GREENBELT, Md. – TRX Systems announced today that its NEON® Personnel Tracker Solution was used to track personnel within challenging indoor, underground, and urban GPS-denied environments at the Thunderstorm 18-2 Dense Urban and Subterranean Technologies (DUST) Demonstration, sponsored within the Department of Defense by the Office of Emerging Capability & Prototyping’s Rapid Reaction Technology Office (RRTO). Thunderstorm 18-2 took place August 6th-17th in New York City and featured technologies to bridge capability gaps facing military and first responders when operating in GPS-denied environments such as tunnels, buildings, and urban canyons.
Thunderstorm is an exercise that provides an opportunity for technology companies to demonstrate new and evolving product capabilities in an operationally relevant environment, as well as to obtain insight into federal technology gaps and emerging needs. The demonstration and experimentation environment enabled a collaborative working relationship between government organizations and industry. The demonstration occurred in GPS-denied environments across New York City including tunnels, transit hubs and large commercial buildings. Thunderstorm 18-2 focused on a number of important new technologies including positioning and navigating in GPS-denied environments, real-time mapping of tunnels and buildings as well as visualization of location and mapping data to improve general situational awareness.
TRX’s NEON Personnel Tracker provides ubiquitous 3D tracking for personnel operating in areas where GPS is unavailable, in a solution easily integrated with 3rd party applications such as ATAK. NEON is based upon a suite of patented algorithms that fuses inertial sensor data, GPS (including resilient GPS sources), available map data and ranging technologies to deliver reliable GPS-denied location. At Thunderstorm 18-2, TRX Systems showcased NEON Personnel Tracker’s ability to improve safety and situational awareness in some of the most challenging GPS-denied environments in New York City by tracking personnel throughout deep subterranean environments, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority East Side Access, as well as an 80-story skyscraper.
The DoD-led demonstration garnered support across federal, state, and local governments as well as first responder organizations. “Thunderstorm provided realistic scenarios for us to demonstrate real-time mapping and tracking within challenging GPS-denied environments,” said Carol Politi, CEO of TRX Systems. “The opportunity to connect with and get live feedback from operational personnel is invaluable.”
About TRX Systems
TRX Systems is the developer of the NEON® Indoor Location Solution, delivering location and mapping indoors, underground and in dense urban areas where GPS is not available or is unreliable. NEON delivers ubiquitous, low-cost, 3D indoor location through the use of advanced sensor fusion, ranging, and patented dynamic mapping algorithms. NEON location technology provides the foundation for a number of commercial applications including NEON Personnel Tracker and NEON Signal Mapper. TRX is the recipient of the Silver Edison Award for Innovation in the Navigation and Robotics category, the Tibbetts Award given by the U.S. Small Business Administration for Innovation and Economic Impact of Research and Development, the TEDCO ICE Award for Corporate Excellence and the Innovator Award from the Chesapeake Regional Tech Counsel (CRTC). TRX’s indoor location software development has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Army, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). For more information, visit http://www.trxsystems.com.
