Mobile Devices, May 2015

“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.

KUT: How GPS Technology Could Help Scientists Build a Holodeck, May 2015

“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.

KVUE: University of Texas team changing how we use GPS, May 2015

“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.

Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx visits UT Austin, April 2015

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.