Galileo project - hot news

Galileo project

Jean-Charles Bazin

CC500-GroupA - If you ask anyone the name of a positioning system by satellite, they will probably answer nothing but GPS. But how many people know that the USA have a complete control on the GPS signal? Concretely U.S. authorities have the right to limit the localization accuracy, decrease the signal strength and even shut down the access. To overcome this important limitation, European Union has decided to develop its own positioning system by satellite which is referred as Galileo. In this paper, the concept of localization by satellite is introduced first. Then the reasons leading to the development of a European GPS are explained and finally, the economic and political issues are presented, which will permit to explain how much important the coming 7^th of June is.

Constellation of GPS satellites used for positioning

Positioning by satellite

Being able to know his position at anytime has been a dream since the humanity exists. Thanks to personal GPS receiver, this dream has become true for only 100 dollars. The term GPS refers to an amazing system composed of about 30 satellites orbiting at 20 000km and complex monitoring stations. The basic idea of positioning by satellite is actually very simple: a GPS receiver can calculate its position by measuring its distance with respect to three or more satellites. Indeed by measuring the time delay between the transmission and reception, and as the signal speed is known, the device can compute its distance to the satellite. Doing so for at least three satellites, the GPS receiver can estimate its position by simple trilateration. Combining this basic method with advanced technology, an accuracy of 5 meters can be obtained.

A personal GPS receiver from Magellan society

Galileo - the European GPS

Currently, two localization systems by satellite exist: the American GPS and the Russian GLONASS. Due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, GLONASS has not been correctly maintained so that only eight satellites were in operation in 2002 and therefore GPS is the most widely used system. However, less than two weeks ago, Vladimir Putin has decided to open full signal access to civilians and restore the entire satellite constellation within 5 years. Simultaneously, European Union is developing its own positioning system by satellite. Indeed, as explained in the introduction, the US ministry of defense can limit the GPS localization accuracy, decrease the signal strength and even shut down the access, at any time without informing users in advance. Thus in 2002, EU has officially signed Galileo project funding and planned a civilian use as soon as in 2010.

Political and economical issues of the Galileo project

The main reason why EU decided to develop its own positioning system was to be independent from the American ministry of Defense. Indeed how any military equipment from any European countries could be under the indirect control of the US government? However, the huge amount of money involved in Galileo project has made some interest conflict emerged between countries. For examples, large countries wanted its national organization be in charge of manufacturing the satellites: Thales or Alcatel for France, Aliena for Italia, SSTL for UK, Deutsche Telekom for Germany, etc... Concerning smaller countries like Poland, Austria or Greece, they are arguing to obtain the tracking stations inside their national territory. Moreover, an important part of the project budget came from private funds. However, regarding the difficulty of the actual situation, some institutions have cancelled or decreased their financial propositions so that the project is now under-funded. Therefore this complex situation has led to important tensions and as a consequence, Galileo project is two years late with respect to the initial development plane. In order to solve these political and economical problems, a crucial meeting will be held on the 7^th of June. For example, an important point is that Galileo became a project fully supported by public, i.e. private funds are not allowed. However such a decision can be taken only if the 27 members of the European Union vote it at unanimity. If concrete solutions are not found during this conference, it will have strong consequences for the future development of the European GPS, not only for European countries but also the nations that participate to the project, such as China, India and South Korea.

References:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_positioning_system

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_constellation

TGV

TGV

Jean-Charles Bazin

CC500-GroupA – What does TGV stand for? Whereas this acronym is completely unknown for most of people, TGV is simply trying to... conquer the world! TGV derives from the French expression “Train a Grande Vitesse” which means high-speed train. Last month, this “bullet train” has largely overcome the speed record on railroads which is a good opportunity to look back on this amazing scientific project. First, historical information will be introduced. Then, current position of TGV will be analyzed. Finally, the future of TGV in the world will be presented.

Historical information

In sixties, less and less people used to take train in France. SNCF, the national enterprise that owns almost all of France's railway system, has taken a risky gamble: if trains go faster, more people will choose train for traveling. At this time, a single high speed train existed in the world: the Japanese Shinkansen. Therefore, French government has put a lot of effort in research to develop a national high speed train: the “train a grande vitesse” TGV was born. The first TGV prototype was powered by gas turbine and reached a top speed of 318 km/h in 1975. However due to the oil crisis of 1973, gas turbines were not economically viable and politics drastically decided to make TGV a full electric wheeled train by overhead electrified lines thanks to the many French nuclear power stations, which preserves the energetic independence of the country.

The French TGV is the fastest wheeled train in the world

Current Position

TGV has gathered an impressive list of world records. The most satisfying award for French government is that one month ago, TGV has established a new speed record on rails: 574.8 km/h. Therefore TGV is still the fastest wheeled train, far ahead from the wheeled Shinkansen that has simply reached 443 km/h. However one may notice that the magnetic levitation version of the Shinkansen had reached 581 km/h in 2003.

Another recent record has been established in May 2006 when TGV (in his Eurostar version) has run the longest non-stop journey in the world. The 1421 km separating Cannes from London have been traveled in only 7 hours 25 minutes. Note that this performance broke the previous record set by also a TGV travelling from two geographically opposite French cities: Calais at the top North near England and Marseille in South lying in the Mediterranean Sea (1067 km in 3hours 29 minutes).

Finally, TGV is the only train in the world that has recorded no single fatality for more than 30 years in operation.

Future plan

In 2006, French president Jacques Chirac has pledged that no SNCF train would be powered by fossil fuels by 20 years. Obviously, most of trains do not use fuels directly, so it means that electricity used by trains must be produced by other energy, especially nuclear power. Actually, current nuclear power stations already generate most of electricity used by SNCF trains.

TGV has an important role to play abroad to enhance its development. After 12 years of partnership with ALSTOM (the manufacturer of TGV), South Korea has operated its first high-speed journey in 2004. This step was very important for both nations: Korea for a more uniform development of the country (capital at the north, heavy industries at the south, etc...) and France for a living advertisement of is know-how and its expertise. Clearly, the next step is to commercialize TGV to China, and also to USA for their first high speed train.

The longest non-stop train journey in the world performed in May 2006 by TGV in Eurostar version transporting crew of Da Vinci Code from London to Cannes for the Cannes film festival

To conclude, the risky gamble taken by SNCF in early sixties has been a success: TGV has carried near two billion passengers. The economic policy of SNCF and ALSTOM is clear crystal: develop a perfect railroad system in France and present it as the best train in the world. That is why we can expect that SNCF will try its best to develop new systems to beat the Japanese Shinkansen. The remaining question is: how many years will be needed to reach the 7 km/h that separate TGV and Shinkansen?

DARPA urban challenge

Jean-Charles Bazin

CC500-GroupA - Who has never dreamt of having a car that could drive fully automatically? Making this dream come true is actually the goal of the amazing DARPA urban challenge. The international participants are asked for building an intelligent robot that can drive autonomously in a completely unknown environment by using cutting-edges technologies, such as robot vision, laser, GPS, artificial intelligence, etc... No later than at the end of this week, they have to submit a qualifying video proposal that clearly presents the navigating abilities of their robot. This crucial step is a fabulous opportunity to introduce the DARPA urban challenge in this hot news.

This presentation is divided into three main parts. First, I will explain what the DARPA challenge is and introduce the goal and results of the previous editions of DARPA competitions. Then the brand new ’07 urban challenge will be presented, and finally, the current status of one team (KAIST-Upenn) will be analyzed to show some key technologies involved in this worldwide competition.

First of all, the acronym DARPA stands for US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency whose aim is to develop future technology for military applications. In order to accelerate research and strengthen relationships with universities, DARPA has created the DARPA challenge. The first edition of DARPA challenge took place in 2004. The cars should travel more than 220 km in the Mojave Desert (USA) without any human interventions. Due to the unbelievable difficulty of such a task, no team managed to complete the distance, and worst, the best team (CMU) has traveled only 12 km. After one year of intensive work, no less than four teams have succeeded in driving the 200 km which was far from being expected. The best car, by Stanford, has completed the distance in only seven hours and won the $1 million first prize.

A brand new edition of DARPA challenge is scheduled for November 2007. Whereas ’04 and ’05 competitions took place in the desert, ’07 edition will be held in urban environment. Therefore, the difficulty is still much higher. Indeed, the cars have to not only take other moving vehicles into account but also obey all traffic regulations. For example, if a car detects an obstacle, it has to modify its trajectory to avoid the collision. A very complex situation occurs when a car arrives at a crossroad and has to check whether no other car is coming before crossing. In regards to the complexity of this edition, the first prize has been increased to $2 million dollars.

Framework of the technologies involved in the DARPA urban challenge: robust GPS communication, robust digital map localization, car and moving object detection

In order to introduce some key technologies involved in the urban challenge, this part focuses on the current status of the Ben Franklin team. This team is the result of an intensive collaboration between GRASP lab at the university of Pennsylvania and RCV lab at KAIST. The project has been divided into two parts. The Korean group is focused on the sensors to gather information from the environment. For example, the goal is to automatically detect road lane markings, moving cars, obstacles and use GPS data, and finally match the results with digital map. These tasks are mainly based on computer vision and artificial intelligence and are very complex. Indeed, for instance, how a machine can detect marking lanes automatically with a 100% accuracy even in presence of shadows, rainy or sunny weather or when lanes are of different colors. Moreover some roads will not have lane marking so the car also has to detect this situation. The US group is working on the car dynamic, that is to say how to control the car, drive it faster or slower, change the direction, etc... It is mainly based on information provided by the Korean team and a small navigation error can lead to a car crash and have dramatic consequences for the expensive embedded equipments. .

To conclude, DARPA challenges have encouraged researchers all over the world to develop new technologies and solve robotic problems that seemed to be impossible even three or four years ago. I am convinced that ’07 edition will bring amazing systems that will set back robotic limits still further.

References:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_challenge

- http://www.benfranklinracingteam.org/