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Farmers ‘crippled’ by satellite failure as GPS-guided tractors grind to a halt
- fanf2 4y agoThis article doesn’t make sense because Inmarsat-41 is not a GPS satellite, so the farm equipment must have been relying on it for something other than “their GPS signal”. It would be nice to know what that something was, so that similar single points of failure can be avoided in the future.
- boringg 4y agoHope they have insurance thats covers GPS failure...
- uniqueuid 4y agoIt's kind of surprising that single satellites can still be so crucial, given that we have at least three operational navigation systems which phones can easily use (GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo). Are those not all truly global?
- abfan1127 4y agoWhile these may be truly global, I don't know that all "GPS" satellites are. They reference a specific brand of satellites. Their website mentions that this satellite only services the asian pacific region.
- bluGill 4y agoThis is a navigation satellite, it is a communication satellite that sends information you cannot get via GPS. The speed of light in the atmosphere is not a constant, this satellite is sending corrections so you can account for that (that is there is some other GPS 'near' you, at a known location, and then it compares where GPS says it is to where it really is and you subtract that difference).
- pinewurst 4y agoWhat does Inmarsat (failed sat is Inmarsat-4 F1) have to do with the GPS constellation which is US Government operated?
- causi 4y agoKatie McRobert, general manager at the Australia Farm Institute, said Australian farmers sourced their GPS signal from one satellite, which was a critical risk to rural industries. All that went out the window when the Inmarsat-41 satellite signal failed. Can somebody who actually knows what happened fill us in? Because saying you depended on one satellite for GPS makes no sense. Based on the article as-written, this is headline is wildly misleading. The tractor failure has fuck-all to do with GPS. It sounds like their satellite data link failed and the tractors shut down without a control signal.
- tivert 4y ago> Can somebody who actually knows what happened fill us in? Because saying you depended on one satellite for GPS makes no sense. I have no real knowledge of this, but maybe they were relying on that satellite to transmit DGPS corrections for their region or something, to improve accuracy. Edit: Found this while replying to a now-deleted comment: Even if it's not exactly DGPS, it seems like it's some kind of accuracy-improvement service: https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-04-18/inmarsat-i-4f1-satelite-outage-asia-pacific-gps-farms/102234678 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-04-18/inmarsat-i-4f1-...: > He has got a workaround for now, using the old free-to-air GPS that is a lot less accurate, but he said he was disappointed with the lack of information on the outage. IIRC, regular GPS positions have an error of at least a few meters, which is not good enough if you're trying to plant crops. Edit2: Just digging around, I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNSS_augmentation#Satellite-based_augmentation_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNSS_augmentation#Satellite-ba... > The Australian SBAS [Satellite-based augmentation system] using Inmarsat 41, which famously suffered a failure in April 2023.[6][7]
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- Animats 4y agoIt's a commercial GPS correction service. It corrects for atmospheric conditions which affect RF propagation slightly. There are many ground stations which receive GPS. They send correction info to an uplink station which rebroadcasts corrections using a geosync satellite. These services are regional, not worldwide, since they need ground stations and a geosync satellite with the right coverage. It's not free; there's a substantial subscription charge. Here's one that works in the US.[1] We used Novatel's for the DARPA Grand Challenge 20 years ago. [1] https://novatel.com/products/gps-gnss-correction-services/terrastar-correction-services https://novatel.com/products/gps-gnss-correction-services/te...
- blantonl 4y agoNote that this isn't a GPS failure, it's a failure with Inmarsat's Satellite-based Augmentation Systems (SBAS), which supplements GPS data with signal measurement errors corrections. This allows for centimeter level positioning.
- causi 4y agoInteresting that whatever technology underlies the SBAS system isn't just integrated into GPS. It would be nice to be able to map property lines with just my phone.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoWe don’t want other countries weapons guided by our gps satellites!
- LeifCarrotson 4y agoThis isn't 1993 anymore. Beidou and Glonass (and Galileo) are global networks that do the same things for those other countries, and the ITAR restrictions on GPS receiver altitude and velocity are increasingly able to be overcome by a hobbyist in a garage, much less a nation-state.
- bluGill 4y agoIt doesn't matter - the speed of light in air varies by enough that no satellite can provide the needed accuracy alone.
- fsh 4y agoNot quite. Geodetic GNSS systems use two different carrier frequencies to measure and correct for atmospheric dispersion. This reduces the error to sub-mm levels. The inaccuracy of real-time GNSS is due to unknown variations of the satellite orbits, satellite clocks, and earth rotation.
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- tick_tock_tick 4y agoThe article says GPS but it looks like they are using a special satellite by Inmarsat rather then the USA military GPS. I've very unclear why they are using this one specifically rather then GPS or GNSS. Or even a combo if the Inmarsat has uniquely good properties?
- LinuxBender 4y agoAs others mentioned this sounds unrelated to GPS. Have any colleges been working on a local and self hosted server / transceiver to control tractors and remove this single point of success? Maybe even take GPS out of the equation by having perimeter or fence-line beacons to create a virtual map for the tractor? Bonus if someone made a kit to retrofit old tractors. I could have some fun with my 1947 Fordson 2N driving itself.
- myself248 4y agoI can't imagine relying on private SBAS when DIY RTK is so cheap and easy now. Sparkfun will set you up with your own base station hardware for under $1000, I wonder what a year of inmarsat corrections costs.
- michaelt 4y agoHistorically (perhaps prices have come down a lot in the last decade with the introduction of the L5 signal?) getting RTK corrections from a third party meant you only needed one $20,000 receiver, instead of two.
- myself248 4y agoYeah, um, I have a base+rover pair, with the base set up in my kitchen window and the rover on my quadcopter, for around $600 total... no internet required, no corrections source, all the math done inside the F9P itself by default, or offboard with rtklib if I'm feeling masochistic... It's gotten incredibly affordable.
- gravitronic 4y agoWhat an insane dependency tree, that driving a truck in a field to plant some seeds requires a computer operating in space. I really hope there is a push-back on this unbounded complexity. Mind boggling.
- albatross13 4y agoYou should start your own farm and scale it to feed tens of millions of people, simply by driving a truck in a field :)
- salawat 4y agoCounterpoint: 10's of millions of people are wandering around with absolutely no conception of where their food comes from, and whether there is anything they need to do to keep it that way. I see this as a bug, not a feature.
- jasonpeacock 4y agoThey aren't driving a truck, the truck is driving itself and is guided by a high-resolution GPS-like service. Providing a high-resolution GPS-like service at affordable scale is not simple.
- thebooktocome 4y agoI think a more charitable read of OP is that you don’t need a satellite (or even GPS) to provide centimeter-accurate localization over a wide area. Spacebound systems are always going to have worse uptime and less resiliency than ground ones.
- klyrs 4y agoOne can imagine planting a few posts at the corners of a field with a few dollars worth of radio equipment each, and getting higher resolution without relying on satellite. Reading other comments here, it seems that these exist, in tandem with GPS, to get absolute positioning. But I don't see why absolute positioning would be needed; relative positioning should suffice.
- yardie 4y agoThis is not the USDOD GPS. This is Inmarsat's DGPS service that provides ~1-2cm accuracy. Which, if you're driving between rows of produce can be the difference between harvesting or crushing crops. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS
- polishdude20 4y agoWhat's stopping farmers form getting better local location determination by using RTK stations around their field instead?
- cellularmitosis 4y agoCertain manufacturers fighting against right-to-repair certainly stymies potential third-party hacks / upgrades, such as your suggestion.
- RandallBrown 4y agoJohn Deere appears to sell an RTK system. https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-technology/guidance/mobile-rtk/ https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-te...
- nas 4y agoNothing insurmountable. You need a receiver that supports RTK. Typically the hardware receiver can do it but you have pay to unlock the functionality (typically about 3000 USD per device). You need an RTK base station (or one you can use that's not too far away) and a way to get the correction signal (local radio system or over Internet with cellular data). With DGPS corrections, like you get with the satellite that failed, you get about 10 cm positional accuracy. For dryland crop farming, that's often good enough. It is more accurate than what most human operators can achieve and reduces operator fatigue. So many ag GPS systems are setup to use it out of the box. There are other solutions, in addition to RTK. Trimble has "CenterPoint". There are Omnistar corrections (different sats, better accuracy than DGPS). Novatel has "GLIDE" but I've never seen it in use.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoYou can put devices in the field that substitute for the GPS satellites. But you have to know where the device is! So it'd have to have been installed before the outage.
- Animats 4y agoThat used to be done. They're called "psuedolites". You'd put one somewhere on your property. It listens to the GPS satellites, and over a few hours, gets its own location very accurately by averaging error. Then it rebroadcasts a correction signal to cooperating GPS receivers nearby. Some airports have used these. They're called "ground based augmentation systems" in aviation. There are agricultural versions. Deere sells some.[1] They call this "RTK". [1] https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-technology/guidance/rtk-radio-900/ https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-te...
- skybrian 4y agoThe article is from two days ago. Here's another article saying the satellite is at least partially back online? I don't know if that helps farmers, though. > Inmarsat’s aircraft safety and other L-band satcom services for the Asia-Pacific region are operable again, following an outage of the firm’s I-4 F1 satellite which forced operators to switch to high frequency (HF) radio. The news comes as a relief to operators, pilots, aviation enthusiasts and tech-savvy flyers. > London-based Inmarsat explains in a fresh update today that the L-band satellite “suffered a partial loss of power” which invoked automatic procedures on the satellite that led to the suspension of services for East Asia and the Pacific region starting at 21.14 UTC on Sunday 16 April. https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2023/04/inmarsat-safety-services-returning-for-asia-pacific-after-satellite-outage/ https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2023/04/inmarsat-safety-servic...
- skybrian 4y agoAnother article: > The British satellite Inmarsat I-4 F1, which provides services for East Asia and the Pacific regions, is back in operation after an outage on Sunday. > The incident is prompting farmers and industry groups to examine their backup systems for the technology they are using. Questions raised about reliance of satellite technology for farming after Inmarsat I-4 F1 outage https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-04-19/inmarsat-i-4-f1-satellite-operating-again-after-outage/102239674 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-04-19/inmarsat-i-4-f1...
- oakwhiz 4y agoThis seems like a great use for having a differential RTK GPS receiver at a known good location at the edge of a property. Once it's set up, the moving receiver can use the stationary receiver as a source of correction instead of relying on SBAS or WAAS.
- bluGill 4y agoSo long as the known location GPS has power, hasn't been hit by lightening, hasn't be stolen by local kids, and the radio signal can reach your GPS (this is a big one - some farmers do this, but they have one GPS at home and sometimes it cannot reach all the fields), or any other the other things that can go wrong.
- fsckboy 4y agoI'm a little too lazy to read the article (I'm not super interested, and I'm sure experts are solving the problem as we speak) but I'm curious about "gentle degradation" or "fail-safe" modes: If the satellite/location correction data is not available, does the positioning just get worse by (I think I read) 4%, or did they not anticipate this type of failure and the equipment is actually stuck and useless?
- michaelt 4y agoThe tractor can always be driven by hand. Tractors have not literally "ground to a halt". The systems that have failed are those using GPS with differential corrections, which achieve ~2cm accuracy for 'precision agriculture' (tractor auto-steer, making efficient use of chemicals by only spraying them precisely on the plant, etc) The degradation is they now only have normal GPS which is accurate to within a few meters - but that's useless for precision agriculture.
- eschneider 4y agoThis is literally my day job. It's a gentle degradation.
- pstuart 4y agoWould it not be possible to do a DIY with a collection of mapped stationary transmitters? It's not like it needs to learn about anything outside the farm in question.
- fortysixdegrees 4y agoIn the unlikely event any Aussie or NZ farmers are reading this, it costs less than $1k to setup your own base station and transmit corrections via a number of RF links. One base station is good to a radius of about 60km, so not enough for large ranches but fine for crops. You can setup as many as you need, then no reliance on L band SBAS
- jabradoodle 4y agoIt's terrifying to think what could happen with a mass coronal ejection or some other catastrophic event. When you see events like this and the Ever Given incident. We've built a very complex distributed system that lacks resiliency in some very serious ways.
- cellularmitosis 4y agoThis is perhaps a hyperbolic. Self-driving tractors can always be driven by hand when needed.
- ChatGTP 4y agoNitpicking maybe but in the event described, a lot of people would need to start doing things they’ve never done before, like driving super large tractors ?
- JasserInicide 4y agoDriving the tractors is pretty far down on the things to worry about if a CME happens where every electrical grid on the planet would be down for months
- cellularmitosis 4y agoThanks, I misunderstood.
- fortysixdegrees 4y agoIve been working with GNSS for the last decade and a bit, and this article and the comments here are a low point for HN in terms of people making comments about stuff they dont understand. PSA: if you want to learn about corrected GNSS, stop reading this thread now. I started replying to some comments then gave up, most here are more wrong than right.
- fsh 4y agoPhysics articles are even worse. Commenters on HN are mostly science-illiterate but have very strongly held opinions.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoThis place selects for confident contrarian takes based on superficial knowledge. I get really annoyed by how in nearly any physics or cosmology post, half the comments are a bunch of people smugly declaring that dark matter is just an imaginary fudge factor added by lazy dishonest scientists.
- wepple 4y agoDo you have any suggested resources? It deeply fascinated me but books seem either highly specific or academic
- fortysixdegrees 4y agoYes 100%. Get a ublox F9P board and antenna. Couple hundred dollars. Set it up to do RTK using public CORS base stations (will give you 2cm apx accuracy). You will get a kick out of it. Then next level is grab the latest rtklib, and do PPP processing. The RTK step is simple and will boost your motivation to learn more. PPP is also easy to setup, but there are many things you can take to make it more accurate. Each one you will learn about something new. Satellite clock corrections, position corrections, ionosphere and troposphere modelling, receiver dynamics, tidal loading, wind up, etc. List goes on a lot Once you've done that you'll have a 'feel' for it. From there you'll find your own resources based on what most interests you And yea, it is fascinating. I'm not bored of it after all this time. New stuff keeps coming out. SSR is super interesting right now
- ineedasername 4y agoIt amazes me that we’ve been able to fine tune optimal agricultural practices to the point the a GPS system is a key tool in precision & optimized land usage.
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- phendrenad2 4y agoSeems like GPS is a bad fit for this problem, really. Farm fields are flat. Put up some flashing lights in the corners of a field and use cameras to find them and adjust your position. Done.
- softgrow 4y agoJust got an email from Geoscience Australia. "SouthPAN services in Australia and New Zealand are back online and available to users, as the service outage affecting SouthPAN users via Inmarsat I-4F1 Satellite has now been rectified." Also at top of SouthPAN page https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/positioning-navigation/positioning-australia/about-the-program/southpan https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/positioning-navigati... As a keen OpenStreetmapper I'm always interested in improvement to accuracy. However its a two edge sword as I found out when I got a L1/L5 mouse receiver. A whole bunch of street centrelines locally are out by 1-2m which is seriously annoying when you know about it.
- bennettnate5 4y ago"Grind to a halt" is an awful overstatement here. They should really be saying "farmers lose 4% efficiency boost from downed GPS system" instead. I worry there's a serious misconception in the discussion of this article on the current utility of these GPS systems. It's not like Interstellar, where farm equipment can run unattended--you still need a worker in the tractor to perform the turns at each corner and monitor any deficiencies in the seeder/sprayer. I grew up on a farm growing the crops listed in this article. We didn't get GPS guidance on any of our tractors until the early 2010's--GPS is a convenience, not a dependency. If GPS systems were malfunctioning, we would revert to the way we had planted for decades: drive in a straight line towards the next n'th fence post over at each turn.