Dr. Tyler Reid, co-founder and CTO of Xona House Programs, discusses a brand new kind of worldwide navigation satellite tv for pc system (GNSS). Xona House Programs plans to offer centimeter-level positioning accuracy and can serve the rising autonomous automobile neighborhood, the place exact navigation is essential. Reid discusses the benefits and technical challenges of a low Earth orbit (LEO) resolution.
Tyler Reid
Tyler Reid is co-founder and CTO of Xona House Programs. Beforehand, Tyler labored as a Analysis Engineer on the Ford Motor Firm in localization and mapping for self-driving automobiles. He has additionally labored as an engineer at Google and as a lecturer at Stanford College, the place he co-taught the GPS course. Tyler obtained his PhD (2017) and MSc (2012) in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford and B.Eng. (’10) in Mechanical Engineering from McGill.
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transcript
lilly: Hiya and welcome to the Robohub podcast. Would you thoughts introducing your self?
Tyler: Hiya and thanks once more for having me on at present. So I’m Tyler Reid and I’m co-founder and CTO of Xona House Programs.
lilly: And might you inform us somewhat bit about Xona House Programs?
Tyler: Yeah, for certain. So Xona House Programs is an organization targeted on, mainly constructing business GPS satellites.
So actually shifting away from the mannequin of, you realize, these sort of authorities operated techniques like GPS which have a sort of very particular, you realize, authorities oriented mission. Shifting in the direction of a system that’s, you realize, commercially pushed round sort of wants of business customers and, you realize, going extra in that course to type of assist these customers going ahead.
lilly: And what do you assume are type of the advantages of going business with a GPS kind expertise?
Tyler: Yeah, for certain. So to talk somewhat bit about my background and type of the place a few of that is coming from. So, so I type of got here from the world of, you realize, GPS and began actually in grad faculty on that aspect of issues.
And transitioned after grad faculty to working in sort of business analysis. So I used to be working in autonomous automobiles, working with these techniques and sort of seeing these techniques actually closely depend on, on GPS and sort of what’s on the market at present. And actually the state-of-the-art of the expertise was, you realize, having third get together corporations mainly ship correction info for the GPS satellite tv for pc.
So the knowledge coming from GPS straight was actually not fairly on the degree that it have to be to assist these, you realize, techniques like self-driving which might be actually making an attempt to get right down to the centimeter degree location to, to, you realize, drive themselves on the highway. and so to get to that degree, you had sort of these corporations whose entire sort of function was to ship, you realize, higher orbit, higher clock info than what GPS provides you straight to actually drive these errors right down to that sort of that centimeter degree.
And due to the best way the system was architected, which actually wasn’t, you realize, meant for use this manner, it led to. you realize, the fragilities in that sort of sign. So whenever you begin to drive below timber or in sure environments, you’d usually lose that sort of centimeter degree location. And it simply, it type of left some, I suppose, holes to be stuffed by, by one thing else.
And what that’s one thing else was was, was a part of my job to determine, okay. You already know, was it possibly terrestrial based mostly resolution? Is it pc imaginative and prescient resolution is a sort of the entire above. And, you realize, with my background coming from, you realize, satellite tv for pc navigation and GPS and sort of seeing how these techniques have supported, you realize, some security, crucial purposes like civil aviation, which is, you realize, a part of what my sort of, the thesis work was in and sort of desirous about how that might evolve to assist, you realize, a few of these floor techniques like autonomous automobiles, but additionally uAVs and, and sort of different type of,type of autonomous techniques going ahead, that type of actually led to this.
Okay, properly, how can we modify issues on the area aspect relatively than simply making an attempt to make use of what we’ve from these sort of authorities techniques to, to type of, you realize, fill the gaps, I suppose. And so from a, from a business perspective, you realize, what are a number of the advantages that you just get there? Effectively, actually you’re not tied to sort of the, the system that, that the federal government supplies for you, which, you realize, is sort of static. It’s there for a motive. And it, you realize, it’s actually a improbable system and it, it helps billions of customers. It has created sort of all, you realize, all these use circumstances that we, you realize, I’ve, I’ve a horrible sense of course.
So, you realize, realizing sort of the blue dot to seek out my approach house has, has been, you realize, extremely helpful. However, you realize, as we take into consideration shifting away from, you realize, people who can. use that info to type of get near the place they should go after which sort of end the job themselves and, and going in the direction of autonomous techniques that basically depend on that blue dot being, you realize, precisely proper the place it’s to, to, to actually get to that time type of on their very own, with none enter from, from any people.
There actually is type of that there’s type of a leap that should occur there when it comes to, you realize, The sorts of ranges of, reliability and likewise, you realize, precision that, that these techniques assist. And so desirous about this from sort of the business perspective, you realize, what are you able to present and, and changing into sort of from an aerospace background, you realize, how will you, you realize, evolve this area phase to actually be targeted on the, on the business aspect.
And so. Among the advantages. There’s you, you simply, you realize, you’ve sort of a clean slate in a way. And so you can begin with, you realize, what do we actually have to assist customers on the bottom? After which we are able to begin to architect the system, you realize, round a few of these, you realize, rising wants relatively than, you realize, supporting issues from in many years, up to now, I suppose.
lilly: And when it comes to like attending to that centimeter degree accuracy do you assume that a lot of the technological developments are within the area aspect or like, do you intend on doing does Xona area techniques plan on doing a whole lot of that error correction, like related error correction kind stuff and like the total stack?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s an excellent query. And I’ll say in some sense, we’re not inventing, we’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re type of, you realize, we’re utilizing a whole lot of the methods that’s been properly established by the type of excessive precision GNSS business, which has supported traditionally [00:05:00] issues like surveying issues like mapping, precision agriculture, you realize, are huge customers of, of this type of expertise.
And so actually sort of constructing on the shoulders of giants in, in that respect. You already know, how, how are people getting excessive precision at present and sort of, you realize, evolving that to kinda the following, the following sort of, you realize, what would possibly the following type of, area infrastructure appear to be to, to make use of these methods and sort of make them even higher for people.
And so, you realize, whenever you have a look at the sort of errors that stack up in GPS, you’ve received. The environment is a giant one, you realize, as these alerts refract by way of the totally different layers of the environment, notably the ionosphere and troposphere, you realize, that that’s a, an error that type of manifests itself on the person degree, but additionally simply the orbit and clock info coming from the satellite tv for pc, as a result of in the end you’re triangulating your place from, you realize, a number of totally different factors in area.
You higher know very properly what these factors have been, cuz in any other case you’re not gonna know very properly. What, what your place is on the finish of the day. So you must work out a strategy to get, you realize, centimeter degree, you realize, orbital info of the GPS satellite tv for pc, so to in flip type of get your place to the type of centimeter degree as properly.
And so how do you try this with type of, you realize, as we take into consideration this type of evolving from, you realize, the sort of, the methods which have been used up to now to, you realize, what is perhaps attainable, sooner or later? Effectively, it seems that one of many huge sort of inputs to that system, When it comes to how shortly you may get from sort of meter degree place right down to sort of the centimeter degree is how shortly the satellites transfer overhead.
And it seems that if you happen to make it such that the satellites transfer overhead in a short time, there’s simply much more info in that type of very fast cross than you’ve from these additional satellites, which historically are sort of medium earth orbit to assist that convergence get you from sort of a tens of minutes sort of place to a minute or much less sort of place. And, and naturally there are methods which might be making that all the time higher on a regular basis from a medium earth orbit perspective. You already know, whenever you’re utilizing sort of the normal GSS satellites to, to get to that prime precision, there are methods evolving to, to get there sooner and sooner.
However if in case you have that very quick type of movement throughout the sky, it simply makes these methods even higher than that they might be in any other case. And in order that’s, that’s, that’s an instance of the sort of factor you are able to do from a, you realize, business area phase perspective to, to simply type of deliver extra functionality to, to people on the bottom.
lilly: And so if in case you have, if you happen to get higher efficiency from having shifting automobiles, and so that you’re having them at decrease orbits, you additionally want like three or so to get your place does having greater than that assist? And what number of, like what number of complete satellites do you assume is gonna be the correct quantity?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a extremely good query.
What it comes right down to is, you realize, the extra satellites, the higher , that’s sort of the straightforward query, the straightforward reply there, however mm-hmm, actually we’re, you realize, actually leveraging an analogous approach that’s been used from, from GPS, which is named trilateration.. And what that’s, is there’s mainly 4 unknowns in that system and the 4 unknowns or your X, Y, Zed (or sorry, that’s Canadian – XYZ) and, and time, and, and the rationale time is type of an uncertainty there may be that the best way you calculate vary to the totally different satellites is that the satellite tv for pc sends a sign and the sign mainly says it was this time after I despatched it, the sign takes a while for it to journey to you. You obtain it a while later.
And so the distinction between the time it was despatched and the time you obtained it’s the, mainly the time of flight of the sign. And, and that point multiplied by the velocity of sunshine is, is the vary to the satellite tv for pc. So, if you happen to try this to a number of satellites, now you’ve calculated one thing that appears like a spread to you as a result of it’s, you realize, that, that point of flight to a handful of satellites, you’d consider, you realize, in 3d area, you want, you’ve three satellites, three unknown, you realize, XYZ place.
You already know, what’s the, what’s that fourth unknown, you realize, why do you’ve that further unknown there? And that’s since you don’t know precisely what time it’s whenever you obtained it, you obtained it at some native time, which is, you realize, no matter time your telephone says, however you realize, how, how correct is that on the finish of the.
Tyler: And whenever you consider the sensitivity of the issue of how correct you actually need to know your time to do to calculate these ranges? Effectively, it seems. One nanosecond of time, uncertainty is, is a foot or 30 centimeter. And so it stacks up very, in a short time whenever you’re speaking about sort of nanosecond of, of time data, and it’s very arduous to, to keep up nanosecond type of timing in your telephone.
Your time, time in your telephone is extra on the sort of microsecond degree. More often than not, that’s sort of the place it must be to, to do its job, which is sort of telecommunications and all these things. However if you happen to’re speaking about doing precision ranging. You actually need that sort of nanosecond sort of functionality.
And so relatively than, you realize, having to deliver an atomic clock with you on a regular basis to type of maintain your time at that type of, you realize, very excessive, exact degree, you simply resolve for it as a substitute. So that you add a fourth satellite tv for pc and now, you realize, you get the three dimensions and that point dimension to, to get your place type of right down to, you realize, our expertise at present is extra sort of at that meter degree, however you realize, that type of handful of nanosecond sort of uncertainty sort of level. And so, you realize, going, in order that sort of minimal quantity it’s essential to get some sort of place info is, is 4. It does assume you haven’t any different [00:10:00] sensors or, or nothing else like that.
So if you happen to simply sort of solely have your sort of GPS receiver and nothing else 4 satellites is sort of the naked quantity it’s essential to, to get that first place. so you realize, what number of extra do it’s essential to do the job? Effectively, properly, you need extra than simply 4 to sort of be sturdy to that. And, and the reason being, is you begin type of shifting round on the planet.
You, you might not all the time have international view if you happen to sort of have, you’re assuming you’ve full view of the sky, all it takes is a constructing to dam one a part of the sky and also you solely have three. So you actually wanna design that system to, you realize, have greater than 4 in view always that you just have been on earth.
So that you just’re sturdy and issues like buildings being in the best way, timber being in the best way. you realize, additionally simply, typically it’s, you realize, you’re gonna have simply one thing, that’s gonna offer you greater precision if in case you have much more satellites in view, trigger you’ve extra measurements obtainable to you and.
The the proper of quantity that almost all, I suppose I’ll say GNSS techniques have come to at present is extra at that sort of 10 or 12 variety of satellites in view. And that’s what GPS has at present. That’s what the European Galileo system has at present. And so sort of in addition to the, the Russian, sorry, the Russian GLONASS, and Chinese language Beidou techniques are, are sort of in that related variety of satellites.
And so. Tenish or so satellite tv for pc is about the place you need be sort of at minimal and the extra satellites you must simply higher, it’s gonna work in additional locations, I suppose.
lilly: Mm-hmm if it’s 10 or 12, like seen out of your machine directly, I assume they don’t have protection of in every single place suddenly for the total constructed out constellation.
Tyler: Yeah, that’s an excellent query. And so when, whenever you’re speaking about sort of the GPS system, which is deployed in a medium Earth orbit, which is about 20,000 kilometer altitudeor so. That system has about 30 satellites to attain that purpose. In order that’s about what number of satellites that whenever you deploy type of on the excessive orbit that you just want. We’re concentrating on a decrease orbit than that at present, which is extra sort of within the thousand kilometer vary..
So, so being that 20 occasions nearer to earth, it seems that satellite tv for pc footprint simply shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. Trigger you’re simply a lot nearer to, to earth. And so that you want extra satellites to get the identical quantity of protection. So we’re concentrating on a couple of 300 satellite tv for pc constellation or so.
lilly: OK. talking in regards to the time of flight measurements, is there any, like, would you contemplate and what are the benefits and drawbacks of, as a substitute of doing the a technique time of flight and having to maintain monitor of all that synchronization with doing type of a two-way ranging, the place your machine is the one pinging?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s an excellent query. And, and this was one of many unique trades that was carried out when people have been creating GPS. And so some individuals smarter than me had, had put a whole lot of thought into, you realize, why you would possibly. Do this type of system over say this type of two-way time switch system.
Yeah. And a number of the benefits there, the principle one is basically that in case your machine has to ping again to the satellite tv for pc, it does two issues and certainly one of them is that it, it, it’s an even bigger energy draw in your machine as a result of your machine is having to sort of ship a radio sign {that a} satellite tv for pc has to obtain.
And in order that that’s one piece. And the opposite piece of it’s that the satellites then additionally must, be capable of obtain all these alerts from a number of customers. And so you find yourself placing a constraint on the capability of the satellite tv for pc within the sense that now that satellite tv for pc has to get pings again from all these people which might be utilizing it, possibly just a few hundred or a number of thousand individuals directly can use it, which is, it finally ends up being sort of a limiter on the variety of people who can really use that system.
Whereas if you happen to use this type of a technique time switch system, the place though you do want type of an additional satellite tv for pc in view to unravel the issue. You possibly can in principle type of, you realize, assist an infinite variety of customers. And so, which is the case of GPS at present, the place we see it supporting, you realize, billions of customers and you’ll, you realize, add as many units as you need with out having that constraint.
In order that, that that’s the massive one.
lilly: Yeah, that is smart. So in case you are at this decrease orbit and GPS satellites, The standard authorities funded ones nonetheless exist above you. Can you employ them to raised monitor your satellites?
Tyler: Yeah. completely. And that turns into one of many inputs, to the system, for certain.
As a result of, and people have carried out a whole lot of stuff in, in low Earth orbit, supported by GPS as a result of a part of the service quantity of, of these GPS is to assist purposes in decrease orbit. So you possibly can consider earth imagery, the worldwide area station, all these varieties of oldsters are, are utilizing that. That being stated, we’re designing the system to be GPS impartial.
Simply because there’s a whole lot of curiosity from that from people to have that functionality, you’re not essentially absolutely depending on, you realize, this different system that you just’re augmenting having some capability to type of function, with out enter from that system is, is advantageous in some methods, however it’s there and it’s a nice enter to the system that, that we’re placing collectively.
Tyler: And so it is smart to, to incorporate these measurements a approach of simply making the system extra sturdy on the finish of the day.
For a person, like for the typical particular person with a telephone, will the GPS receiver that I have already got on my telephone work along with your system instantly? Or are there adjustments that must be made?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a extremely good query too. And it, there’ll possible must be adjustments to, to the machine in your telephone at present, however we see that as a part of the type of pure evolution of how the GNSS chip units are evolving and. Certainly one of our, I suppose our common method to this isn’t to compete with the GNSS receiver producers it’s to work with them, to include [00:15:00] our service into their units.
And, and so actually working to, you realize, make it, make that type of adoption as just like what say including a number of the new constellations which have come on-line over time is like, so, you realize, initially there was solely GPS chips after which there was GPS plus BLONASS chips, after which there GPS plus Galileo plus BLONASS plus Beidou chips.
And so actually making an attempt to type. Proceed that evolution of together with a few of these, these new techniques into these chip units. And so working with the, the GNSS receiver producers for most certainly the following technology of units, as a result of notably the sort of ASIC units that you just discover in your telephone are, are so optimized for a particular software that becoming in new issues is, is a giant problem. For a number of the extra, I’ll say, this, type of, excessive efficiency receivers which might be on the market at present which might be supporting a number of the excessive precision purposes on that aspect of issues, that there’s some, chance of, having that be extra akin to a, a software program replace than,than type of a brand new system.
lilly: Fascinating. I wished to pivot somewhat bit and speak extra about, a few of your work with autonomous automobiles and at like, there’s clearly a transparent, like interface between these two issues, however what are a number of the similarities and variations when it comes to like the way you really are fixing technical issues or the autonomy on the automobiles and the autonomy on the satellites or any of that sort of factor?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s an excellent query. So I’ll say half, possibly I’ll, I’ll take. Give somewhat little bit of historical past of type of the place a number of the, I suppose, type of my time in autonomous automobile type of led to this curiosity in type of pursuing this type of satellite tv for pc navigation aspect. so after I entered the sort of autonomous automobile realm and I used to be working at Ford motor firm on the time, a part of my function at that at the moment was type of a mixture of expertise scouting and basic analysis .
In expertise scouting, it was actually working with the startups, notably in Silicon valley, but additionally different expertise corporations as properly, to actually set up, you realize, what’s the state-of-the-art in, you realize, location and mapping applied sciences for. At first was, you realize, targeted on sort of these degree 4 degree 5 absolutely autonomous automobiles, however it was additionally type of supporting a number of the degree two degree three sort of, driver help techniques as properly.
And type of as soon as establishing that sort of the place, what the state of they’re, the expertise was a part of that and type of, making an attempt to determine which of them have been a number of the market leaders was to ascertain, you realize, what are the necessities for these techniques in the end, and which one is sort of closest to the place the necessities ultimately have to be.
So, you realize, what are the situation necessities for, for autonomy? And that turned out to be a, a a lot more durable query than I believe we initially thought, I believe people have been like, oh, you realize, 10 centimeters appears to be the correct quantity, however it was usually sort of unjustified. It was type of a ten centimeter appears to be a quantity the place the system fails the least.
In order that looks like a superb place to begin. However we wished to sort of take a step again and say, okay, essentially, you realize, what do these automobiles actually need when it comes to, you realize, a bounding field, if you happen to wanna consider it that approach round a automobile to say, okay, that is the situational consciousness that I would like to do that, this type of household of duties or this type of household of duties.
And actually what it turns into is there’s some purposes the place it’s essential to know what highway you’re on. Some purposes it’s essential to know what lane you’re in. And a few purposes we actually have to know, you realize, to the centimeter, to have the ability to steer the automobile inside the lane and sort of, you realize, get to the place you’re going.
And it turned out that, you realize, seeing sort of the place, the place the necessities in the end wanted to go and sort of the place the state-of-the-art expertise was. There was no less than in my thoughts, very a lot a niche of, you realize, the place, the place issues, type of stood at present. And that led to the motivation, no less than from, from my aspect to say, okay, properly, what’s one thing we are able to do from the infrastructure aspect to assist fill that hole?
As a result of one of many developments that was occurring within the autonomous automobile business, no less than within the time after I was, was there was. You already know, the, the sort of variety of sensors, the quantity of compute on the automobiles was making these automobiles in some sense, prohibitively costly. You already know, you had a lot {hardware} on the automobiles, the automobiles have been sort of these sort of million greenback, very specialised sort of automobiles.
It simply didn’t scale that properly, whereas if you happen to can offload a few of that to the infrastructure aspect, to assist plenty of automobiles, You already know, that appeared to make extra sense to me no less than. And, and so this went again to, okay, properly, what, you realize, being sort of somebody from an aerospace background, place, navigation background, considering, okay, properly, what can we do from an area, infrastructure aspect to assist this type of place navigation and, and time drawback.
Tyler: And so I believe when it comes to, you realize, the place these two issues are, are type of coming collectively is, is basically seeing this from a okay, how can the, this infrastructure assist the wants of these techniques? There are, in fact, some, some crossover between the 2 within the sense that there are applied sciences which might be, I believe gonna be used on each within the sense that, you realize, you need these satellites whenever you’re deploying a big constellation to have, you realize, a excessive diploma of autonomy about themselves when it comes to fault monitoring when it comes to integrity monitoring.
As a result of in the end you’re making an attempt to. You already know, assist these, you realize, security, crucial techniques within the, within the case of automotive. And so having the, you realize, a whole lot of that sort of fault checking, type of carried out in an autonomous approach. In order that be caught in a short time, it turns into crucial, however there’s additionally simply basic issues like, you realize, essentially a automobile when it’s doing its navigation and positioning is operating [00:20:00] one thing like a Kalman filter or some one thing that’s combining these measurements.
These sorts of issues are gonna be operating on, on the satellites for orbit willpower. So it’s a unique context of drawback, however you realize, essentially an analogous software in, ultimately of the day. And there’s additionally some components of, I believe, collaborative, you realize, infrastructure as properly. So whenever you consider, you realize, self-driving automobile driving by itself with a complete bunch of sensors on it, properly, that’s.
You’re sort of simply making an attempt to exchange one human in a automobile. Perhaps that’s not one of the best ways to do it. Perhaps there’s some benefits to having automobiles work collectively in a collaborative approach the place, you realize, a automobile that’s maybe down the highway from you possibly can share sensor info or situational consciousness info so to set up that situational consciousness, you realize, on the metropolis degree the place you possibly can see round corners, see aroundyou know, different obstacles which you could’t see to sort of get to the purpose the place you’re driving as safely, as you realize, all of the people mixed on the highway, relatively than sort of only one human can solely see one a part of the view of the world. And so I believe there’s a component of that that may discover its approach into the, the area sort of the area and sort of floor segments that assist these sort of area techniques going ahead.
Y know, how can these techniques work collectively to seek out faults in one another the place you realize, these, these sorts of concepts that I believe are, are attention-grabbing as properly.
lilly: Yeah. that’s a extremely good level. And I’m somewhat in listening to extra about this concept of getting the satellites collaborate and type of what are essentially the most technically difficult or technically promising components of that.
Tyler: Yeah, that’s an excellent query as properly. There’s, I’ll say there’s so much occurring in, within the area business now, I believe even in comparison with, you realize, even 5 or 10 years in the past that they actually make a whole lot of this attainable. And you realize, one of many huge ones is simply the size of the constellations being deployed nowadays.
And I believe that that’s enabled by. A number of issues just like the decrease price of entry to area, you realize, SpaceX is I believe one of many extra seen gamers there, however there are in fact others and the opposite is simply, you realize, totally different satellite tv for pc manufacturing methods. So constructing satellites extra such as you would construct a automobile on an meeting line relatively than sort of these bespoke sort of one satellite tv for pc’s in a room the place you’ve a bunch of individuals sort of placing stuff on it.
It’s a fairly, it’s only a totally different mannequin of, of assembling this stuff. And. After we have a look at the sorts of applied sciences that I believe are, are type of coming into that type of satellite tv for pc realm which might be possibly even borrowed from locations like automotive, the place, you realize, particularly whenever you’re speaking about meeting and, and testing, you realize, making one thing that’s, you realize, very sturdy in, in sort of excessive volumes that.
Type of brings this stuff collectively. I believe that, that that’s no less than one instance of, you realize, I believe the place these two industries can study from one another, I suppose. Uh, okay. So I believe so far as, you realize, autonomy on the satellites and the flexibility to type of collaborate with one another, I believe one of many huge, the, one of many huge parts of that’s the capability for the satellites to simply speak to one another, to start with. And so the flexibility to type of cross info.
Between satellites is, is I believe a, a giant milestone type of as a part of that. And I believe one of many enabling applied sciences there that we’re, that we’ve seen type of come to mild is the, this capability of sort of having inter satellite tv for pc communication hyperlinks between these satellites. And there’s been a whole lot of, I believe development of in each optical and radio, sort of,you realize, intersatellite hyperlinks between that to cross that info round.
And I believe that, that, I imply step one to collaboration as it’s an automotive as properly, it’s simply establishing I believe that that’s commonplace and likewise the type of capability for this stuff to cross info between one another. I believe there’s actually been challenges in automotive on that aspect with, with establishing requirements, with issues like vehicle-to-things, so V2 V to X, so automobile -to-stuff, or different automobile sort of communication hyperlinks and establishing simply, you realize, what’s the spectrum that we shared? What’s the protocols for these sort of communications? And I believe it’s, it’s one factor to do it in a sort of. You already know, if one say automotive OEM decides to do it a sure approach they usually can try this between all their automobiles.
It’s one other to do it type of throughout automobiles of all totally different producers, type of in a standardized approach. And so I believe that that’s that’s one of many challenges is simply type of establishing, establishing type of the expertise and the sort of requirements for that communication throughout, throughout satellites.
And naturally, as we take into consideration deploying our system, we predict principally of type of communication between the satellites that we’ve. But it surely’s attention-grabbing to consider, you realize, potential, you realize, cross type of, communication between different platforms as properly.
lilly: Yeah. And do you intend on, do you anticipate having optical or RF cross hyperlinks or each in your system?
Tyler: Yeah, I believe that’s one thing that we’re exploring. So I believe it’s one thing that’s on the desk, however I believe that we’re nonetheless in, we’re on the section proper now the place we’ve deployed our first demonstration satellite tv for pc. And so for the demonstration satellite tv for pc, it has, I’ll say one thing that’s akin to, you realize, inter satellite tv for pc hyperlink, which we’re exploring between this, our type of second launch that’s coming, subsequent yr.
And so. That’s one thing that we’re exploring as a part of the long run deployment of the system, however the type of earlier iterations could, it might not be required. So it’s, it’s one thing that we’re exploring and it’s one thing we’re keeping track of, however, it it’s possibly not essentially one thing that’s essentially crucial to the system working.
lilly: Effectively, congratulations in your first launch and your upcoming second launch. I wished to pivot somewhat bit extra really, and listen to a bit about, a few of your [00:25:00] analysis again whenever you have been within the academia and like how that led into, each your autonomous automobile and your present jobs.
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a, yeah, that brings me again
So to return to, I suppose my days as a grad pupil. So, the lab that I labored in was the GPS analysis lab at Stanford college. And it was a extremely nice setting for me. It was one which targeted, you realize, very a lot on that sort of place navigation drawback, but additionally one which targeted somewhat bit on, you realize, operational initiatives for the FAA, in addition to we have been working with the federal aviation administration.
You already know, assist these sort of security, crucial techniques, you realize, plane utilizing GPS to land plane utilizing GPS in flight. so, you realize, desirous about issues about, you realize, what are security crucial use circumstances of place navigation and time particularly in transportation. And on this case, it was supporting civil aviation.
And in order that was a extremely, that was a extremely attention-grabbing setting for me, since you might see the work that you just’re doing straight impacting that business. In some variety of years, it wasn’t that the grad college students have been engaged on issues, you realize, straight sort of in operation, however that it wasn’t too distant from sort of essentially seeing the lifetime of operation.
So I believe from a, you realize, how that led into sort of the, the work that I used to be doing, sort of within the autonomous automobile world. I believe that desirous about the issue of, you realize, what are the sort of ranges of situational consciousness that automobiles want when it comes to place navigation and time, you realize, what’s the degree of sort of security and integrity that these techniques want?
Actually utilizing that sort of framework in a structured strategy to develop, you realize, what would possibly that framework appear to be in automotive, which was sort of new to that concept of getting place and knowledge as a part of that sort of security, crucial enter to, you realize, steering the automobile and, you realize, sort of conserving the human partially within the loop or completely within the loop, that are sort of issues that aviation had type of labored by way of as a result of there are occasions the place the plane will fly itself.
There are occasions the place the plane sort of has the pilot within the. So it’s, you realize, desirous about these sorts of issues in that framework. And I believe that that, that sort of aspect of issues straight led to the work that we did in type of establishing, you realize, what is perhaps the framework and necessities for these automobiles going ahead.
You already know, desirous about this in sort of a civil aviation method, as a result of. And whenever you examine the numbers, you realize, civil aviation actually has the very best monitor report which you could give you when it comes to security and, you realize, per miles traveled with people and sort of all these by all metrics. It’s it’s approach safer to take a seat at an airplane than it’s to take a seat in a automobile that that was that’s typically the, the takeaway and a part of that’s the properly that people have so much much less people in automobiles have so much much less coaching than people in plane who’re working these issues.
And so it’s a. That that’s simply essentially a kind of variations. And, and, and a part of that’s, is that if one thing goes incorrect in an plane, such as you higher know what to do shortly, whereas one thing goes incorrect in a automobile, you possibly can pull off to the aspect of the highway. And so, and so simply essentially some, some variations there, however I believe that that’s, that’s one of many huge ones I believe was, you realize, bringing a few of that framework from, you realize, aviation to automotive and desirous about these, these issues in that approach.
And the opposite aspect of that was the sort of. You already know, the sort of business GPS and GNSS aspect of that. So, you realize, transitioning from, you realize, You already know, the federal government system that helps, you realize, all these billions of units and created all this type of, you realize, financial improvement and sort of all these developments, and desirous about how that may evolve sort of within the so-called sort of new area age, which is the age whenever you consider issues like SpaceX and, you realize, these sort of gamers which have actually challenged the type of so-called conventional aerospace, which is, extra the sort of, you realize, whenever you consider that as sort of these longer timelines, very danger adversarial sort of gamers. And, and, you realize, desirous about how, how would possibly a few of these sort of new methods or new approaches in area, desirous about these sort of mega constellations which might be being proposed by, on the time they have been being proposed, it didn’t but exist. So we’re speaking about sort of Starlink and OneWeb and you realize, all these sort of gamers, which appeared sort of like science fiction on the time, this was sort of within the 2015 sort of period earlier than a whole lot of these things launched something or had been deployed.
These have been all sort of concepts on. you realize, a few of that work was type of the elemental, okay, properly, what would possibly you be capable of do with one thing like this? If, if these sort of satellites really come to exist, if the launch prices really come down, you realize, what is perhaps some functionality that you may leverage from that sort of area infrastructure?
So if you happen to might deploy one thing like that for place navigation and time, you realize, what would possibly that appear to be? What would possibly the capabilities be? However I believe at that time it was sort of a okay, properly that, that’s an attention-grabbing drawback, however, It was in some sense, missing motivation. It was type of a, okay, properly, who desires this?
You already know, what do we’d like this for? GPS works rather well. Each, I believe on the time it was like, properly, we’ve carried out it. You already know, GPS is in everybody’s pocket. What else might you need? And, and it wasn’t till I, I labored in an business the place GPS, because it stood, wasn’t fairly sufficient for, for what they wanted that I type of these dots related at no less than on my aspect to, to see, okay, properly possibly this type of method might assist this different aspect as properly.
So in some sense, you realize, there’s, I suppose studying from each side and sort of related this stuff collectively, I suppose.
lilly: Yeah, that makes [00:30:00] sense. It’s very attention-grabbing to listen to the way it all connects. we’re arising on time, however I do have one final query. which is, are there different business gamers making an attempt to get into the GNSS area?
Like, do you’ve any actual opponents proper now?
Tyler: Oh, there, certain. There’s positively people on the market. So we’re not the one ones doing this. I believe that they’re, I gained’t identify all of them by identify. Trigger I, I can’t communicate to everybody’s plans on the market, however I can communicate to a, a number of common developments that, that we’ve seen.
And one is that, you realize, the, the oldsters on the market who’re constructing these sort of mega constellations for communication functions. So, you realize, the web from the sky sort of people are positively curious about offering one thing. I believe that it, it seems very totally different from, from what we’re working in the direction of, which is extra of a , you realize, particular excessive efficiency, you realize, GNSS, P and T sort of service, which seems so much like what you have already got in your telephone when it comes to chip set, when it comes to these sorts of, you realize, antenna, these varieties of things. While you have a look at a number of the, you realize, the communication, techniques, you realize, actually they’re a totally totally different frequency bands.
Their person terminals are normally fairly giant as a result of we’d like a fairly large antenna to type of, full the hyperlink funds to get the sort of knowledge charges that they’re speaking about. It, it they’re, they’re actually desirous about it, however I believe that, you realize, their major purpose is basically, you realize, communication, however it’s type of a, oh, we are able to, you realize, we’ve this technique, we are able to in all probability assist some sort of navigation as properly.
At the very least that’s what we’ve seen to date. So I believe that that’s, that’s one of many opponents on the market. When it comes to others, we’ve seen some attention-grabbing stuff happening from really one of many main, automotive OEMs on the market, which is a Chinese language firm known as Geely. They’re really constructing and deploying their very own constellation, which is basically to assist autonomous automotive actions. It’s, you realize, communication navigation sort of multi functional package deal. And in order that’s, you realize, seems to be, you realize, one of many huge, one of many huge gamers on the market. And so there there’s actually another corporations as properly. There are some established companies on the market at present, for instance, from Iridium, which is offering some P and T companies at present.
And there are different satellite tv for pc companies offering extra correction companies. So issues which might be correcting, offering further info to type of praise the GPS sign, however not a further, you realize, type of ranging or GPS sign itself. In order that’s, I believe one of many, one of many main variations there.
Tyler: So, and we, we, and I believe since we’ve been doing this, we’ve seen some others, another corporations type of suggest some related issues as properly. So I believe we’re, it seems to be that, issues are heading on this course, I suppose.
lilly: Effectively, yeah, it’s positively an thrilling area to be in an thrilling time.
And. A very attention-grabbing concept. Thanks a lot for talking with me.
Tyler: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks once more for, for the invitation to talk right here at present. And, yeah, this was nice dialogue.
transcript
tags: Enterprise, c-House, cx-House, PNT, podcast, Robotics expertise, area, startup
Lilly Clark
