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![Locus Lock is designing RF systems to provide navigational security.](https://www.therobotreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Lotus_Lock_top.jpg)
Locus Lock is designing RF programs to supply navigational safety. Supply: Locus Lock
Flying again from Miami final week, I put my life within the palms of two strangers, simply because they wore gold epaulets. These business pilots, in flip, trusted their onboard computer systems to soundly navigate the passengers dwelling. 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 nearly entered into Iranian airspace with out clearance. In 2020, Iran shot down an uncleared passenger plane that entered its territory. This has made the key airways, avionics producers, and NATO militaries and governments scramble to search out options.
![Navigational problems can be risky for commercial aircraft. Source: OPS Group](https://i0.wp.com/robotrabbi.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image.png?resize=1024%2C631&ssl=1)
Navigational errors could be very harmful for business plane. Supply: OPS Group
Locus Lock founder got here out of drone R&D
At ff Enterprise Capital, we acknowledge that GPS spoofing and jamming are elementary issues for aerial, terrestrial, and marine autonomous programs in transferring 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 spend money on Locus Lock. The corporate mentioned it’s taking an revolutionary software program strategy to GNSS sign processing utilizing radio frequency, at a fraction of the price of comparable {hardware} offered by navy contractors.
Final week, I sat down with Locus Lock founder Hailey Nichols, a former College of Texas researcher within the faculty’s Radionavigation Laboratory. UT’s Lab is greatest identified for its work with SpaceX and Starlink.
Nichols defined her transition from educational to founder: “I used to be at all times enthralled with the concept of aerospace and studied at MIT, the place I used to be obsessive about the management and robotic facet of aerospace. After I graduated, I labored at Aurora Flight Sciences, which is a subsidiary of Boeing, and I used to be a UAV software program engineer.”
At Aurora, Nichols targeted on integrating suites of sensors corresponding to 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 exhausting for engineers to combine,” she recalled. “This drawback annoyed me a lot that I went again to grad faculty to review it additional, and I joined a lab down on the College of Texas.”
In Austin, the roboticist noticed a special strategy 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 methods ahead to sensor know-how,” 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 business companions after Locus Lock printed analysis on autonomous autos precisely navigating city canyons.
![Navigating urban canyons is a challenge for conventional satellite-based systems.](https://i0.wp.com/robotrabbi.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-2.png?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1)
Navigating city canyons is a problem for standard satellite-based programs. Supply: Quora
Dependable navigation wanted for dual-use functions
Right now, Locus Lock is able to market its product extra broadly for dual-use functions throughout the spectrum of autonomy for business and protection use instances.
“Present GPS receivers typically fail in what’s referred to as ‘city multipath,’” mentioned Nichols. “That is the place there’s constructing interference and shrouding of the sky may cause positioning errors. This may be problematic for autonomous vehicles, drones, and outside robotics that want entry to centimeter-level positioning to make protected 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 are 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 resolution, and in contrast to {hardware}, it’s inexpensive 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 probably the most cutting-edge and up-to-date processing methods 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 mentioned, claiming that it offers a differentiator from competing merchandise. “What meaning is we’re performing some superior sensor-fusion methods with GNSS indicators along with inertial navigation to make sure that, even in these pockets of city canyons the place chances are you’ll not have entry to GNSS indicators … the GPS receiver [will] nonetheless present centimeter-level positioning.”
As Nichols boasted, Locus Lock is an enabler of “subsequent era autonomous mobility.”
Locus Lock seems to be to inexpensive centimeter-level accuracy
Whereas conventional GPS parts value round $40,000, Locus Lock mentioned its its proprietary software program and a 2-in. board value round $2,000. Right now, centimeter accuracy is inaccessible to most robotic firms as a result of most suppliers of sturdy {hardware} are navy contractors, together with L3Harris Applied sciences, BAE Programs, Northrop Grumman, and Elbit Programs.
“We’ve particularly made certain to cater our resolution in direction of extra low-cost environments that may proliferate mass-market autonomy and robotics into the ecosystem,” acknowledged Nichols.
![Locus Lock puts its software on a 2-in. board.](https://i0.wp.com/robotrabbi.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LocusLockBoard.jpg?resize=789%2C1024&ssl=1)
Locus Lock places its software program on a 2-in. board. Supply: Oliver Mitchell
Nichols added that Locus Lock’s GNSS receiver is ready to pull in information from international and regional satellite tv for pc constellations.
“[This gives] us extra entry to any indicators within the sky at any given time,” mentioned the startup founder. “Variety can also be more and more vital in next-generation GPS receivers as a result of it permits the system to evade jammed or troubled 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 firms which have progressed their autonomy stacks to be fairly excessive, they haven’t gotten their costs all the way down to make sense in a mass-market situation,” she mentioned. “And so it’s essential to allow this subsequent era of autonomous mobility at massive to not compromise on efficiency however to have the ability to present this at an inexpensive value. Locus Lock is offering high-end efficiency at a a lot cheaper price level.”
Nichols even predicted that the corporate may ultimately get product to beneath $1,000, if not much less, with extra adoption.
![Global software defined radio market, research by Grand View Research](https://i0.wp.com/robotrabbi.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/global-software-defined-radio-market.png?resize=670%2C350&ssl=1)
Supply: Grand View Analysis
Tesla Optimus takes steps towards extra cellular programs
Yesterday, Tesla printed on X the newest video of its Optimus humanoid transferring fluidly at an unimaginable gait for a robotic. Pitchbook lately predicted that this might be a breakout interval for humanoids, with 84 main firms now having raised over $4.6 billion.
Tesla’s Optimus Robotic Achieves New Milestones in Mobility and Job Effectivity
Superior Mobility Showcased:Tesla’s newest clip of the Optimus humanoid robotic demonstrates vital 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 through GPS spoofing into the service of terrorists, cybercriminals, or hostile governments could be very actual and horrifying. Fortunately, Nichols and her workforce are working with the Military Futures Command.
“A variety of this work has been carried out in spoofing and jamming — not solely detection, but in addition mitigation,” she mentioned. “We detect the kind of RF atmosphere that we’re working in to mitigate it and inform that finish person with the situational consciousness that’s wanted to evaluate ongoing assaults.”
“As well as, we will iterate a lot quicker and herald world-class specialists on safety and encryption to make sure that we defend safe navy indicators as a lot as doable,” mentioned Nichols. “Our software program can discover assured reception that’s demanded by these more and more costly and vital belongings that the navy 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.