00:00 Wide
shot - National Space Centre, Leicester
Medium
of Rocket in Centre tower
Pull
wide from tower to show Dr Chris Hill walk into shot
Medium
wide - Dr Hill with GPS receiver
c.u.
GPS receiver sign
Dr
Hill using GPS receiver
c.u.
stylus onto screen
Dr
Hill reflected in GPS screen
c.u.
Space Centre on PDS screen
Guide Voice: This is the UK's National Space
Centre in Leicester; an educational facility and research centre
dedicated to the subject of space science - the perfect location
for a display on Satellite Navigation as assembled by research
staff at the nearby University of Nottingham.
Chris Hill, one of the Nottingham Research Team, knows exactly
where he is - because he's using a GPS unit to check his position.
So what, exactly, is GPS?
00:27 SOT: Dr. David Park, Senior Research Fellow,
IESSG, University of Nottingham. – “GPS
stands for Global Positioning System, and it's an American
constellation of satellites orbiting the Earth continuously
transmitting a signal down to Earth. And a user with a
receiver costing less than a hundred pounds can attain their
position to an accuracy of about five to ten metres anywhere on the
planet.”
00:44 Pull
out from satellite to reveal globe (model)
Woman
at Satellite Navigation exhibit
c.u.
sequence, woman answering questions on display
Pull
out from display screen to show woman
Guide Voice: Funded by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council the exhibition at the Space Centre
aims to raise public awareness of satellite navigation and its
increasing importance in everyday life.
Originally developed for, and still used by, the military; GPS
is increasingly in use by the scientific and civilian industrial
communities. It is used to navigate ships, to track freight
shipments, for surveying and mapping and a host of other
applications.
01:11 SOT: Dr. Park – “More and
more folk are seeing GPS coming as standard on their cars,
they’re using it perhaps for hill walking, some of them are
probably seeing this, you know, on their television, military
conflict such as Iraq, rightly or wrongly we’re seeing this
technology more and more in the news around us. And although
not everyone has to know exactly how it works or why its doing what
it's doing, I think we will, over the coming few years see more and
more people just say, wait a minute, I know what GPS, I’ve
heard of that, what does it mean what does it do for me? How is it
benefiting me?”
01:39 Wide
shot – man reading display material
c.u.
Satellite display panel
c.u.
high end GPS receiver
c.u
and pull out medium range GPS receivers
pull
out on GPS ariel
c.u.
map on GPS receiver
Focus
pull – wrist worn GPS receiver
Pan
across budget GPS receivers
Guide Voice: Questions like these are what
Nottingham's Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy
hopes to help people understand. The IESSG lead the world in many
areas of both scientific and commercial research and has done so
since its establishment.
Its latest development in the field of Satellite positioning is
GRINGO - or GPS Rinex Generator; a programme developed to analyze
full range of data from low budget GPS receivers, increasing their
degree of accuracy from metres to centimetres.
02:11: Dr Chris Hill, Principal Officer, IESSG
– “Gringo is a data logging program that
we’ve written to record the raw data from a range of GPS
receivers, the same raw measurement data which is used by the
manufacturers of those receivers to produce real time coordinates
with an accuracy of five to ten metres. We use that data once
its been recorded, we post process it off-line to produce
coordinates with an accuracy of a few centimetres.”
02:50 Budget
GPS receiver attached to Laptop computer
"Gringo"
application start-up window
Dr
Hill at Laptop computer
c.u.
Dr Hill
c.u.
map detail on screen
Wide
– Dr Hill with computer and GPS receiver
c.u.
hand on computer mouse
c.u.
map detail on screen
Screen
showing completed map
Guide Voice: This technology opens up the field
of GPS surveying, previously the domain of much more expensive
professional GPS equipment. As a result, organisations that have a
need to carry out accurate locating work, such as Local
Authorities, and training establishments, will be able to do so
within their limited budgets - producing detailed mapping like this
orienteering example for Eastwood Hall in Derbyshire, England.
03:00 SOT: Dr. Hill– “In the
future what we'd like to do is make this a real capability.
Currently we can only record the data and process it
off-line. What we'd like to do is enable users to use this
technology to record their positions in real time, so they could
use it for setting out or real time mapping.”
02:50 Pull
out from globe in Space Centre
Medium
wide of people looking at Satellite Navigation display
Guide Voice: Gringo is an obvious breakthrough
in widening the application of GPS technology. What does Dr Park
think the future holds for satellite positioning?
03:00 SOT: Dr. Park–
“For the everyday person on the street, you're going to
see GPS or some sort of satellite positioning system - it might be
GPS it might be others - becoming ubiquitous. Probably every
electronics product that you buy, certainly in 10 to 20 years time
will certainly contain some kind of positioning system, every
vehicle that you drive in - whether it's your car, a lorry that's
carrying goods for you, a ship taking you on holiday, an aircraft
taking you overseas, will have satellite positioning in it.
This whole awareness of the public, the issue of spatial awareness,
"where are things, where am I in relation to things", the
value added services related to that knowledge, will become endemic
throughout community I think.”
04:04 End
