Maxar Intelligence has announced the release of Raptor software for autonomous systems, which it claims is the first technology that allows drones to navigate without GPS.
Maxar Intelligence has announced the release of Raptor software for autonomous systems, which it claims is the first technology that allows drones to navigate without GPS.
The company says that Raptor is a «powerful software package» that allows autonomous drones to navigate and obtain precise coordinates in the absence of GPS.
«This technology transforms the resilience and reliability of unmanned systems, enabling autonomy across military, humanitarian, and commercial operations for customers around the world», — Maxar Intelligence said.
The developers assure that Raptor can be easily integrated into any UAV. The technology uses only the drone’s camera and more than 90 million square kilometers of global 3D terrain data from Maxar, which helps the platform navigate and obtains precise terrain coordinates in real time without GPS. Raptor can also operate at night and in low terrain conditions (at an altitude of up to 120 m).
«By eliminating the reliance on GPS, Raptor software unlocks the full potential of autonomous systems — from enabling truly collaborative, multidiscipline operations across the digital battlefield to large-scale delivery systems in urban areas where knowing the precise coordinates of a drop-off location is critical to getting the job done», — said Peter Wilczynski, director of product at Maxar Intelligence.
The Raptor software package includes:
Maxar Intelligence notes that a dedicated downward-facing camera takes up «valuable payload space» and increases the platform’s weight and power consumption. Therefore, the advantage of the Raptor is that the technology works with existing UAV optics, including forward- and side-view cameras.
Last fall, many posts appeared in the Ukrainian segments of popular social networks from users saying that their alarm clocks went off at an untimely time due to automatic time change. They also indicated a change in geolocation, for example from Kyiv to Kursk, or the territory of Belarus.
Such anomalies are observed during air alert, when electronic warfare systems are activated, trying to confuse Iranian-Russian Shahed drones and send them back to Russian territory. Therefore, in the capital of Ukraine, GPS can sometimes show the user a location in the Bryansk or Kursk regions.
When GPS spoofing is used, real signals from satellites are replaced with false ones. Therefore, the enemy drone continues to believe that it is flying the correct route, but in fact its real position differs from the coordinates it receives.
«Spoofing can be used in combat, but in certain areas on our territory,» Vladyslav Zhuravel, a veteran, military expert, and Project Manager at Razom Heroes, told dev.ua.
Recall that earlier, the aerospace company Maxar restored free access to satellite imagery for Ukraine as part of the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery (GEGD) program from the US government.
