INDUSTRY

Trimble Adds Kenai Tablet to its Portfolio

Trimble has introduced the Kenai™ rugged tablet computer, an all-in-one computing solution that can transport a user’s office to the field, forest, desert, manufacturing floor or boardroom. Trimble brings durability, reliability and feature-rich design to the Kenai tablet’s versatile configuration making it a powerful mobile computing solution for transportation, public safety, field service, forestry, utilities, mapping, insurance and other outdoor or servicerelated applications. The Kenai tablet features a 10.1 inch capacitive multi-touch screen with WUXGA display technology to provide superior readability in virtually any extreme environment such as heavy rain or the brightest outdoor conditions without compromising performance or efficiencies. www.trimble.com/mobile

Leica Geosystems buys Indonesian distribution company

Leica Geosystems has purchase of assets from PT Almega Geosystems, the company which has been representing Leica in Indonesia for the past 15 years. The new company has been rebranded as PT Leica Geosystems Indonesia, and will strengthen the presence of Leica Geosystems in the Asia Pacific region. Located in northeast Jakarta, the new company will provide the Indonesian market with measurement technology solutions. http://news.xinhuanet.com

Northrop will bid if Pentagon opens GPS satellite tender

Northrop Grumman Corp said it would bid if the U.S. Air Force opens a fresh competition for next-generation GPS satellites next year, as expected, and perhaps later on a new ground control system.

Tom Vice, president of Northrop’s Aerospace Systems division, said he expects the Air Force to launch a competition for new GPS satellites, and Northrop was ready to participate. It already builds satellites for the U.S. intelligence community and is building the powerful new James Webb telescope for NASA.

Air Force officials have said they expect to start early work in 2016 on a competition for a next batch of GPS satellites, followed by a formal request for proposals in 2018.

Lockheed Martin Corp is under contract to build the first eight GPS III satellites, and the Air Force has options for two more. http://news.yahoo.com/

Septentrio PolaRx5 – receiver

Septentrio has launched a GNSS receiver for precise scientific and geodetic applications: the PolaRx5. It supports applications for the Earth science community, offering a range of advanced features which enable maximum accuracy and functionality. It offers 544 hardware channels for robust and high-quality GNSS tracking. The receiver supports all major satellite signals including QZSS and IRSS.

Northrop Grumman to replace U.S. Navy’s INS

The U.S. Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to replace the inertial navigation system used on most of the Navy’s combat and support ships.

The contract is valued at $19.8 million with a total potential value of $47.8 million over five years if all options are exercised. The inertial navigation system, also known as INS-R, supports the new Navy Assured Positioning Navigation and Timing architecture currently in development by the Navy. The new system will increase navigation accuracy. http://www.upi.com/

Fugro awarded PGS positioning contract

Fugro has been awarded a three-year contract by PGS for the provision of precise satellite positioning systems for its entire seismic vessel fleet.

Fugro, a provider of precise satellite positioning to the offshore oil and gas industry, will supply PGS vessels with a number of completely independent GNSS. These systems include Fugro’s recently launched Starfix.G4 – the first commercial GNSS service to utilize all available GNSS systems, giving sub-decimeter accuracy – and Starfix.G2+, a global service offering centimeter accuracy in both position and height. http://www.oedigital.com

New Beijing Airport Extends Trimble Integrated Construction Contract

Trimble has announced that it has received a contract extension to use the company’s technology from Trimble to integrate construction and operations for the high-profile Beijing New Airport Project, expected to be the world’s largest when completed at an estimated cost of $13.1 billion.

Trimble won the initial bid to supply the project with a construction information management system. Based on the success of the solution to date, the contract has been extended to include additional machine control systems for soil stabilization.

Beijing’s new airport, scheduled to open in late 2018, is projected to handle approximately 72 million travelers, 2 million tons of shipping and 620,000 flights by the year 2025.

KCS Releases Low-Cost Track/ Trace GNSS+ Module

KCS BV has extended its TraceME product line with a low-budget track-and-trace module based on the company’s LoRa technology. The TM-900/N1C1 module is the latest development in KCS’s TraceME GPS track-and-trace product line. The product is targeted for tracking and tracing a variety of objects, including livestock, and for personal use. The full version module comes equipped with various technologies for to achieve traceability (e.g., GPS/GLONASS, LoRa, Bluetooth LE, ANT/ANT+, and proprietary RF), which can all be combined depending on the application. Compared to traditional track-and-trace modules, the TM-900/N1C1 omits GPRS/ SMS, thereby eliminating traditional national telecom operational costs.

Esri’s ArcGIS to Support SAP HANA®

SAP SE recently announced that through a global technology partnership, Esri will commercially support ArcGIS using SAP HANA® as an enterprise geodatabase. This release of ArcGIS, planned for 2016, expands the existing native integration with SAP HANA and allow customers to run all their SAP® Business Suite and ArcGIS applications within an architecture based on SAP HANA. The companies will further enhance the SAP HANA platform by more deeply integrating advanced ArcGIS geospatial capabilities and content across SAP’s broader application portfolio. The collaboration between SAP and Esri is expected to harness the power of combining two marketleading platforms, providing the ability to run both GIS workloads and advanced spatial analytics on a single SAP HANA geodatabase. SAP and Esri have been technology partners for a number of years, providing integration of their respective platforms, SAP HANA and Esri ArcGIS.

DAT/EM Systems International Releases 7.2

DAT/EM Systems International® released the 7.2 edition of DAT/EM software products including Summit Evolution™, LandScape™, Capture™, MapEditor™, Ortho+Mosaic™, Airfield3D™ and Contour Creator™. The advancements in the 7.2 DAT/EM Photogrammetric Suite represent the latest evolution in technology and are based on customer input and growth within the geospatial industry.

LightSquared settle GPS Spectrum Lawsuit

LightSquared and Deere & Co. have settled a long-running legal fight over whether the wireless venture’s GPS network interfered with global receivers made by the farm-equipment manufacturer.

In 2013, Phil Falcone ’s Harbinger Capital, the hedge fund which then controlled LightSquared, sued Deere and two other GPS companies—Garrmin Ltd. and Trimble Navigation Ltd. – along with industry groups in federal court claiming their equipment interfered with the LightSquared network.

Under its deal with Deere, LightSquared has agreed to forgo a portion of its spectrum nearest to the GPS signal and instead will use frequencies that are further away from the GPS signal. In return, Deere said it won’t object to LightSquared’s deployment of its wireless broadband network.

The settlement with Garmin, which comes on the heels of LightSquared’s recent settlements with Deere & Co. and Trimble Navigation Ltd., marks the end of a number of disputes between LightSquared and GPS equipment makers over the use of spectrum for ground-based wireless broadband services. The company last week also withdrew its lawsuit against the U.S. government for allowing GPS equipment makers to use spectrum owned by LightSquared. www.wsj.com/

Alternative GPS ground system by U.S. Air Force

The U.S. Air Force will continue work on an alternative ground control program and explore outside options to hedge against further cost spikes and delays on Raytheon Co’s troubled ground control system for next-generation GPS satellites, according to an Air Force document seen by Reuters.

A “deep dive” review led by the Pentagon’s chief arms buyer last week resulted in a further two-year delay in completion of the Raytheon program and potential cost increases. The delays and cost increases are the latest troubles facing a program slammed as “a disaster” by General John Hyten, commander of Air Force Space Command. Raytheon won a contract worth up to $1.5 billion in 2010 to develop the GPS Operational Control System, or OCX, to operate the next generation GPS 3 satellites being built by Lockheed Martin Corp . By December 2014, the program’s projected cost had soared to $3.6 billion, including inflation, due to increased cyber security requirements and poor contractor performance, according to Air Force and Pentagon officials. https://www.yahoo.com