Novariant, Inc. (Integrinautics)

Novariant is the premier industrial solutions provider for precision positioning, intelligent control systems, and positioning infrastructures. Novariant technology provides precision location and machine control solutions in applications that require a high level of accuracy, consistency, and availability. Their machine control solutions use Real-time Kinematic (RTK) Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and other patented technologies to automatically steer equipment, map terrain, and land aircraft.

Transcript

00:00:00 around the world many people use GPS or global positioning technology to get from point to point more easily and quickly including many who are driving farm and mining equipment thanks to a group of Stanford University and NASA researchers in 1984 the team worked together on NASA's gravity Pro V mission the mission was designed to test a couple of Einstein's relativity

00:00:26 predictions if you put something in space and put it in orbit around the Earth Earth you could make the gyroscope drag free gravity free and take away all the forces affecting that gyroscope and then just make these measurements of the theory of relativity for the mission's experiments the Stanford group developed new high performance attitude determining Hardware that relied on GPS

00:00:49 signals the hardware determined the spacecraft's precise orbit location and attitude while working with NASA the University team thought their technology probably would have other flight applications and tested it on a small passenger plane the Stanford researchers formed a company in Terron autic now known as novariant Incorporated and partnered with engineers at NASA's

00:01:15 Langley Research Center and the Federal Aviation Administration to develop one of those applications through a small business technology transfer or sttr contract from Langley The Firm built an Integrity Beacon Landing system system capable of Landing aircraft if you could use carrier phase to measure small differences between the wings of an airplane well what if you took an

00:01:38 antenna on the ground somewhere Could you actually measure the position of that airplane as it were say coming in for a landing by using the new system novariant was able to conduct automatic Landings with a Boeing 737 the Integrity Beacon Landing system had centimeter accurate realtime kinematic or rtk GPS technology as well as pseudolite infrastructure a first for

00:02:05 Aviation the pseudo lights acting as GPS transmitters on the ground built-in position redundancy for the plane because of the successful 737 Landings and some other Stanford research novariant believed the system could provide Precision control of other vehicles including farm equipment by tweaking the original technology novariant created the new technology

00:02:31 they actually tested in Farmers Fields before we knew it the farm owner would be coming up to the Tractor they'd see what we were doing and would start asking a lot of questions and usually that conversation would end with the farmer breaking out his checkbook and saying I've got to have that thing the company made their original prototype much smaller and simpler to use and in

00:02:50 2000 they released rtk Auto steer through its new autofarm division today Farmers around the world are using Auto steer to get sub inch accurate steerings from their equipment when they're preparing Fields laying beds planting and tilling another application also spun out of the original NASA sttr work novariant has commercialized the plyt now called terites for open pit mining

00:03:17 applications many of these mines are using GPS today now the problem is as you dig a big hole in the ground the walls of the mine will block the GPS signals in other words you don't have a clear view of the sky if you're in the bottom of an open pit so what we do is we provide these terites the terites go around the rim of the mine and they provide extra signals into the mine so

00:03:38 that the vehicles can perform their position fixes and do their job 24 hours a day 7 days a week in the future maybe Auto steer will be steering a NASA vehicle in space [Music]