Positioning, Navigation and Timing for Target Acquisition

To address the USSOCOM’s need for a non-GPS and optically agnostic solution to navigation and targeting, Intellisense Systems, Inc. (Intellisense) proposes to develop a new Celestial-Assured Navigation (CelNav) software system based on a novel integration of celestial navigation, information theory, and computer vision. CelNav uses a clock, deep learning, celestial charts, and celestial tracking software to estimate the global position of the user when the optics are pointed at the sky. Information from visual augmentation system (VAS) configurations and mapped astronomical formations are used as constraints to fit the user’s global position from a video sequence of sky and landscape images. Height above ellipsoid (HAE) estimates are retrieved from triangulation of local landscape features in conjunction with mapped average elevations at corresponding global positions. Specifically, the innovation in fusing mature celestial navigation techniques with deep learning, information theory, and celestial tracking will provide a failsafe to GPS and improve the accuracy of the user’s global position when complemented with other navigation software on the VAS through sensor fusion techniques. CelNav augments available positional estimates and offers an infrastructure-free alternative to satellite GPS when triangulation coordinates are unavailable or spoofed. CelNav will be designed with modular software, directly addressing SOCOM requirements that CelNav be optically agnostic and injectable into any VAS wherever possible. In Phase I, Intellisense will determine the factors needed to ensure CelNav can be ingested into VAS systems, consulting with Elbit Systems and Leonardo DRS to verify system requirements. Intellisense will then perform a celestial mapping, develop CelNav to account for specific VAS parameters such as processing power and optical pathways, and address all viable overall system design options with respective specifications in order to determine what requirements will be necessary. In Phase II, Intellisense plans to develop, install, and demonstrate a prototype system determined to be the most feasible solution during the Phase I study on the celestial-assured navigation.