Dr. Tyler Reid, co-founder and CTO of Xona Area Techniques, discusses a brand new sort of world navigation satellite tv for pc system (GNSS). Xona Area Techniques plans to offer centimeter-level positioning accuracy and can serve the rising autonomous car neighborhood, the place exact navigation is vital. 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 Area Techniques. 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 acquired 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: Howdy and welcome to the Robohub podcast. Would you thoughts introducing your self?
Tyler: Howdy and thanks once more for having me on immediately. So I’m Tyler Reid and I’m co-founder and CTO of Xona Area Techniques.
lilly: And might you inform us a little bit bit about Xona Area Techniques?
Tyler: Yeah, for positive. So Xona Area Techniques is an organization targeted on, principally constructing business GPS satellites.
So actually transferring 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. Transferring in direction of a system that’s, you realize, commercially pushed round sort of wants of economic customers and, you realize, going extra in that course to kind of help these customers going ahead.
lilly: And what do you assume are kind of the advantages of going business with a GPS sort know-how?
Tyler: Yeah, for positive. So to talk a little bit bit about my background and kind of the place a few of that is coming from. So, so I kind of got here from the world of, you realize, GPS and began actually in grad college on that aspect of issues.
And transitioned after grad college to working in sort of business analysis. So I used to be working in autonomous autos, working with these techniques and sort of seeing these techniques actually closely depend on, on GPS and sort of what’s on the market immediately. And actually the state-of-the-art of the know-how was, you realize, having third social gathering corporations principally ship correction data for the GPS satellite tv for pc.
So the data coming from GPS straight was actually not fairly on the degree that it should be to help these, you realize, techniques like self-driving which are actually making an attempt to get all the way down to the centimeter degree location to, to, you realize, drive themselves on the street. and so to get to that degree, you had sort of these corporations whose entire sort of position was to ship, you realize, higher orbit, higher clock data than what GPS offers you straight to actually drive these errors all the way 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 beneath timber or in sure environments, you’d usually lose that sort of centimeter degree location. And it simply, it kind 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 understand, was it possibly terrestrial primarily based resolution? Is it laptop 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, important functions like civil aviation, which is, you realize, a part of what my sort of, the thesis work was in and sort of fascinated with how that might evolve to help, you realize, a few of these floor techniques like autonomous autos, but additionally uAVs and, and sort of different kind of,kind of autonomous techniques going ahead, that kind of actually led to this.
Okay, nicely, how can we alter issues on the area aspect somewhat than simply making an attempt to make use of what we’ve got from these sort of authorities techniques to, to kind 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? Properly, actually you’re not tied to sort of the, the system that, that the federal government gives for you, which, you realize, is sort of static. It’s there for a motive. And it, you realize, it’s actually a unbelievable system and it, it helps billions of customers. It has created sort of all, you realize, all these use instances that we, you realize, I’ve, I’ve a horrible sense of course.
So, you realize, figuring out sort of the blue dot to search out my manner house has, has been, you realize, extremely helpful. However, you realize, as we take into consideration transferring away from, you realize, people who can. use that data to kind of get near the place they should go after which sort of end the job themselves and, and going in direction of autonomous techniques that actually depend on that blue dot being, you realize, precisely proper the place it’s to, to, to actually get to that time kind of on their very own, with none enter from, from any people.
There actually is kind of that there’s kind 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 help. And so fascinated with 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 are you going to, you realize, evolve this area phase to actually be targeted on the, on the business aspect.
And so. A number of the advantages. There may be you, you simply, you realize, you will have sort of a clean slate in a way. And so you can begin with, you realize, what do we actually have to help customers on the bottom? After which we will begin to architect the system, you realize, round a few of these, you realize, rising wants somewhat than, you realize, supporting issues from in a long time, previously, I suppose.
lilly: And when it comes to like attending to that centimeter degree accuracy do you assume that many of the technological developments are within the area aspect or like, do you intend on doing does Xona area techniques plan on doing a variety of that error correction, like related error correction sort stuff and like the complete stack?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a terrific query. And I’ll say in some sense, we’re not inventing, we’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re kind of, you realize, we’re utilizing a variety of the strategies that’s been nicely established by the kind of excessive precision GNSS business, which has supported traditionally [00:05:00] issues like surveying issues like mapping, precision agriculture, you realize, are massive customers of, of this sort of know-how.
And so actually sort of constructing on the shoulders of giants in, in that respect. You understand, how, how are people getting excessive precision immediately and sort of, you realize, evolving that to kinda the subsequent, the subsequent sort of, you realize, what may the subsequent kind of, area infrastructure appear like to, to make use of these strategies and sort of make them even higher for folk.
And so, you realize, whenever you take a look at the sort of errors that stack up in GPS, you’ve bought. The ambiance is a giant one, you realize, as these alerts refract by way of the completely different layers of the ambiance, significantly the ionosphere and troposphere, you realize, that that’s a, an error that kind of manifests itself on the consumer degree, but additionally simply the orbit and clock data 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 completely different factors in area.
You higher know very nicely what these factors have been, cuz in any other case you’re not gonna know very nicely. 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 data of the GPS satellite tv for pc, in an effort to in flip kind of get your place to the kind of centimeter degree as nicely.
And so how do you do this with kind of, you realize, as we take into consideration this sort of evolving from, you realize, the sort of, the strategies which were used previously to, you realize, what could be doable, sooner or later? Properly, it seems that one of many massive sort of inputs to that system, When it comes to how rapidly you may get from sort of meter degree place all the way down to sort of the centimeter degree is how rapidly 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 data in that kind of very fast move than you will have 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 strategies which are making that all the time higher on a regular basis from a medium earth orbit perspective. You understand, whenever you’re utilizing sort of the normal GSS satellites to, to get to that prime precision, there are strategies evolving to, to get there sooner and sooner.
However in case you have that very quick kind of movement throughout the sky, it simply makes these strategies 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 kind of convey extra functionality to, to people on the bottom.
lilly: And so in case you have, if you happen to get higher efficiency from having transferring autos, 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 amount?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a very good query.
What it comes all the way down to is, you realize, the extra satellites, the higher , that’s sort of the easy query, the easy reply there, however mm-hmm, actually we’re, you realize, actually leveraging an analogous method that’s been used from, from GPS, which is called trilateration.. And what that’s, is there’s principally 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 kind of an uncertainty there’s that the best way you calculate vary to the completely different satellites is that the satellite tv for pc sends a sign and the sign principally says it was this time once 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 acquired it’s the, principally 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 do 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 will have three satellites, three unknown, you realize, XYZ place.
You understand, what’s the, what’s that fourth unknown, you realize, why do you will have that further unknown there? And that’s since you don’t know precisely what time it’s whenever you acquired it, you acquired 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 really want to know your time to do to calculate these ranges? Properly, 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 information, and it’s very exhausting to, to take care of nanosecond kind 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 somewhat than, you realize, having to convey an atomic clock with you on a regular basis to kind of preserve your time at that kind 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 kind of all the way down to, you realize, our expertise immediately is extra sort of at that meter degree, however you realize, that kind of handful of nanosecond sort of uncertainty sort of level. And so, you realize, going, in order that sort of minimal quantity you want to get some sort of place data 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 you want to, to get that first place. so you realize, what number of extra do you want to do the job? Properly, nicely, you need extra than simply 4 to sort of be sturdy to that. And, and the reason being, is you begin kind of transferring round on the earth.
You, you could not all the time have international view if you happen to sort of have, you’re assuming you will have 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 provide you with increased precision in case you have much more satellites in view, trigger you will have extra measurements obtainable to you and.
The the correct of quantity that the majority, I suppose I’ll say GNSS techniques have come to immediately is extra at that sort of 10 or 12 variety of satellites in view. And that’s what GPS has immediately. That’s what the European Galileo system has immediately. 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 system directly, I assume they don’t have protection of all over the place all of sudden for the complete constructed out constellation.
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a terrific 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 realize that objective. In order that’s about what number of satellites that whenever you deploy kind of on the excessive orbit that you just want. We’re concentrating on a decrease orbit than that immediately, 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 think about and what are the benefits and drawbacks of, as a substitute of doing the a method time of flight and having to maintain monitor of all that synchronization with doing kind of a two-way ranging, the place your system is the one pinging?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a terrific query. And, and this was one of many unique trades that was performed when people have been growing GPS. And so some individuals smarter than me had, had put a variety of thought into, you realize, why you may. Do this sort of system over say this sort of two-way time switch system.
Yeah. And a number of the benefits there, the primary one is absolutely that in case your system has to ping again to the satellite tv for pc, it does two issues and one in every of them is that it, it, it’s a much bigger energy draw in your system as a result of your system 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, have the ability to 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 are 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 sort of a method time switch system, the place though you do want kind of an additional satellite tv for pc in view to unravel the issue. You possibly can in idea kind of, you realize, help an infinite variety of customers. And so, which is the case of GPS immediately, 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 sensible. So if you’re at this decrease orbit and GPS satellites, The normal authorities funded ones nonetheless exist above you. Can you utilize them to higher monitor your satellites?
Tyler: Yeah. completely. And that turns into one of many inputs, to the system, for positive.
As a result of, and people have performed a variety 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 help functions in decrease orbit. So you’ll be able to consider earth imagery, the worldwide area station, all these sorts of parents are, are utilizing that. That being stated, we’re designing the system to be GPS unbiased.
Simply because there’s a variety 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 capacity to kind 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 sensible to, to incorporate these measurements a manner of simply making the system extra sturdy on the finish of the day.
For a consumer, like for the typical individual with a telephone, will the GPS receiver that I have already got on my telephone work together with your system instantly? Or are there adjustments that must be made?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a very good query too. And it, there’ll seemingly must be adjustments to, to the system in your telephone immediately, however we see that as a part of the kind of pure evolution of how the GNSS chip units are evolving and. Certainly one of our, I suppose our basic strategy 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 kind of adoption as much 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 more than likely the subsequent era of units, as a result of significantly the sort of ASIC units that you just discover in your telephone are, are so optimized for a particular utility that becoming in new issues is, is a giant problem. For a number of the extra, I’ll say, this, kind of, excessive efficiency receivers which are on the market immediately which are supporting a number of the excessive precision functions on that aspect of issues, that there’s some, chance of, having that be extra akin to a, a software program replace than,than kind of a brand new system.
lilly: Fascinating. I needed to pivot a little bit bit and speak extra about, a few of your work with autonomous autos 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 autos and the autonomy on the satellites or any of that sort of factor?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a terrific query. So I’ll say half, possibly I’ll, I’ll take. Give a little bit little bit of historical past of kind of the place a number of the, I suppose, kind of my time in autonomous car kind of led to this curiosity in kind of pursuing this sort of satellite tv for pc navigation aspect. so once I entered the sort of autonomous car realm and I used to be working at Ford motor firm on the time, a part of my position at that at the moment was kind of a mixture of know-how scouting and elementary analysis .
In know-how scouting, it was actually working with the startups, significantly in Silicon valley, but additionally different know-how corporations as nicely, 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 autos, nevertheless it was additionally kind of supporting a number of the degree two degree three sort of, driver help techniques as nicely.
And kind of as soon as establishing that sort of the place, what the state of they’re, the know-how was a part of that and kind of, making an attempt to establish which of them have been a number of the market leaders was to determine, 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 should be.
So, you realize, what are the placement necessities for, for autonomy? And that turned out to be a, a a lot more durable query than I feel we initially thought, I feel people have been like, oh, you realize, 10 centimeters appears to be the correct quantity, nevertheless it was usually sort of unjustified. It was kind of a ten centimeter appears to be a quantity the place the system fails the least.
In order that looks as if an excellent place to begin. However we needed to sort of take a step again and say, okay, basically, you realize, what do these autos really want when it comes to, you realize, a bounding field, if you happen to wanna consider it that manner round a car to say, okay, that is the situational consciousness that I want to do that, this sort of household of duties or this sort of household of duties.
And actually what it turns into is there’s some functions the place you want to know what street you’re on. Some functions you want to know what lane you’re in. And a few functions we actually have to know, you realize, to the centimeter, to have the ability to steer the automotive throughout 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 know-how was. There was at the very least in my thoughts, very a lot a spot of, you realize, the place, the place issues, kind of stood immediately. And that led to the motivation, at the very least from, from my aspect to say, okay, nicely, what’s one thing we will do from the infrastructure aspect to assist fill that hole?
As a result of one of many traits that was taking place within the autonomous car business, at the very least within the time once I was, was there was. You understand, the, the sort of variety of sensors, the quantity of compute on the autos was making these autos in some sense, prohibitively costly. You understand, you had a lot {hardware} on the autos, the autos have been sort of these sort of million greenback, very specialised sort of autos.
It simply didn’t scale that nicely, whereas if you happen to can offload a few of that to the infrastructure aspect, to help a number of autos, You understand, that appeared to make extra sense to me at the very least. And, and so this went again to, okay, nicely, what, you realize, being sort of somebody from an aerospace background, place, navigation background, pondering, okay, nicely, what can we do from an area, infrastructure aspect to help this sort of place navigation and, and time downside.
Tyler: And so I feel when it comes to, you realize, the place these two issues are, are kind of coming collectively is, is absolutely seeing this from a okay, how can the, this infrastructure help the wants of these techniques? There are, in fact, some, some crossover between the 2 within the sense that there are applied sciences which are, I feel 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 understand, help these, you realize, security, important techniques within the, within the case of automotive. And so having the, you realize, a variety of that sort of fault checking, kind of performed in an autonomous manner. In order that be caught in a short time, it turns into essential, however there’s additionally simply elementary issues like, you realize, basically a car 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 distinct context of downside, however you realize, basically an analogous software in, ultimately of the day. And there’s additionally some parts of, I feel, collaborative, you realize, infrastructure as nicely. So whenever you consider, you realize, self-driving automotive driving by itself with a complete bunch of sensors on it, nicely, that’s.
You’re sort of simply making an attempt to switch one human in a automotive. Possibly that’s not one of the best ways to do it. Possibly there’s some benefits to having autos work collectively in a collaborative manner the place, you realize, a car that’s maybe down the street from you’ll be able to share sensor data or situational consciousness data in an effort to set up that situational consciousness, you realize, on the metropolis degree the place you’ll be able to 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 street, somewhat than sort of only one human can solely see one a part of the view of the world. And so I feel there’s a component of that that may discover its manner into the, the area sort of the area and sort of floor segments that help these sort of area techniques going ahead.
Y know, how can these techniques work collectively to search out faults in one another the place you realize, these, these sorts of concepts that I feel are, are attention-grabbing as nicely.
lilly: Yeah. that’s a very good level. And I’m a little bit in listening to extra about this concept of getting the satellites collaborate and kind of what are essentially the most technically difficult or technically promising parts of that.
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a terrific query as nicely. There’s, I’ll say there’s rather a lot taking place in, within the area business now, I feel even in comparison with, you realize, even 5 or 10 years in the past that they actually make a variety of this doable. And you realize, one of many massive ones is simply the size of the constellations being deployed lately.
And I feel that that’s enabled by. A couple of issues just like the decrease price of entry to area, you realize, SpaceX is I feel one of many extra seen gamers there, however there are in fact others and the opposite is simply, you realize, completely different satellite tv for pc manufacturing strategies. So constructing satellites extra such as you would construct a automotive on an meeting line somewhat than sort of these bespoke sort of one satellite tv for pc’s in a room the place you will have a bunch of individuals sort of placing stuff on it.
It’s a reasonably, it’s only a completely different mannequin of, of assembling these items. And. Once we take a look at the sorts of applied sciences that I feel are, are kind of coming into that kind of satellite tv for pc realm which are 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 these items collectively. I feel that, that that’s at the very least one instance of, you realize, I feel the place these two industries can be taught from one another, I suppose. Uh, okay. So I feel so far as, you realize, autonomy on the satellites and the flexibility to kind of collaborate with one another, I feel one of many massive, the, one of many massive elements of that’s the capacity for the satellites to simply speak to one another, to start with. And so the flexibility to kind of move data.
Between satellites is, is I feel a, a giant milestone kind of as a part of that. And I feel one of many enabling applied sciences there that we’re, that we’ve seen kind of come to mild is the, this capacity of sort of having inter satellite tv for pc communication hyperlinks between these satellites. And there’s been a variety of, I feel development of in each optical and radio, sort of,you realize, intersatellite hyperlinks between that to move that data round.
And I feel that, that, I imply step one to collaboration as it’s an automotive as nicely, it’s simply establishing I feel that that’s customary and likewise the kind of capacity for these items to move data between one another. I feel there’s definitely been challenges in automotive on that aspect with, with establishing requirements, with issues like vehicle-to-things, so V2 V to X, so car -to-stuff, or different car 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 feel it’s, it’s one factor to do it in a sort of. You understand, if one say automotive OEM decides to do it a sure manner they usually can do this between all their autos.
It’s one other to do it kind of throughout autos of all completely different producers, kind of in a standardized manner. And so I feel that that’s that’s one of many challenges is simply kind of establishing, establishing kind of the know-how and the sort of requirements for that communication throughout, throughout satellites.
And naturally, as we take into consideration deploying our system, we expect principally of kind of communication between the satellites that we’ve got. Nevertheless it’s attention-grabbing to consider, you realize, potential, you realize, cross kind of, communication between different platforms as nicely.
lilly: Yeah. And do you intend on, do you anticipate having optical or RF cross hyperlinks or each in your system?
Tyler: Yeah, I feel that’s one thing that we’re exploring. So I feel it’s one thing that’s on the desk, however I feel that we’re nonetheless in, we’re on the part proper now the place we’ve got 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 kind 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 kind of earlier iterations could, it is probably not required. So it’s, it’s one thing that we’re exploring and it’s one thing we’re maintaining a tally of, however, it it’s possibly not essentially one thing that’s basically important to the system working.
lilly: Properly, congratulations in your first launch and your upcoming second launch. I needed to pivot a little bit 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 car 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 very nice atmosphere for me. It was one which targeted, you realize, very a lot on that sort of place navigation downside, but additionally one which targeted a little bit bit on, you realize, operational tasks for the FAA, in addition to we have been working with the federal aviation administration.
You understand, help these sort of security, important techniques, you realize, plane utilizing GPS to land plane utilizing GPS in flight. so, you realize, fascinated with issues about, you realize, what are security important use instances of place navigation and time particularly in transportation. And on this case, it was supporting civil aviation.
And in order that was a very, that was a very attention-grabbing atmosphere for me, since you may 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 feel from a, you realize, how that led into sort of the, the work that I used to be doing, sort of within the autonomous car world. I feel that fascinated with the issue of, you realize, what are the sort of ranges of situational consciousness that autos 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 may that framework appear like in automotive, which was sort of new to that concept of getting place and data as a part of that sort of security, important enter to, you realize, steering the car and, you realize, sort of maintaining the human partially within the loop or completely within the loop, that are sort of issues that aviation had kind 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, fascinated with these sorts of issues in that framework. And I feel that that, that sort of aspect of issues straight led to the work that we did in kind of establishing, you realize, what could be the framework and necessities for these autos going ahead.
You understand, fascinated with this in sort of a civil aviation strategy, as a result of. And whenever you evaluate the numbers, you realize, civil aviation actually has the most effective monitor document 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 manner safer to sit down at an airplane than it’s to sit down in a automotive that that was that’s typically the, the takeaway and a part of that’s the nicely that people have rather a lot much less people in automobiles have rather a lot much less coaching than people in plane who’re working these issues.
And so it’s a. That that’s simply basically a kind of variations. And, and, and a part of that’s, is that if one thing goes unsuitable in an plane, such as you higher know what to do rapidly, whereas one thing goes unsuitable in a automotive, you’ll be able to pull off to the aspect of the street. And so, and so simply basically some, some variations there, however I feel that that’s, that’s one of many massive ones I feel was, you realize, bringing a few of that framework from, you realize, aviation to automotive and fascinated with these, these issues in that manner.
And the opposite aspect of that was the sort of. You understand, the sort of business GPS and GNSS aspect of that. So, you realize, transitioning from, you realize, You understand, the federal government system that helps, you realize, all these billions of units and created all this sort of, you realize, financial improvement and sort of all these developments, and fascinated with how which 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 kind 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 antagonistic sort of gamers. And, and, you realize, fascinated with how, how may a few of these sort of new strategies or new approaches in area, fascinated with these sort of mega constellations which are 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 variety 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 kind of the basic, okay, nicely, what may you have the ability to 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 could be some functionality that you would leverage from that sort of area infrastructure?
So if you happen to may deploy one thing like that for place navigation and time, you realize, what may that appear like? What may the capabilities be? However I feel at that time it was sort of a okay, nicely that, that’s an attention-grabbing downside, however, It was in some sense, missing motivation. It was kind of a, okay, nicely, who desires this?
You understand, what do we want this for? GPS works rather well. Each, I feel on the time it was like, nicely, we’ve performed it. You understand, GPS is in everybody’s pocket. What else may 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 kind of these dots linked at at the very least on my aspect to, to see, okay, nicely possibly this sort of strategy may help this different aspect as nicely.
So in some sense, you realize, there’s, I suppose studying from each side and sort of linked these items 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 developing 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 will have any actual opponents proper now?
Tyler: Oh, there, positive. There’s undoubtedly people on the market. So we’re not the one ones doing this. I feel that they’re, I gained’t title all of them by title. Trigger I, I can’t converse to everybody’s plans on the market, however I can converse to a, a number of basic traits that, that we’ve seen.
And one is that, you realize, the, the parents 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 undoubtedly considering offering one thing. I feel that it, it seems to be very completely different from, from what we’re working in direction of, which is extra of a , you realize, particular excessive efficiency, you realize, GNSS, P and T sort of service, which seems to be rather a lot 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 sorts of things. If you take a look at a number of the, you realize, the communication, techniques, you realize, actually they’re a very completely different frequency bands.
Their consumer terminals are often fairly giant as a result of we want a fairly large antenna to kind of, full the hyperlink finances to get the sort of information charges that they’re speaking about. It, it they’re, they’re definitely fascinated with it, however I feel that, you realize, their major objective is absolutely, you realize, communication, nevertheless it’s kind of a, oh, we will, you realize, we’ve got this method, we will most likely help some sort of navigation as nicely.
Not less than that’s what we’ve seen to this point. So I feel that that’s, that’s one of many opponents on the market. When it comes to others, we’ve seen some attention-grabbing stuff occurring 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 absolutely to help autonomous automotive actions. It’s, you realize, communication navigation sort of multi function bundle. And in order that’s, you realize, seems to be, you realize, one of many massive, one of many massive gamers on the market. And so there there’s definitely another corporations as nicely. There are some established companies on the market immediately, for instance, from Iridium, which is offering some P and T companies immediately.
And there are different satellite tv for pc companies offering extra correction companies. So issues which are correcting, offering further data to kind of praise the GPS sign, however not a further, you realize, kind of ranging or GPS sign itself. In order that’s, I feel one of many, one of many main variations there.
Tyler: So, and we, we, and I feel since we’ve been doing this, we’ve seen some others, another corporations kind of suggest some related issues as nicely. So I feel we’re, it seems to be that, issues are heading on this course, I suppose.
lilly: Properly, yeah, it’s undoubtedly 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 immediately. And, yeah, this was nice dialogue.
transcript
tags: Enterprise, c-Area, cx-Area, PNT, podcast, Robotics know-how, area, startup
Lilly Clark
