Smart competition for clever navigation at NAVISP Industry Days
Europe’s leading companies and research institutes working on positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies met at ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands in mid-June for this year’s NAVISP Industry Days, devoted to the latest developments in the Agency’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme.
NAVISP is ESA’s programme focused on navigation technologies beyond Galileo and EGNOS, with many of the same engineers that led the development of Europe’s own satnav constellation working with European industry and academia on exciting new concepts.
Around 130 people participated in the two-day event, which covered dozens of the more than 200 NAVISP projects embarked upon to date. As well as attending presentations, participants had the opportunity to meet and talk shop in the exhibition area showing off products and hardware, from an improved accuracy smartphone sattnav board to smart drones for navigation data gathering.
Throughout the Industry Days, the importance of innovation for competitiveness was repeatedly highlighted, so that companies can adapt to rapid technological change in the fast-growing PNT sector, which today already accounts for 10% of the European economy.
Companies always try to target profitable markets and there is high economic value in navigation and alternative PNT solutions. NAVISP has been recognised as an important enabler in the push for novel PNT technologies, but also their adoption by society. For instance, the program includes research on safe air and ground navigation in congested urban environments: from autonomous drones in urban skies to assisted and automated vehicles of all types on the roads, rail- or waterways.
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“NAVISP’s strength lies in supporting all types of actors, from start-ups and SMEs to large enterprises, and space companies to companies in other sectors that have recognized the added value of PNT solutions,“ comments Pierluigi Mancini, NAVISP Programme Manager.
“That means playing a part in advancing research and product development, as well as commercialization to broadly foster and support European industry in addressing technology, market and regulatory risks.”
At the Industry Days, many different projects across varying market areas along different points in the value chain were highlighted, from air mobility testbeds to new technologies for roads and other infrastructure, support for maritime navigation to the development of novel PNT satellites, as well as studies for quantum-based PNT and weather monitoring based on collaborative crowdsourcing.
And the high innovation potential of NAVISP activities was underlined by the fact that two new Navigation Directorate programmes set to be proposed to ESA’s Council of Ministers this November – the in-orbit demonstration of low-earth orbit PNT services and GENESIS mission for precision Earth measurement – owed their origin to initial NAVISP projects.
The entire set of the NAVISP Industry Days presentations can be found here.