Press and News - 15.08.2003

u-blox Sponsors 'Team Spirit of Las Vegas' in Grand DARPA Challenge.

Herndon/VA and Edwards AFB/CA, August 15th, 2003 - The 'Team Spirit of Las Vegas' decided for the u-blox sensor-based dead-reckoning board SBR-LS to guide their unmanned vehicle in the Grand DARPA challenge in 2004.

The DARPA Grand Challenge is a race of autonomous unmanned vehicles, starting in the vicinity of Los Angeles to the city of Las Vegas. The winning team will receive prize money in the amount of USD 1 million. The course is around three hundred miles of grueling on- and off-road conditions against competing unmanned vehicles. The contenders will have to overcome desert like conditions, to include, but not limited to mountains, canyons, Joshua tree forests, boulders, ditches, and riverbeds, possibly dry and/or wet. On March 13th , 2004, DARPA, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, will kick off the competition as a way to stimulate the creation of new concepts for ground based unmanned vehicles. More information on the DARPA challenge is available at www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge.

The SBR-LS uses u-blox' own 16-channel, low-power ANTARIS™ GPS chipset. The position is determined by combining GPS signal with information from the vehicle, such as the speed pulse.

"Having accurate position, velocity and heading information is absolutely crucial for success in this most challenging competition," says US Air Force Major Kent Tiffany, leader of the 'Team Spirit of Las Vegas'. "We need to have 100% reliable and accurate position information all the time, more so during GPS outage areas. The u-blox dead-reckoning solution will guide us under extremely adverse conditions, even with weak or no GPS signal. The SBR-LS is easy to integrate and self-calibrating. What else can you ask for?"

Nikolaos Papadopoulos, VP of Sales at u-blox America: "We developed our inexpensive dead-reckoning solution with urban canyons in mind. I am looking forward to see our SBR-LS excel also in real canyons."

Says Karsten Tietz, President u-blox America: "This competition is going to be a lot of fun. We are proud to be a sponsor of the highly professional 'Team Spirit of Las Vegas' at the Grand DARPA Challenge. May the best team win!"

About u-blox
u-blox develops and markets positioning technologies based on the Global Positioning System (GPS). It provides its products to Original Equipment Manufacturers, which integrate and utilize u-blox' miniaturized GPS modules and chipsets. u-blox is a privately held company founded in 1997 and headquartered in Thalwil, Switzerland, with subsidiaries in Germany, UK, USA and Hong Kong.

About the 'Team Spirit of Las Vegas'
The 'Team Spirit of Las Vegas' is a mixed team of "off-time" government workers (U.S. Air Force, U.S. Government, and NASA), as well as big contractor employees such as Boeing with unparalleled background in unmanned vehicles. The project leader is US Air Force Major Kent J. Tiffany, a test pilot at Edwards AFB, California with over 4-years of test experience as an Air Force Officer on Unmanned Systems to include 100% autonomous aircraft such as Global Hawk and Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) / X-45A. The U.S. Air Force, U.S. Government, NASA or Boeing are not in any way affiliated with Major Kent Tiffany's "off-time" team nor can they endorse u-blox products or services. For more information, please write to Kent.Tiffany@edwards.af.mil or call at +1 (661) 810-8207 (preferred).

-end-

Press Contacts
u-blox America, Inc.
Karsten Tietz, President
Phone: +1 (703) 234 5290, E-Mail: karsten.tietz@u-blox.com

u-blox AG
Manuela Vujevic, Marketing Communications
Phone: +41 (1) 722 74 53, E-Mail: manuela.vujevic@u-blox.com

Further Information

Press Releases 2003

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last modified: 12.08.2003

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