I am the Chief Scientist and Chief Executive of GeoNumerics. I hold a PhD in Mathematics and have spent my professional life in the geomatics and navigation area. I have worked at the former Institute of Cartography of Catatonia (ICC) --now the Institute of Cartoghraphy and Geology of Catalonia (ICGC),-- at the Institute of Geomatics (IG), at the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTT) and at GeoNumerics (GN).
International Association of Geodesy symposia, 2016
We revisit the concept of scalar gravity anomaly determination by an airborne strapdown INS–GNSS ... more We revisit the concept of scalar gravity anomaly determination by an airborne strapdown INS–GNSS system. We built on the previously investigated concepts (mainly within 1995–2005 period) while trying to decrease the error spectrum of the system caused by accelerometer biases at lower frequencies and GNSS-position/velocity noise at shorter wavelengths. We propose to determine the random long-term accelerometer bias through combination of −GRACE + GOCE data that provide an unbiased field with 80 km resolution while the decrease in velocity noise is expected by precise-point-positioning (PPP) method that merges satellite-phase observations from GPS and Galileo. In the absence of Galileo constellation we focus our practical demonstration on the gravity-anomaly determination via INS/GNSS data filtering. We present first the modeling of an extended Kalman filter/smoother that determines the gravity anomaly together with the trajectory, which is a preferred method over the cascade determination (i.e. separate estimation of trajectory and specific forces, GNSS acceleration and low-pass filtering of the merged signal). Second, we show how to incorporate the same modeling within the concept of dynamic networks. This approach allows imposing cross-over conditions on the state of gravity anomaly at trajectory intersections while estimating the sensor and trajectory errors at the same time. This is indeed rigorous formulation of the problem that is expected to surpass the conditioning via cross-over adjustment that in previous investigations followed the filtering-smoothing. Despite the remaining challenges of the method of dynamic network caused by large number of parameters (i.e. > 106), we present first assessment of such implementation that was obtained within European FP7 GAL project.
This paper introduces and describes the goals, concept and overall approach of the European 7th F... more This paper introduces and describes the goals, concept and overall approach of the European 7th Framework Programme's project named CLOSE-SEARCH, which stands for 'Accurate and safe EGNOS-SoL Navigation for UAV-based low-cost SAR operations'. The goal of CLOSE-SEARCH is to integrate in a helicopter-type Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), a thermal imaging sensor and a multi-sensor navigation system (based on the use of a Barometric Altimeter (BA), a Magnetometer (MAGN), a Redundant Inertial Navigation System (RINS) and an SBAS-enabled GNSS receiver) with an Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (AIM) capability, to support the search component of Search-And-Rescue (SAR) operations in remote, difficult-to-access areas and/or in time critical situations. The proposed integration will result in a Hardware and Software prototype that will demonstrate an end-to-end functionality, that is to fly in patterns over a region of interest (possibly inaccessible) during day or night and also u...
The use of unmanned aerial systems for civilian search-and-rescue operations or disaster manageme... more The use of unmanned aerial systems for civilian search-and-rescue operations or disaster management is not new. Predators drones, commonly associated with military operations, were used in the aftermath of the hurricane Katrina in the United States; rotary-wing vehicles equipped with radiation sensors, infrared thermometers and cameras helped out at Japan’s post-tsunami Fukushima nuclear facility. These are just a couple examples of the cross-application potential of such platforms. This article explores the concept, development, and results of a project to develop an unmanned system on board an aircraft. Equipped with a thermal/optical camera and a multi-sensor navigation system benefiting from the European augmentation system EGNOS, the system is designed for a particular application: finding people lost in remote and rugged outdoor environments.
This paper attempts to describe the general state of the art of trajectory determination for airb... more This paper attempts to describe the general state of the art of trajectory determination for airborne and terrestrial photogrammetry and remote sensing for mapping. We discuss the need, applications, technology, models, estimation methods and exploitation of trajectories. The paper also summarizes the research done in the past, at the former Institute of Geomatics and currently in GeoNumerics. 1. INTRODUCTION: TRAJECTORY DETERMINATION Trajectory determination has been with us for many more years than we use to believe. In photogrammetry and remote sensing (PARS), we often associate trajectory determination to INS/GNSS integration for sensor orientation and therefore overlook that traditional sensor orientation is nothing else than trajectory determination at low frequency at unequally spaced time instants (INS stands for Inertial Navigation System, and GNSS for Global Navigation Satellite System). However, it suffices to recall the origins of bundle adjustment and of its application to satellite orbit determination with ballistic cameras (Schmid, H. H. (1974)), to realize how close orientation and trajectory determination are. This said, with the exception of frame cameras – yes, we know, they dominate the market, – the rest of imaging instruments in our field, have been designed with the assumption that a sufficiently precise and accurate trajectory – at least of the time-Position-Attitude type – is available. In particular, this is the case of the instruments for mobile mapping – terrestrial and aerial – like the laser scanners, the radars and the array cameras. The acquisition frequency of some of the latter is so high that the trajectory “consumer” expects that for any given time t, orientation elements o(t) be extracted of the trajectory τ that fulfil its – of the sensor – geometric quality requirements. (Today, for our mapping imaging instruments, the interval of acquisition frequencies is, in terms of orders of magnitude, ]10 6 , 0[ Hz.)
This paper will introduce and describe the goals, concept and overall approach of the European CL... more This paper will introduce and describe the goals, concept and overall approach of the European CLOSE-SEARCH project. CLOSE-SEARCH stands for ’Accurate and safe EGNOS-SoL Navigation for UAV-based low-cost SAR operations’ and is being conducted by a consortium of a research centre (Institute of Geomatics, IG), a private for non-profit technology centre (Asociaci´on de la Industria Navarra, AIN), the Geodetic Engineering Laboratory (TOPO) of the Ecole Polytechnique F´ed´erale of Lausanne (EPFL), an aerospace engineering company (DEIMOS Engenharia, DME), a public research agency and geospatial data provider (Institute of Cartography of Catalonia, ICC) and an end user, the Direcci´o General de Protecci´o Civil (DGPC, the Catalan civil protection authority)
This paper presents the concept, developments and preliminary results of the Horizon 2020 project... more This paper presents the concept, developments and preliminary results of the Horizon 2020 project named SAT406M. The goal of this project is to develop an application based on a wrist-worn device, conceived to be a maritime application, and the use of European Global Navigation Satellite Systems, based on the Galileo Search and Rescue service, using its unique Return-Link-Message function, improving the mobility and safety of citizens. In particular for this paper, we focus on the development and the first testing and results of a physiological monitoring component included in the device. This component will provide the Search and Rescue services with additional information about the SAT406M user's physiological status once the distress alarm is triggered. The algorithm implemented uses some stochastic techniques to deduce the SAT406M user's physiological status, encoded in two bits, from sensor inputs. The results here presented, which are still preliminary results from an ...
The PERIGEO R&D project aims at developing, testing and validating algorithms and/or methods for ... more The PERIGEO R&D project aims at developing, testing and validating algorithms and/or methods for space missions in various field of research. This paper focuses in one of the scenarios considered in PERIGEO: navigation for atmospheric flights. Space missions heavily rely on navigation to reach success, and autonomy of on-board navigation systems and sensors is desired to reach new frontiers of space exploration. From the technology side, optical frame cameras, LiDAR and inertial technologies are selected to cover the requirements of such missions. From the processing side, image processing techniques are developed for vision-based relative and absolute navigation, based on point extraction and matching from camera images, and crater detection and matching in camera and LiDAR images. The current paper addresses the challenges of space navigation, presents the current developments and preliminary results, and describes payload elements to be integrated in an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (U...
Recent advances in UAV platforms together with the miniaturization of cameras and laser scanner s... more Recent advances in UAV platforms together with the miniaturization of cameras and laser scanner sensors make feasible to fly simultaneously, in terms of size and cost, multi-sensor payloads, expanding UAV-based possible applications and targeting new communities. These payloads can consist, for example, of several cameras sensing different spectral bands and/or lightweight, low cost laser scanners. The use of fused data from these sensors can boost the use of UAVs for environmental mapping purposes such as landslide volumetric estimation, biomass estimation or forestry management, to mention a few. In this context, co-registration becomes a key step in order to exploit the complementary characteristics of sever-al cameras and/or laser scanners, and thus generating additional information layers.
In this paper, we will describe the architecture of an innovative generic trajectory determinatio... more In this paper, we will describe the architecture of an innovative generic trajectory determination system. The architecture describes a software (SW) platform for the optimal determination of trajectories or paths of stochastic dynamical systems driven by observations –or measurements– and their associated dynamic or static models. The proposed architecture has been already implemented in the NAVEGA SW. NAVEGA has evolved from an INS/GPS trajectory determination programme into the above more general concept to accommodate the various instrument and sensor configurations of modern navigation and orientation systems. Thus, NAVEGA can be "configured" for any sensor navigation combination, as, for example, navigation systems based only in GNSS, classical hybrid INS/GNSS systems, INS/GNSS systems augmented with other ancillary navigation sensors, INS/GNSS/visual aiding systems with multiple IMU or multiple GNSS receivers, to mention a few examples.
ISPRS - International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 2017
Sensor calibration, image orientation, object extraction and scene understanding from images and ... more Sensor calibration, image orientation, object extraction and scene understanding from images and image sequences are important research topics in Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Computer Vision and Geoinformation Science. Within these areas, both geometry and semantics play an important role, and high quality results require appropriate handling of all these aspects. While individual algorithms differ according to the imaging geometry and the employed sensors and platforms, all mentioned aspects need to be integrated in a suitable workflow to solve most real-world problems.
International Association of Geodesy symposia, 2016
We revisit the concept of scalar gravity anomaly determination by an airborne strapdown INS–GNSS ... more We revisit the concept of scalar gravity anomaly determination by an airborne strapdown INS–GNSS system. We built on the previously investigated concepts (mainly within 1995–2005 period) while trying to decrease the error spectrum of the system caused by accelerometer biases at lower frequencies and GNSS-position/velocity noise at shorter wavelengths. We propose to determine the random long-term accelerometer bias through combination of −GRACE + GOCE data that provide an unbiased field with 80 km resolution while the decrease in velocity noise is expected by precise-point-positioning (PPP) method that merges satellite-phase observations from GPS and Galileo. In the absence of Galileo constellation we focus our practical demonstration on the gravity-anomaly determination via INS/GNSS data filtering. We present first the modeling of an extended Kalman filter/smoother that determines the gravity anomaly together with the trajectory, which is a preferred method over the cascade determination (i.e. separate estimation of trajectory and specific forces, GNSS acceleration and low-pass filtering of the merged signal). Second, we show how to incorporate the same modeling within the concept of dynamic networks. This approach allows imposing cross-over conditions on the state of gravity anomaly at trajectory intersections while estimating the sensor and trajectory errors at the same time. This is indeed rigorous formulation of the problem that is expected to surpass the conditioning via cross-over adjustment that in previous investigations followed the filtering-smoothing. Despite the remaining challenges of the method of dynamic network caused by large number of parameters (i.e. > 106), we present first assessment of such implementation that was obtained within European FP7 GAL project.
This paper introduces and describes the goals, concept and overall approach of the European 7th F... more This paper introduces and describes the goals, concept and overall approach of the European 7th Framework Programme's project named CLOSE-SEARCH, which stands for 'Accurate and safe EGNOS-SoL Navigation for UAV-based low-cost SAR operations'. The goal of CLOSE-SEARCH is to integrate in a helicopter-type Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), a thermal imaging sensor and a multi-sensor navigation system (based on the use of a Barometric Altimeter (BA), a Magnetometer (MAGN), a Redundant Inertial Navigation System (RINS) and an SBAS-enabled GNSS receiver) with an Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (AIM) capability, to support the search component of Search-And-Rescue (SAR) operations in remote, difficult-to-access areas and/or in time critical situations. The proposed integration will result in a Hardware and Software prototype that will demonstrate an end-to-end functionality, that is to fly in patterns over a region of interest (possibly inaccessible) during day or night and also u...
The use of unmanned aerial systems for civilian search-and-rescue operations or disaster manageme... more The use of unmanned aerial systems for civilian search-and-rescue operations or disaster management is not new. Predators drones, commonly associated with military operations, were used in the aftermath of the hurricane Katrina in the United States; rotary-wing vehicles equipped with radiation sensors, infrared thermometers and cameras helped out at Japan’s post-tsunami Fukushima nuclear facility. These are just a couple examples of the cross-application potential of such platforms. This article explores the concept, development, and results of a project to develop an unmanned system on board an aircraft. Equipped with a thermal/optical camera and a multi-sensor navigation system benefiting from the European augmentation system EGNOS, the system is designed for a particular application: finding people lost in remote and rugged outdoor environments.
This paper attempts to describe the general state of the art of trajectory determination for airb... more This paper attempts to describe the general state of the art of trajectory determination for airborne and terrestrial photogrammetry and remote sensing for mapping. We discuss the need, applications, technology, models, estimation methods and exploitation of trajectories. The paper also summarizes the research done in the past, at the former Institute of Geomatics and currently in GeoNumerics. 1. INTRODUCTION: TRAJECTORY DETERMINATION Trajectory determination has been with us for many more years than we use to believe. In photogrammetry and remote sensing (PARS), we often associate trajectory determination to INS/GNSS integration for sensor orientation and therefore overlook that traditional sensor orientation is nothing else than trajectory determination at low frequency at unequally spaced time instants (INS stands for Inertial Navigation System, and GNSS for Global Navigation Satellite System). However, it suffices to recall the origins of bundle adjustment and of its application to satellite orbit determination with ballistic cameras (Schmid, H. H. (1974)), to realize how close orientation and trajectory determination are. This said, with the exception of frame cameras – yes, we know, they dominate the market, – the rest of imaging instruments in our field, have been designed with the assumption that a sufficiently precise and accurate trajectory – at least of the time-Position-Attitude type – is available. In particular, this is the case of the instruments for mobile mapping – terrestrial and aerial – like the laser scanners, the radars and the array cameras. The acquisition frequency of some of the latter is so high that the trajectory “consumer” expects that for any given time t, orientation elements o(t) be extracted of the trajectory τ that fulfil its – of the sensor – geometric quality requirements. (Today, for our mapping imaging instruments, the interval of acquisition frequencies is, in terms of orders of magnitude, ]10 6 , 0[ Hz.)
This paper will introduce and describe the goals, concept and overall approach of the European CL... more This paper will introduce and describe the goals, concept and overall approach of the European CLOSE-SEARCH project. CLOSE-SEARCH stands for ’Accurate and safe EGNOS-SoL Navigation for UAV-based low-cost SAR operations’ and is being conducted by a consortium of a research centre (Institute of Geomatics, IG), a private for non-profit technology centre (Asociaci´on de la Industria Navarra, AIN), the Geodetic Engineering Laboratory (TOPO) of the Ecole Polytechnique F´ed´erale of Lausanne (EPFL), an aerospace engineering company (DEIMOS Engenharia, DME), a public research agency and geospatial data provider (Institute of Cartography of Catalonia, ICC) and an end user, the Direcci´o General de Protecci´o Civil (DGPC, the Catalan civil protection authority)
This paper presents the concept, developments and preliminary results of the Horizon 2020 project... more This paper presents the concept, developments and preliminary results of the Horizon 2020 project named SAT406M. The goal of this project is to develop an application based on a wrist-worn device, conceived to be a maritime application, and the use of European Global Navigation Satellite Systems, based on the Galileo Search and Rescue service, using its unique Return-Link-Message function, improving the mobility and safety of citizens. In particular for this paper, we focus on the development and the first testing and results of a physiological monitoring component included in the device. This component will provide the Search and Rescue services with additional information about the SAT406M user's physiological status once the distress alarm is triggered. The algorithm implemented uses some stochastic techniques to deduce the SAT406M user's physiological status, encoded in two bits, from sensor inputs. The results here presented, which are still preliminary results from an ...
The PERIGEO R&D project aims at developing, testing and validating algorithms and/or methods for ... more The PERIGEO R&D project aims at developing, testing and validating algorithms and/or methods for space missions in various field of research. This paper focuses in one of the scenarios considered in PERIGEO: navigation for atmospheric flights. Space missions heavily rely on navigation to reach success, and autonomy of on-board navigation systems and sensors is desired to reach new frontiers of space exploration. From the technology side, optical frame cameras, LiDAR and inertial technologies are selected to cover the requirements of such missions. From the processing side, image processing techniques are developed for vision-based relative and absolute navigation, based on point extraction and matching from camera images, and crater detection and matching in camera and LiDAR images. The current paper addresses the challenges of space navigation, presents the current developments and preliminary results, and describes payload elements to be integrated in an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (U...
Recent advances in UAV platforms together with the miniaturization of cameras and laser scanner s... more Recent advances in UAV platforms together with the miniaturization of cameras and laser scanner sensors make feasible to fly simultaneously, in terms of size and cost, multi-sensor payloads, expanding UAV-based possible applications and targeting new communities. These payloads can consist, for example, of several cameras sensing different spectral bands and/or lightweight, low cost laser scanners. The use of fused data from these sensors can boost the use of UAVs for environmental mapping purposes such as landslide volumetric estimation, biomass estimation or forestry management, to mention a few. In this context, co-registration becomes a key step in order to exploit the complementary characteristics of sever-al cameras and/or laser scanners, and thus generating additional information layers.
In this paper, we will describe the architecture of an innovative generic trajectory determinatio... more In this paper, we will describe the architecture of an innovative generic trajectory determination system. The architecture describes a software (SW) platform for the optimal determination of trajectories or paths of stochastic dynamical systems driven by observations –or measurements– and their associated dynamic or static models. The proposed architecture has been already implemented in the NAVEGA SW. NAVEGA has evolved from an INS/GPS trajectory determination programme into the above more general concept to accommodate the various instrument and sensor configurations of modern navigation and orientation systems. Thus, NAVEGA can be "configured" for any sensor navigation combination, as, for example, navigation systems based only in GNSS, classical hybrid INS/GNSS systems, INS/GNSS systems augmented with other ancillary navigation sensors, INS/GNSS/visual aiding systems with multiple IMU or multiple GNSS receivers, to mention a few examples.
ISPRS - International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 2017
Sensor calibration, image orientation, object extraction and scene understanding from images and ... more Sensor calibration, image orientation, object extraction and scene understanding from images and image sequences are important research topics in Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Computer Vision and Geoinformation Science. Within these areas, both geometry and semantics play an important role, and high quality results require appropriate handling of all these aspects. While individual algorithms differ according to the imaging geometry and the employed sensors and platforms, all mentioned aspects need to be integrated in a suitable workflow to solve most real-world problems.
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Papers by Ismael Colomina