Dr. Tyler Reid, co-founder and CTO of Xona Space Systems, discusses a brand new sort of world navigation satellite tv for pc system (GNSS). Xona Space Systems plans to supply 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 Space Systems. Previously, Tyler labored as a Research Engineer on the Ford Motor Company in localization and mapping for self-driving vehicles. He has additionally labored as an engineer at Google and as a lecturer at Stanford University, 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: Hello and welcome to the Robohub podcast. Would you thoughts introducing your self?
Tyler: Hello and thanks once more for having me on as we speak. So I’m Tyler Reid and I’m co-founder and CTO of Xona Space Systems.
lilly: And are you able to inform us slightly bit about Xona Space Systems?
Tyler: Yeah, for certain. So Xona Space Systems is an organization centered on, mainly constructing business GPS satellites.
So actually transferring away from the mannequin of, you understand, these type of authorities operated techniques like GPS which have a type of very particular, you understand, authorities oriented mission. Moving in direction of a system that’s, you understand, commercially pushed round type of wants of business customers and, you understand, going extra in that course to form of assist these customers going ahead.
lilly: And what do you suppose are form of the advantages of going business with a GPS sort know-how?
Tyler: Yeah, for certain. So to talk slightly bit about my background and form of the place a few of that is coming from. So, so I form of got here from the world of, you understand, GPS and began actually in grad college on that facet of issues.
And transitioned after grad college to working in type of business analysis. So I used to be working in autonomous automobiles, working with these techniques and type of seeing these techniques actually closely depend on, on GPS and type of what’s on the market as we speak. And actually the state-of-the-art of the know-how was, you understand, having third get together corporations mainly ship correction data for the GPS satellite tv for pc.
So the knowledge coming from GPS instantly was actually not fairly on the degree that it must be to assist these, you understand, techniques like self-driving which might be actually making an attempt to get all the way down to the centimeter degree location to, to, you understand, drive themselves on the highway. and so to get to that degree, you had type of these corporations whose entire type of position was to ship, you understand, higher orbit, higher clock data than what GPS provides you instantly to actually drive these errors all the way down to that type of that centimeter degree.
And due to the way in which the system was architected, which actually wasn’t, you understand, meant for use this fashion, it led to. you understand, the fragilities in that type of sign. So whenever you begin to drive beneath timber or in sure environments, you’d typically lose that type of centimeter degree location. And it simply, it form 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 know, was it perhaps terrestrial primarily based resolution? Is it pc imaginative and prescient resolution is a type of the entire above. And, you understand, with my background coming from, you understand, satellite tv for pc navigation and GPS and type of seeing how these techniques have supported, you understand, some security, crucial purposes like civil aviation, which is, you understand, a part of what my type of, the thesis work was in and type of fascinated by how that might evolve to assist, you understand, a few of these floor techniques like autonomous automobiles, but additionally uAVs and, and type of different form of,form of autonomous techniques going ahead, that form of actually led to this.
Okay, nicely, how can we modify issues on the house facet fairly than simply making an attempt to make use of what now we have from these type of authorities techniques to, to form of, you understand, fill the gaps, I suppose. And so from a, from a business perspective, you understand, what are a few of the advantages that you just get there? Well, actually you’re not tied to type of the, the system that, that the federal government offers for you, which, you understand, is type of static. It’s there for a motive. And it, you understand, it’s actually a implausible system and it, it helps billions of customers. It has created type of all, you understand, all these use circumstances that we, you understand, I’ve, I’ve a horrible sense of course.
So, you understand, realizing type of the blue dot to seek out my manner residence has, has been, you understand, extremely helpful. But, you understand, as we take into consideration transferring away from, you understand, people who can. use that data to form of get near the place they should go after which type of end the job themselves and, and going in direction of autonomous techniques that actually depend on that blue dot being, you understand, precisely proper the place it’s to, to, to actually get to that time form of on their very own, with none enter from, from any people.
There actually is form of that there’s form of a leap that should occur there by way of, you understand, The sorts of ranges of, reliability and in addition, you understand, precision that, that these techniques assist. And so fascinated by this from type of the business perspective, you understand, what are you able to present and, and changing into type of from an aerospace background, you understand, how are you going to, you understand, evolve this house phase to actually be centered on the, on the business facet.
And so. Some of the advantages. There is you, you simply, you understand, you may have type of a clean slate in a way. And so you can begin with, you understand, what do we actually have to assist customers on the bottom? And then we will begin to architect the system, you understand, round a few of these, you understand, rising wants fairly than, you understand, supporting issues from in a long time, previously, I suppose.
lilly: And by way of like attending to that centimeter degree accuracy do you suppose that many of the technological developments are within the house facet or like, do you propose on doing does Xona house techniques plan on doing a variety of that error correction, like comparable error correction sort stuff and like the complete stack?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a fantastic query. And I’ll say in some sense, we’re not inventing, we’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re form of, you understand, we’re utilizing a variety of the strategies that’s been nicely established by the form of excessive precision GNSS business, which has supported traditionally [00:05:00] issues like surveying issues like mapping, precision agriculture, you understand, are massive customers of, of this sort of know-how.
And so actually type of constructing on the shoulders of giants in, in that respect. You know, how, how are of us getting excessive precision as we speak and type of, you understand, evolving that to kinda the subsequent, the subsequent type of, you understand, what would possibly the subsequent form of, house infrastructure appear to be to, to make use of these strategies and type of make them even higher for people.
And so, you understand, whenever you take a look at the type of errors that stack up in GPS, you’ve bought. The ambiance is an enormous one, you understand, as these alerts refract via the totally different layers of the ambiance, significantly the ionosphere and troposphere, you understand, that that’s a, an error that form of manifests itself on the person degree, but additionally simply the orbit and clock data coming from the satellite tv for pc, as a result of finally you’re triangulating your place from, you understand, just a few totally different factors in house.
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 it’s important to work out a option to get, you understand, centimeter degree, you understand, orbital data of the GPS satellite tv for pc, so that you could in flip form of get your place to the form of centimeter degree as nicely.
And so how do you try this with form of, you understand, as we take into consideration this sort of evolving from, you understand, the type of, the strategies which have been used previously to, you understand, what could be potential, sooner or later? Well, it seems that one of many massive type of inputs to that system, In phrases of how shortly you will get from type of meter degree place all the way down to type of the centimeter degree is how shortly the satellites transfer overhead.
And it seems that should you make it such that the satellites transfer overhead in a short time, there’s simply much more data in that form of very fast go than you may have from these additional satellites, which historically are type of medium earth orbit to assist that convergence get you from type of a tens of minutes type of place to a minute or much less type of place. And, and naturally there are strategies which might be making that at all times higher on a regular basis from a medium earth orbit perspective. You know, whenever you’re utilizing type of the normal GSS satellites to, to get to that top precision, there are strategies evolving to, to get there sooner and sooner.
But you probably have that very quick form of movement throughout the sky, it simply makes these strategies even higher than that they’d be in any other case. And in order that’s, that’s, that’s an instance of the type of factor you are able to do from a, you understand, business house phase perspective to, to only form of carry extra functionality to, to of us on the bottom.
lilly: And so you probably have, should you get higher efficiency from having transferring 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 whole satellites do you suppose is gonna be the correct amount?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a extremely good query.
What it comes all the way down to is, you understand, the extra satellites, the higher , that’s type of the easy query, the easy reply there, however mm-hmm, actually we’re, you understand, actually leveraging an identical method that’s been used from, from GPS, which is called 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 form of an uncertainty there’s that the way in which 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 pace of sunshine is, is the vary to the satellite tv for pc. So, should you try this to a number of satellites, now you’ve calculated one thing that appears like a variety to you as a result of it’s, you understand, that, that point of flight to a handful of satellites, you’d consider, you understand, in 3d house, you want, you may have three satellites, three unknown, you understand, XYZ place.
You know, what’s the, what’s that fourth unknown, you understand, why do you may have 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 understand, no matter time your cellphone says, however you understand, 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? Well, 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 type of nanosecond of, of time information, and it’s very onerous to, to take care of nanosecond form of timing in your cellphone.
Your time, time in your cellphone is extra on the type of microsecond degree. Most of the time, that’s type of the place it must be to, to do its job, which is type of telecommunications and all these things. But should you’re speaking about doing precision ranging. You actually need that type of nanosecond type of functionality.
And so fairly than, you understand, having to carry an atomic clock with you on a regular basis to form of hold your time at that form of, you understand, very excessive, exact degree, you simply remedy for it as a substitute. So you add a fourth satellite tv for pc and now, you understand, you get the three dimensions and that point dimension to, to get your place form of all the way down to, you understand, our expertise as we speak is extra type of at that meter degree, however you understand, that form of handful of nanosecond type of uncertainty type of level. And so, you understand, going, in order that type of minimal quantity you want to get some type of place data is, is 4. It does assume you don’t have any different [00:10:00] sensors or, or nothing else like that.
So should you simply type of solely have your type of GPS receiver and nothing else 4 satellites is type of the naked quantity you want to, to get that first place. so you understand, what number of extra do you want to do the job? Well, nicely, you need extra than simply 4 to type of be sturdy to that. And, and the reason being, is you begin form of transferring round on the planet.
You, chances are you’ll not at all times have international view should you type of have, you’re assuming you may 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 understand, 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 way in which, timber being in the way in which. you understand, additionally simply, typically it’s, you understand, you’re gonna have simply one thing, that’s gonna offer you larger precision you probably have much more satellites in view, trigger you may have extra measurements obtainable to you and.
The the proper of quantity that almost all, I suppose I’ll say GNSS techniques have come to as we speak is extra at that type of 10 or 12 variety of satellites in view. And that’s what GPS has as we speak. That’s what the European Galileo system has as we speak. And so type of in addition to the, the Russian, sorry, the Russian GLONASS, and Chinese Beidou techniques are, are type of in that comparable variety of satellites.
And so. Tenish or so satellite tv for pc is about the place you need be type of at minimal and the extra satellites it’s important to 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 gadget directly, I assume they don’t have protection of all over the place suddenly for the complete constructed out constellation.
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a fantastic query. And so when, whenever you’re speaking about type 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 objective. So that’s about what number of satellites that whenever you deploy form of on the excessive orbit that you just want. We’re focusing on a decrease orbit than that as we speak, which is extra type of within the thousand kilometer vary..
So, so being that 20 instances nearer to earth, it seems that satellite tv for pc footprint simply shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. Cause 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 focusing on a few 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 observe of all that synchronization with doing form of a two-way ranging, the place your gadget is the one pinging?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a fantastic query. And, and this was one of many unique trades that was completed when of us have been growing GPS. And so some individuals smarter than me had, had put a variety of thought into, you understand, why you would possibly. Do this sort of system over say this sort of two-way time switch system.
Yeah. And a few of the benefits there, the principle one is de facto that in case your gadget 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 a much bigger energy draw in your gadget as a result of your gadget is having to type 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 of us which might be utilizing it, perhaps only some hundred or just a few thousand individuals directly can use it, which is, it finally ends up being type of a limiter on the variety of of us who can truly use that system.
Whereas should you use this sort of a method time switch system, the place though you do want form of an additional satellite tv for pc in view to unravel the issue. You can in concept form of, you understand, assist an infinite variety of customers. And so, which is the case of GPS as we speak, the place we see it supporting, you understand, billions of customers and you may, you understand, add as many gadgets as you need with out having that constraint.
So that, that that’s the large one.
lilly: Yeah, that is sensible. So if you’re at this decrease orbit and GPS satellites, The conventional authorities funded ones nonetheless exist above you. Can you utilize them to higher observe your satellites?
Tyler: Yeah. completely. And that turns into one of many inputs, to the system, for certain.
Because, and people have completed 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 assist purposes in decrease orbit. So you may consider earth imagery, the worldwide house station, all these varieties of oldsters are, are utilizing that. That being stated, we’re designing the system to be GPS impartial.
Just as a result of there’s a variety of curiosity from that from of us to have that functionality, you’re not essentially absolutely depending on, you understand, this different system that you just’re augmenting having some skill to form 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 person, like for the common individual with a cellphone, will the GPS receiver that I have already got on my cellphone 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 seemingly must be adjustments to, to the gadget in your cellphone as we speak, however we see that as a part of the form of pure evolution of how the GNSS chip units are evolving and. One of our, I suppose our normal 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 gadgets.
And, and so actually working to, you understand, make it, make that form of adoption as much like what say including a few of the new constellations which have come on-line over time is like, so, you understand, 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 kind. Continue 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 probably the subsequent technology of gadgets, as a result of significantly the type of ASIC gadgets that you just discover in your cellphone are, are so optimized for a selected software that becoming in new issues is, is an enormous problem. For a few of the extra, I’ll say, this, form of, excessive efficiency receivers which might be on the market as we speak which might be supporting a few of the excessive precision purposes on that facet of issues, that there’s some, risk of, having that be extra akin to a, a software program replace than,than form of a brand new system.
lilly: Interesting. I needed to pivot slightly 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 few of the similarities and variations by way of like the way you truly are fixing technical issues or the autonomy on the automobiles and the autonomy on the satellites or any of that type of factor?
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a fantastic query. So I’ll say half, perhaps I’ll, I’ll take. Give slightly little bit of historical past of form of the place a few of the, I suppose, form of my time in autonomous car form of led to this curiosity in form of pursuing this sort of satellite tv for pc navigation facet. so after I entered the type 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 form of a mixture of know-how scouting and basic 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 understand, what’s the state-of-the-art in, you understand, location and mapping applied sciences for. At first was, you understand, centered on type of these degree 4 degree 5 absolutely autonomous automobiles, however it was additionally form of supporting a few of the degree two degree three type of, driver help techniques as nicely.
And form of as soon as establishing that type of the place, what the state of they’re, the know-how was a part of that and form of, making an attempt to establish which of them have been a few of the market leaders was to determine, you understand, what are the necessities for these techniques finally, and which one is type of closest to the place the necessities finally must be.
So, you understand, what are the placement 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 of us have been like, oh, you understand, 10 centimeters appears to be the proper quantity, however it was typically type of unjustified. It was form of a ten centimeter appears to be a quantity the place the system fails the least.
So that looks like a superb place to start out. But we needed to type of take a step again and say, okay, essentially, you understand, what do these automobiles actually need by way of, you understand, a bounding field, should you wanna consider it that manner round a car to say, okay, that is the situational consciousness that I would like 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 purposes the place you want to know what highway you’re on. Some purposes you want to know what lane you’re in. And some purposes we actually have to know, you understand, to the centimeter, to have the ability to steer the automobile inside the lane and type of, you understand, get to the place you’re going.
And it turned out that, you understand, seeing type of the place, the place the necessities finally wanted to go and type of the place the state-of-the-art know-how was. There was no less than in my thoughts, very a lot a niche of, you understand, the place, the place issues, form of stood as we speak. And that led to the motivation, no less than from, from my facet to say, okay, nicely, what’s one thing we will do from the infrastructure facet to assist fill that hole?
Because one of many traits that was taking place within the autonomous car business, no less than within the time after I was, was there was. You know, the, the type of variety of sensors, the quantity of compute on the automobiles was making these automobiles in some sense, prohibitively costly. You know, you had a lot {hardware} on the automobiles, the automobiles have been type of these type of million greenback, very specialised type of automobiles.
It simply didn’t scale that nicely, whereas should you can offload a few of that to the infrastructure facet, to assist plenty of automobiles, You know, that appeared to make extra sense to me no less than. And, and so this went again to, okay, nicely, what, you understand, being type of somebody from an aerospace background, place, navigation background, considering, okay, nicely, what can we do from an area, infrastructure facet to assist this sort of place navigation and, and time downside.
Tyler: And so I believe by way of, you understand, the place these two issues are, are form of coming collectively is, is de facto seeing this from a okay, how can the, this infrastructure assist the wants of these techniques? There are, after all, 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 understand, you need these satellites whenever you’re deploying a big constellation to have, you understand, a excessive diploma of autonomy about themselves by way of fault monitoring by way of integrity monitoring.
Because finally you’re making an attempt to. You know, assist these, you understand, security, crucial techniques within the, within the case of automotive. And so having the, you understand, a variety of that type of fault checking, form of completed in an autonomous manner. So that be caught in a short time, it turns into crucial, however there’s additionally simply basic issues like, you understand, essentially a car when it’s doing its navigation and positioning is working [00:20:00] one thing like a Kalman filter or some one thing that’s combining these measurements.
Those sorts of issues are gonna be working on, on the satellites for orbit dedication. So it’s a special context of downside, however you understand, essentially an identical instrument in, ultimately of the day. And there’s additionally some components of, I believe, collaborative, you understand, infrastructure as nicely. So whenever you consider, you understand, self-driving automobile driving by itself with a complete bunch of sensors on it, nicely, that’s.
You’re type of simply making an attempt to exchange one human in a automobile. Maybe that’s not the easiest way to do it. Maybe there’s some benefits to having automobiles work collectively in a collaborative manner the place, you understand, a car that’s maybe down the highway from you may share sensor data or situational consciousness data so that you could set up that situational consciousness, you understand, on the metropolis degree the place you may see round corners, see aroundyou know, different obstacles you can’t see to type of get to the purpose the place you’re driving as safely, as you understand, all of the people mixed on the highway, fairly than type 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 manner into the, the house type of the house and type of floor segments that assist these type of house techniques going ahead.
Y know, how can these techniques work collectively to seek out faults in one another the place you understand, these, these sorts of concepts that I believe are, are attention-grabbing as nicely.
lilly: Yeah. that’s a extremely good level. And I’m slightly in listening to extra about this concept of getting the satellites collaborate and form of what are probably the most technically difficult or technically promising components of that.
Tyler: Yeah, that’s a fantastic query as nicely. There’s, I’ll say there’s quite a bit taking place in, within the house business now, I believe even in comparison with, you understand, even 5 or 10 years in the past that they actually make a variety of this potential. And you understand, one of many massive ones is simply the dimensions of the constellations being deployed nowadays.
And I believe that that’s enabled by. A couple of issues just like the decrease price of entry to house, you understand, SpaceX is I believe one of many extra seen gamers there, however there are after all others and the opposite is simply, you understand, totally different satellite tv for pc manufacturing strategies. So constructing satellites extra such as you would construct a automobile on an meeting line fairly than type of these bespoke type of one satellite tv for pc’s in a room the place you may have a bunch of individuals type of placing stuff on it.
It’s a reasonably, it’s only a totally different mannequin of, of assembling this stuff. And. When we take a look at the sorts of applied sciences that I believe are, are form of coming into that form of satellite tv for pc realm which might be perhaps even borrowed from locations like automotive, the place, you understand, particularly whenever you’re speaking about meeting and, and testing, you understand, making one thing that’s, you understand, very sturdy in, in type of excessive volumes that.
Sort of brings this stuff collectively. I believe that, that that’s no less than one instance of, you understand, I believe the place these two industries can study from one another, I suppose. Uh, okay. So I believe so far as, you understand, autonomy on the satellites and the power to form of collaborate with one another, I believe one of many massive, the, one of many massive elements of that’s the skill for the satellites to only speak to one another, to start with. And so the power to form of go data.
Between satellites is, is I believe a, an enormous milestone form of as a part of that. And I believe one of many enabling applied sciences there that we’re, that we’ve seen form of come to mild is the, this skill of type of having inter satellite tv for pc communication hyperlinks between these satellites. And there’s been a variety of, I believe development of in each optical and radio, type of,you understand, intersatellite hyperlinks between that to go that data round.
And I believe that, that, I imply step one to collaboration as it’s an automotive as nicely, it’s simply establishing I believe that that’s commonplace and in addition the form of skill for this stuff to go data between one another. I believe there’s definitely been challenges in automotive on that facet with, with establishing requirements, with issues like vehicle-to-things, so V2 V to X, so car -to-stuff, or different car type of communication hyperlinks and establishing simply, you understand, what’s the spectrum that we shared? What is the protocols for these type of communications? And I believe it’s, it’s one factor to do it in a type of. You know, if one say automotive OEM decides to do it a sure manner they usually can try this between all their automobiles.
It’s one other to do it form of throughout automobiles of all totally different producers, form of in a standardized manner. And so I believe that that’s that’s one of many challenges is simply form of establishing, establishing form of the know-how and the type of requirements for that communication throughout, throughout satellites.
And after all, as we take into consideration deploying our system, we predict largely of form of communication between the satellites that now we have. But it’s attention-grabbing to consider, you understand, potential, you understand, cross form of, communication between different platforms as nicely.
lilly: Yeah. And do you propose 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 part proper now the place now we have 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 understand, inter satellite tv for pc hyperlink, which we’re exploring between this, our form of second launch that’s coming, subsequent 12 months.
And so. That is one thing that we’re exploring as a part of the long run deployment of the system, however the form of earlier iterations could, it will not be 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 perhaps not essentially one thing that’s essentially crucial to the system working.
lilly: Well, congratulations in your first launch and your upcoming second launch. I needed to pivot slightly bit extra truly, 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 extremely nice surroundings for me. It was one which centered, you understand, very a lot on that type of place navigation downside, but additionally one which centered slightly bit on, you understand, operational tasks for the FAA, in addition to we have been working with the federal aviation administration.
You know, assist these type of security, crucial techniques, you understand, plane utilizing GPS to land plane utilizing GPS in flight. so, you understand, fascinated by issues about, you understand, 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 surroundings for me, since you might see the work that you just’re doing instantly impacting that business. In some variety of years, it wasn’t that the grad college students have been engaged on issues, you understand, instantly type of in operation, however that it wasn’t too far-off from type of essentially seeing the lifetime of operation.
So I believe from a, you understand, how that led into type of the, the work that I used to be doing, type of within the autonomous car world. I believe that fascinated by the issue of, you understand, what are the type of ranges of situational consciousness that automobiles want by way of place navigation and time, you understand, what’s the degree of type of security and integrity that these techniques want?
Really utilizing that type of framework in a structured option to develop, you understand, what would possibly that framework appear to be in automotive, which was type of new to that concept of getting place and data as a part of that type of security, crucial enter to, you understand, steering the car and, you understand, type of retaining the human partially within the loop or completely within the loop, that are type of issues that aviation had form of labored via as a result of there are occasions the place the plane will fly itself.
There are instances the place the plane type of has the pilot within the. So it’s, you understand, fascinated by these sorts of issues in that framework. And I believe that that, that type of facet of issues instantly led to the work that we did in form of establishing, you understand, what could be the framework and necessities for these automobiles going ahead.
You know, fascinated by this in type of a civil aviation method, as a result of. And whenever you evaluate the numbers, you understand, civil aviation actually has the very best observe document you can give you by way of security and, you understand, per miles traveled with people and type of all these by all metrics. It’s it’s manner 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 nicely that people have quite a bit much less people in vehicles have quite a bit much less coaching than people in plane who’re working these issues.
And so it’s a. That that’s simply essentially a type of variations. And, and, and a part of that’s, is that if one thing goes flawed in an plane, such as you higher know what to do shortly, whereas one thing goes flawed in a automobile, you may pull off to the facet of the highway. And so, and so simply essentially some, some variations there, however I believe that that’s, that’s one of many massive ones I believe was, you understand, bringing a few of that framework from, you understand, aviation to automotive and fascinated by these, these issues in that manner.
And the opposite facet of that was the type of. You know, the type of business GPS and GNSS facet of that. So, you understand, transitioning from, you understand, You know, the federal government system that helps, you understand, all these billions of gadgets and created all this sort of, you understand, financial improvement and type of all these developments, and fascinated by how which may evolve type of within the so-called type of new house age, which is the age whenever you consider issues like SpaceX and, you understand, these type of gamers which have actually challenged the form of so-called conventional aerospace, which is, extra the type of, you understand, whenever you consider that as type of these longer timelines, very threat adversarial type of gamers. And, and, you understand, fascinated by how, how would possibly a few of these type of new strategies or new approaches in house, fascinated by these type 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 type of Starlink and OneWeb and you understand, all these type of gamers, which appeared type of like science fiction on the time, this was type of within the 2015 type of period earlier than a variety of these things launched something or had been deployed.
These have been all type of concepts on. you understand, a few of that work was form of the basic, okay, nicely, what would possibly you be capable of do with one thing like this? If, if these type of satellites truly come to exist, if the launch prices truly come down, you understand, what could be some functionality that you might leverage from that type of house infrastructure?
So should you might deploy one thing like that for place navigation and time, you understand, what would possibly that appear to be? What would possibly the capabilities be? But I believe at that time it was type of a okay, nicely that, that’s an attention-grabbing downside, however, It was in some sense, missing motivation. It was form of a, okay, nicely, who needs this?
You know, what do we want this for? GPS works rather well. Every, I believe on the time it was like, nicely, we’ve completed it. You 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 form of these dots linked at no less than on my facet to, to see, okay, nicely perhaps this sort of method might assist this different facet as nicely.
So in some sense, you understand, there’s, I suppose studying from each side and type of linked 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 house?
Like, do you may have any actual opponents proper now?
Tyler: Oh, there, certain. There’s undoubtedly of us on the market. So we’re not the one ones doing this. I believe that they’re, I gained’t title all of them by title. Cause I, I can’t communicate to everybody’s plans on the market, however I can communicate to a, just a few normal traits that, that we’ve seen.
And one is that, you understand, the, the parents on the market who’re constructing these type of mega constellations for communication functions. So, you understand, the web from the sky type of of us are undoubtedly excited about offering one thing. I believe that it, it appears to be like very totally different from, from what we’re working in direction of, which is extra of a , you understand, particular excessive efficiency, you understand, GNSS, P and T type of service, which appears to be like quite a bit like what you have already got in your cellphone by way of chip set, by way of these sorts of, you understand, antenna, these varieties of things. When you take a look at a few of the, you understand, the communication, techniques, you understand, actually they’re a very totally different frequency bands.
Their person terminals are often fairly massive as a result of we want a fairly large antenna to form of, full the hyperlink funds to get the type of information charges that they’re speaking about. It, it they’re, they’re definitely fascinated by it, however I believe that, you understand, their major objective is de facto, you understand, communication, however it’s form of a, oh, we will, you understand, now we have this method, we will in all probability assist some type of navigation as nicely.
At least that’s what we’ve seen up to now. So I believe that that’s, that’s one of many opponents on the market. In phrases of others, we’ve seen some attention-grabbing stuff occurring from truly one of many main, automotive OEMs on the market, which is a Chinese firm known as Geely. They’re truly constructing and deploying their very own constellation, which is de facto to assist autonomous automotive actions. It’s, you understand, communication navigation type of multi function package deal. And in order that’s, you understand, seems to be, you understand, 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 providers on the market as we speak, for instance, from Iridium, which is offering some P and T providers as we speak.
And there are different satellite tv for pc providers offering extra correction providers. So issues which might be correcting, offering extra data to form of praise the GPS sign, however not a further, you understand, form of ranging or GPS sign itself. So 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 form of suggest some comparable issues as nicely. So I believe we’re, it seems to be that, issues are heading on this course, I suppose.
lilly: Well, yeah, it’s undoubtedly an thrilling house to be in an thrilling time.
And. A extremely attention-grabbing concept. Thank you a lot for talking with me.
Tyler: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you once more for, for the invitation to talk right here as we speak. And, yeah, this was nice dialogue.
transcript
tags: Business, c-Space, cx-Space, PNT, podcast, Robotics know-how, house, startup
Lilly Clark