The Trusted Transport Positioning System

The Local Positioning System (LPS) offers a groundbreaking alternative to GPS that has many advantages when compared to other commercial alternatives. By demonstrating the technology across multiple high-value transport use cases this project seeks to validate LPS in real-world scenarios and evaluate the viability of a new positioning technology that provides new and improved capabilities for much of the entire transport ecosystem.

The project will deploy and test the utility of this new positioning technology in four high-value transport use cases that focus on providing locational tracking for transport assets like normal and connected and automated vehicles where existing solutions do not (for example in underground tunnels where GPS does not work), and enabling downstream enhanced functionality – for example, location-verified infringement validation for enforcing scooter helmet wearing.

The testing and evaluation will be done with input from partners Toyota, QLD TMR and RACQ, who provide end-user insights into the transport assets being tracked. If successful, the project will substantially improve the technology readiness level of the LPS for the transport domain in particular, and provide a foundation for larger scale commercial investment, development and deployment.

More broadly, the project supports development of a sovereign Australian-made positioning capability with widespread utility both within and outside of the transport sector.

Participants

• iMOVE Australia
• Queensland University of Technology
  

Project background

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning services (e.g. GPS) are the default service used to provide positional estimation and tracking across a wide range of sectors including transport. But GNSS does not work well in a range of environments where transport sector assets – like scooters and vehicles (both normal and autonomous) – need to operate such as indoors, underground, in tunnels, and in areas with tall buildings which cause interference, known as the urban canyon effect.

An increasing concern, especially for Australia given its complete lack of a sovereign GNSS system, is our critical reliance on provision of this service by other countries. Another increasing concern is that GNSS can easily be jammed (blocked) or spoofed (not blocked but replaced with erroneous signals), as has been seen not just in but also in the region of conflicts, where transport-related assets like planes cannot rely on GNSS.

There is consequently a pressing demand for a viable positioning alternative to GNSS to enable both positional tracking of transport-related assets in areas where current GNSS does not function, as well as resilience against GNSS being unavailable, jammed or interfered with.

The LPS provides such an alternative positioning service, working in many areas that GNSS does not, and without the reliance on satellites that the entire GNSS system is built on. The transport sector is one of those most reliant on positional tracking, and LPS has great potential to address these opportunities and shortcomings of current positioning technologies.

This project will deploy and evaluate the viability of LPS across the most immediate opportunities in the transport sector, identified in conjunction with partner organisations.

Project objectives

• A deployable positioning LPS hardware kit that can be attached to scooter and on-road vehicle assets.
• A software backend and graphical user interface (GUI) visualisation that enables mapping of transport environments (e.g. roads, scooter environments) using LPS-equipped scooters and/or vehicles.
• A software backend and GUI visualisation that enables live position tracking for LPS-equipped scooters and vehicles when operating in mapped environments (on-road or off-road), that can be used by partner organisations.
• Detailed performance evaluation using standard positioning and localisation performance metrics of the performance of the LPS system across a range of GNSS-denied or degraded road environments (tunnels, inner cities) as well as off-road scooter environments.
• A demonstration of the use of positional tracking of a scooter to validate the detections provided by a camera-based helmet wearing enforcement system.

Please note …

This page will be a living record of this project. As it matures, hits milestones, etc., we’ll continue to add information, links, images, interviews and more. Watch this space!