Maritime Navigation Research in GPS-Denied Environments

Psionic provides accurate navigation which requires no external signal inputs or sensors via a comprehensive, available, and demonstrated lidar technology designated SurePath™, which is Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 7. SurePath is a velocity-centric Inertial Navigation System (INS) which determines position by accurately measuring vehicle velocity vectors which are utilized by Psionic’s Navigation Filter (PNF) to supplement an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). SurePath is based upon the Navigational Doppler Lidar (NDL) which Psionic exclusively licenses from NASA for commercialization opportunities. NASA invested over a decade of research and development to produce this NDL technology for autonomous lunar landing and space exploration.  This SBIR Phase II focuses on continued research and investigations for transitioning SurePath from terrain based navigation to aerial and maritime navigation. SurePath successfully demonstrated terrain based navigation in numerous GPS-Denied environments and documented results which verify the technology’s capabilities and accuracy. However, water demonstrates unique reflectivity properties which require operational and SurePath system modifications. For example, maritime SurePath navigation is a statistical challenge which requires experimental flights to collect data, analyze the sampling rates, determine the number of sensors required, location of sensors on the aircraft, etc. During May 2024, Psionic completed the Phase I SBIR which was a feasibility experiment to quantify the likelihood of lidar returns from the ocean’s surface. The Psionic lidar system captured a high number of measurements as it flew over various maritime conditions ranging from shallow coastal areas to open ocean environments.  And signal strength was excellent. The lidar transmitted and captured ocean surface returns 30% of the time during the test flights or about 10 measurements per second.For this SBIR Phase II, Psionic proposes additional test flights, data acquisition, analysis and research plus SurePath engineering modifications to develop an aerial maritime SurePath for commercialization. Potential SBIR Phase II tasking candidates are summarized below.Monte Carlo simulation and empirical data evaluation to perform statistical analyses to optimize the Psionic Navigational Filter for aerial maritime navigation.Gather data with two lidar systems simultaneously. Place the lidar sensors in different aircraft location and post process the data to synchronize it and assess the results for various aircraft sensor locations.Evaluate alternate lidar sensor configurations to identify the optimum configuration for maritime navigation.Increase the lidar sampling rate to increase the number of useful velocity measurements.