What is the future of satellite positioning technology?

On October 30th, 2013, the Information Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly organized the Information Center of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Land Survey and Mapping Department of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, and the National Remote Sensing Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology in Beijing to host the Eighth China Wisdom. "City Construction Technology Conference and Equipment Expo", Ph.D. and lecturer Guo Chi of the Navigation and Positioning Technology Research Center of Wuhan University.

Dr. Guo Chi, PhD, Lecturer, Satellite Navigation and Positioning Technology Research Center, Wuhan University

Reporter: Hello, Mr. Guo, now the satellite navigation and positioning system has penetrated into all corners of society and economy. How is China's current satellite positioning technology product development and application reflected?

Guo Chi: Now the entire satellite is divided from the market, and generally we are divided into three more generally recognized. A government market, an industry market, and then the public market. Therefore, the application status of the three markets in the three aspects is not particularly the same, such as the government market is mainly to do some infrastructure, the industry market is mainly to do some professional application related to the industry. What the mass market does more is to compare the daily life of ordinary people with the mobile internet. What is the current application situation? Overall, position sensors are becoming more and more popular. For example, there are GPSs in mobile phones. It is expected that there will be double-deck Beidou GPS in mobile phones within a few years. Position sensors themselves are becoming more and more popular; once the sensors are popularized to everyone and every vehicle, downstream applications It will flourish. Regardless of whether it is from the country, from the government or from the perspective of experts, it is considered that the development of the industry is very good. A slogan is now proposed to allow Beidou to enter millions of households. Basically, it must continue to develop in terms of service accuracy and application creativity so that it can enter millions of households.

There is still a concept in the society. When it comes to the Beidou, it feels like it is far from the people. It is like a very sophisticated army and national defense. It feels that it is far from the people. The reason why there are such differences is that I think there are mainly two aspects that have not been done well enough and are not close enough to the people: one is the ability to provide position and the other is the ability to understand the position. There is not enough capacity in these two areas. The location accuracy is not enough. One is GPS and the other is Beidou. First of all, it can only meet the outdoor positioning and can not meet the indoor positioning. However, most people live in the room and there is no satellite signal in the room. This application cannot be used. Second, Even if the accuracy is not enough outdoors, generally 4-20 meters of error, like the basic navigation applications can be, and then complex applications, more interesting, more accurate application is not enough, such as walking in the pedestrian street to receive relevant information, then No, positioning can only be a pedestrian street, I feel very far away from us.

In this regard, Wuhan University has taken the lead in making recommendations to the state and implementing the "Yanhe Plan." He is also a god, an ancient god. What is the plan and plan? In the words of Professor Shi Yong of our center, that is, “to solve the problem of seamless high-precision indoor and outdoor applications to solve the problem of locating the last kilometer.” To solve this problem, the people feel close to life. This plan is mainly composed of two major branches: one is based on various reinforcement systems, and now it is mainly used as a ground-based reinforcement system to improve the accuracy of GPS and Beidou, and will be mainly oriented to Beidou in the future. At present, Beidou's ground-based reinforcement network has been established in Hubei, Shanghai and other places, and experiments can already reach centimeters. Civilian use does not require such a high level of accuracy. The sub-meters and meters are already good. Now there are no technical problems. We are also appealing that many companies are now looking for such an opportunity and need everyone to work together because it involves the data of research institutes like Wuhan University that involve infrastructure, surveying and mapping bureaus, and surveying and mapping information departments. To provide it, there needs to be operators, like telecommunications. We are now doing our own experiments and doing some small business on our own, with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of terminals. The problem is not great. But now more than 800 million mobile phone users across the country have met high-precision positioning, which must be provided by broadcasters and mobile operators. Now that the integration is one step worse, but once it is integrated, our future civil outdoor positioning will be at least sub-meter level. Now, there are a large number of location service applications in the 10-meter accuracy. It can be imagined that if the sub-meter level is achieved Accuracy, location services will present a new wave of boom; Second, do indoor positioning, including indoor maps and indoor positioning, indoor positioning is currently doing a better job, as Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications do better, there is strong and strong, Bo Yang Shi Tong Such companies do a better job, there is the telecommunications sector, Shanghai Telecom is also doing this, we believe that in the next few years, indoor positioning will have some big development. Indoor positioning mainly depends on the positioning of WiFi, there are other technologies, there are other difficulties, and finally the indoor and outdoor seamlessly. Of course, for vehicles, in addition to indoor and outdoor, there is inertial navigation participation, which is integrated navigation. Some civil inertial sensors are already very cheap. Gyroscopes and accelerometers are found in cell phones over three thousand yuan. The next step is to further integrate them.

Reporter: Indoors rely mainly on WIFI positioning, but generally there is no outdoor WIFI. After you say that indoor and outdoor seamless integration, what can you do to serve the public?

Guo Chi: To serve the public there is still an ability to improve, that is, the ability to understand the location. Providing a location for this matter took a long time to do, and the results were better. It was a piece of paper away from industrialization. After the location is provided, what is the difference between the people when they use it? In fact, the people do not want the location. I tell you the coordinates of XYZ. It doesn't mean anything to you. What you want is the social properties behind this coordinate. For example, I want to go to a place. I told you about XYZ. The people said that I don’t want to, what do the people want? I’m going to a place, what information is there in this place, what’s good and fun, and even if my friends go there often, there’s no social emotion. This is to understand the position. Academician Liu Jingnan proposed that understanding the location is an important part of ubiquitous location service or ubiquitous surveying. What changes will it present in the future?

First, the role of change, the previous mapping or positioning, or remote sensing, surveying and measuring the objective world, the objective of the world measured almost, we will begin to measure the subjective world, including human social relations, People’s social emotions can be reflected through their locations. The places where I often appear are actually reflecting my social attributes, reflecting my social ecology, my modality, and my customary preferences. Through these things, there must be changes in decision-making; Second, the change in the model, the former surveying and mapping is a separate producer and consumer, the current practice is that producers, consumers will be integrated, when everyone uses location services, both producers and consumers, This is ubiquitous mapping or ubiquitous location services, mainly to use several technologies: one is called location social perception technology, through the society behind the location perception; the second is big data location analysis, this piece is now more optimistic about everyone. There are many kinds of big data in the world, but location big data is the most common type of big data at present. What can you do with location big data? Everyone can intuitively understand the location of big data and then you can do intelligent transportation. These things are relatively elementary. . It is big data research, but I think it is still elementary. Some of the world’s leading researches this year have seen that using location big data can be used to analyze urban planning, analyze urban energy consumption, analyze PM2.5, analyze the spread of epidemics, and we find that the original location data contains intelligence. With wisdom, we can actually solve such problems. For example, people are very concerned about PM2.5 and the country is concerned. Microsoft Research Asia has done a job to track PM2.5 through taxi tracks. This work is very beautiful and the academic community is paying attention and learning. In the same way, the University of Rochester in the United States last year did a job. What did you do with the speeches and location data on the Weibo microblog? As a result of epidemic predictions, epidemiological prediction was originally a work done by the medical community. Now we find out The data can accurately predict whether there is a trend in epidemic transmission and what kind of dynamics of transmission are. This work is also very remarkable. In fact, we are now thinking, including our own work, that is, how to express the city's intelligence through location data. In fact, the location data is related to the economic operation of the city, and it is related to CPI and housing prices. After the data analysis, we found that the original location reflects all aspects of society. If we can associate these things with each other and dig them out, this time we will be positioning with high precision, providing location, and understanding the location. Our location service will come to an end. There will inevitably be a new wave of upsurge. At that time, location services are different from current location services. They are called ubiquitous location services and are closer to the lives of ordinary people. It won't be long before, like the two of us sitting here, we use the same location service, the information obtained may be different, what you get is what you are interested in, what I get is what I am interested in. How does it know? Social perception, this is a trend now.

Reporter: Now that the application of satellite navigation and positioning in the transportation field has been approved by the general public, what kind of development vision is there for the Satellite Navigation and Positioning Technology Research Center of Wuhan University?

Guo Chi: It is now very important for the Wuhan University’s satellite navigation and positioning technology research center to work on the research and industrialization of navigation location services in the two aspects of providing location and comprehending location. You mentioned the application of the traffic field, a large number of GPS applications in previous years. Since the Beidou began to operate in the region last year, the transportation sector will use Beidou in large quantities. As a result, its own equipment has also been attenuated and eliminated, and it is just being updated. It is not being replaced. It is gradually updated into Beidou GPS dual-mode compatibility, and the use of Beidou is preferred; second, the country also has policy support. At present, the domestic transportation industry is mainly used in these areas, industry and traffic supervision, the so-called two passengers and one danger, two kinds of passenger cars and dangerous goods vehicles. The state imposes two passengers and one danger to install Beidou monitoring equipment. Like a taxi, it belongs to the content of two passengers and one danger. Many cities are equipped, and basically there is no disguise.

Reporter: You just mentioned that vehicles in many cities now have GPS monitoring equipment installed. What are the benefits after installation?

Guo Chi: Just now we also said, first, the supervision, the Traffic Management Bureau has a big screen, which taxi how to run, how dangerous goods vehicles run, such as during the day does not let into the urban area, dangerous goods vehicles into the urban area Now, there is a danger that it can be remotely monitored and even remotely controlled by vehicles. Second, civil and civilian vehicles cannot be forced to install by the government. People are guided through services to make people feel that the value of the equipment is currently The so-called car networking. The best currently done is like OnStar, G-book, etc. OnStar is dedicated to GM, G-book is for Toyota's Lexus high-end car, as a standard, mid-to-low car is not available, middle and low car equipped with some aftermarket navigation devices, these navigators are currently not connected They are all terminal, called isolated, not connected, or discrete. So now these depots, car electronics factories and so-called car networking operators, they are constantly pushing the next generation of car networking, the country also has a car networking special, summed up to the Internet of Things special, the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Industry and many other The departments took the lead in doing this. Several alliances have also been set up in China to link the Internet of Vehicles. They hope that this service will be first used in civil vehicle service. Everyone hopes that the next step is to have a cloud center behind the satellite navigation first. After the vehicles can be released like a kite, they can be retrieved. Now the navigator is selling equipment, selling one is one, and can't stop after going out. The so-called first-class manufacturers sell standards, second-rate selling services, third-rate buying equipment, selling equipment does not make money, equipment can be given to you, navigator can give you, but to your service, this depends on the car network. Now that the development of the Internet of Vehicles has a bottleneck, what are the reasons? That is, the service cannot be done and the service model is too single. The best thing the car network currently does is ask the weather, navigation, stocks and news. This concludes. There is a problem. For example, a domestic famous car networking service started last year and the first wave of trials has already expired. It is said that its renewal rate is not as high as expected, and people’s recognition is still not high. We also contacted a lot of vendors who are connected to the Internet. They all think that the business model is not good, they can't make money, why can't they make money? The service level is low, such as navigation, navigation, what is the situation? You are not familiar with the situation Need to navigate, people generally drive in their own cities, the first month novice need navigation, do not know the road, need to navigate after three months? Need, old drivers need to navigate it? To see which taxi driver But also to navigate, he is much stronger than the navigation, explain what? Explain this service is not sticky, like our QQ, public comments, the year of stealing food, happy network application, sticky high, the people get up in the middle of the night To play, this application hangs in my heart. The navigation is not enough, the service content is static and there is no change. This mode is "service location", not "location service." The location is a relatively slow change, so people do not feel fresh, and it takes a while to become familiar with the environment. So how do you change from "service location" to "location service"? We generally mention three aggregations: data aggregation, content aggregation, and service aggregation. Only in this way can the service model be improved. Only in this way can it become more dynamic, information richer and different. In the same way, the information given to me today is different from the information given to me tomorrow. The people think that this thing is interesting. Every time it is used, the business model will rise.

In addition, through GNSS positioning and car networking, active safety services for vehicles can be realized. Car-connected services can't provide weather and news. They don't have to be provided by navigation systems. Baidu can provide them. Google can provide them. Mobile phones can provide them. Transport stations can provide them. What do you need to do? You want to be able to drive with your car. Safety hook, active safety control. This year, the National 863 has established a topic, which is jointly borne by Tongji University, Wuhan University and Guangdong Changbao Technology Co., Ltd. It is necessary to connect the vehicle's internal network and the external network to interact with each other, so that all kinds of dangerous information can be actively pushed and the dynamics can be achieved. The goal of active coordination, so that the vehicle's active control. This is also the trend of the next car networking development.

Reporter: What are the future prospects of GNSS in smart cities?

Guo Chi: The development of smart cities can not be separated from time and space benchmark, otherwise it is not wisdom. Space-time benchmarks are provided by GNSS and are strategic information on national security. In addition, GNSS is closely related to location big data and is a position sensor. With sensors, we commonly think of the perception layer of the Internet of Things. With such a large amount of sensor data, the location data contains a wealth of community wisdom. We speak of a smart city. In fact, there is no wisdom in the city. What is truly wise is still people. Group intelligence, not expert intelligence, is an important factor in the development of smart cities. Expert intelligence is always limited, group intelligence, such as car networking, car networking in the future is not you and the network, but through the car network to connect you and me, I and him, to connect everyone, he can put Give me your questions. I will answer them for you. The symbiosis, this is collective wisdom. For example, in the social network, we share the location check-in data and vehicle history trajectory. There is too much wisdom in this area. We have already mentioned that we can use it to analyze urban planning, epidemic spread, environmental changes, and urban economic development. These things are indispensable for smart cities.