VANCOUVER, British Columbia — SPARC AI in Melbourne, Australia, has launched a network-based positioning service designed to help drones determine their location when GPS signals are jammed, spoofed or unavailable.
The Overwatch Positioning Network takes a different approach from GPS-denied navigation systems that rely on dedicated hardware or software aboard individual aircraft. Instead, a drone sends sensor and telemetry data to the network, where SPARC AI's system calculates its position and returns latitude and longitude coordinates.
The company says the process takes roughly one-third of a second and does not require customers to install additional positioning equipment or software on the aircraft.
Related: What happens when an aircraft loses GPS?
Overwatch moves positioning calculations off the aircraft
GPS-denied navigation has become an increasingly important consideration for military drones operating in contested environments. Jamming can prevent an aircraft from receiving usable satellite signals, while spoofing can feed the receiver false information about its location.
Alternative navigation systems can help aircraft continue operating under those conditions, but adding hardware or onboard computing to individual drones introduces its own integration requirements.
Overwatch instead uses an application programming interface (API) to exchange information between the aircraft and SPARC AI's network. The drone sends telemetry to the service, which performs the positioning calculations in a data center and returns the resulting coordinates.
SPARC AI says it performs the computation in memory and does not retain customer telemetry or location data. Keeping the calculation off the aircraft also changes where the computing resources have to scale. Rather than adding a positioning payload to each new drone, SPARC AI can add data-center capacity as more aircraft connect to the network.
Network connectivity becomes part of the equation
Moving positioning computation off the aircraft avoids some onboard hardware and processing requirements, but it also makes the connection between the drone and the network an important part of the architecture.
The aircraft has to transmit its sensor data to Overwatch and receive its calculated position quickly enough for that information to remain useful. The amount of time available can depend on the aircraft's speed, mission and how frequently its navigation system requires position updates.
SPARC AI says Overwatch currently returns a position in roughly a third of a second. The company designed the service to operate across multiple geographic data-center regions and automatically increase computing resources as demand grows.
Ukraine could test the approach at larger scale
SPARC AI has invited Ukrainian drone manufacturers and other organizations to access Overwatch as its primary delivery model. The company expects those deployments to test how the network performs at larger scale and amid the GPS interference common in contested environments.
SPARC AI is also pursuing opportunities elsewhere in Europe. Company representatives will attend the MSPO defense exhibition in Poland beginning Sept. 8. SPARC AI says it has meetings scheduled with several European drone manufacturers during the event.
