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Three (3) prizes were awarded to two projects of the Spatial Informatics research group of the Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering Laboratory (SenseLab) in the context of the European Satellite Navigation Competition 2016:

-1st place Globally, European Satellite Navigation Competition, University Challenge, for the project Message in a Bubble, a novel viral communication platform, 

-1st place Globally, European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA), The most innovative application idea for Galileo Initial Services for the project Drones2GNSS,

-2nd Overall Winner, European Satellite Masters, (among 413 expert teams) for the project Drones2GNSS.

Below you may find more information on these projects:

Drones2GNSS - the Future of Surveying: UAV-assisted GNSS Positioning in Obstructed Environments

The Idea:

GNSS positioning accuracy in urban canyons or under tree canopies is degraded when satellite signals are obstructed by buildings, geomorphology, and vegetation. This is a major problem for engineers, who are forced to draw on expensive, time-consuming solutions to gain centimetre-level positioning accuracy. To confront this challenge, Space Geomatica has developed a prototype drone equipped with a highly accurate GNSS receiver and a camera/laser measuring system that retrieves the coordinates of custom surveying poles featuring Wi-Fi, a prism, and a target marker. The team’s image processing algorithms and error correction techniques provide real-time, centimetre-level coordinate estimation and can simultaneously measure multiple moving surveying poles. The processing is performed on-board the UAV without any ground-based hardware. Drones2GNSS thus provides a fast, reliable, cost-effective alternative for absolute coordinate positioning in obstructed environments where GNSS fails. It can cover multiple targets, including cars, people, and vessels. It offers a basis for other related challenges, including UAV GNSS networks, indoor positioning, and error mitigation.

Team members: Achilles Tripolitsiotis, Asst. Prof. Panagiotis Partsinevelos, Prof. Stelios Mertikas

Message in a Bubble: A novel spatio-temporal messaging platform 

The Idea:
Communication in the right place and time is essential to support human relations and highlight important information. Message in a Bubble (MiaB) is a novel spatio-temporal exchange platform. Users can tie their message, story, picture, or memo to a point of interest, or bubble; let it float for a set amount of time; and share it with select users or everyone who enters the same physical space. Users can create a bubble in their actual location, or virtually on a web map. A series of intuitive, exciting, and informative applications provide a novel incentive for interaction, including through virtual road signs, dynamic ambulance route clearance, treasure hunt games, message or payment unlocking, tourist guides, outdoor classroom notes, and location-based advertisements. Additional activities could require a specific group of friends, a certain number of passes over a certain time, or a PIN code to unlock a bubble. Bubbles can be static, moving, or distributed. Moreover, users can interact in space through bubble, libraries, with topics including history, gastronomy, ghost stories, architecture, geology parks, and more! MiaB thus represents a limitless trend in social communication. 

Team members: Asst Prof Panagiotis Partsinevelos, Nikos Afentakis & Senselab Research Team 

Achilles Tripolitsiotis, Sarantis Kyritsis, Stylianos Tsatsarounos, Emmanouil Stefanakis, Smaragda Pappa.