PLANS 2004 Technical Program Synopsis

The PLANS 2004 conference was held in Monterey on April 26 though April 29^th, 2004.  The conference was attended by 319 people from a wide variety of companies and countries. The PLANS 2006 conference will be held April 24^th through April 27^th, 2006, with at conference registration beginning on April 23^rd, 2006.

The Technical Program Committee consisted of:

Program Chair:  Chuck Bye, Honeywell
Program Advisor:  Brian Norling, MEMS Precision Technology
Program Advisor:  Neal Barnett, ARL/PSU, Navigation R&D Center

The first day of the conference was dedicated to tutorials. A total of eight tutorials were offered. A wide range of topics were covered in the tutorials. The tutorials that were presented at the conference are:

1.     MEMS Inertial Technology: A Short Course, Ralph Hopkins

2.     Navigation and Man, Marvin May

3.     Fundamental Issues Affecting GPS/INS Integrations, G. Jeffrey Geier

4.     Navigation System Test and Evaluation, Athanison Monroe

5.     GPS Protection Toolbox: Picking the Right Technology for Interference Suppression, Dr. Ira M. Weiss and Allen W. Morrison

6.     It’s About Time, Dr. Demetrios Matsakis

7.     Low-Cost Inertial Finally! From MEMS to NAV Systems, James L. Farrell, Ph.D.

8.  Introduction to Optical Rotation Sensing, Robert Dahlgren, M.S.

The final three days of the conference were dedicated to the technical program. The technical program was divided into four tracks, with 21 technical sessions, one workshop, and one panel discussion. The tracks and track chair were:

A.    Inertial Sensing Technology, Kenneth Marino, Northrop Grumman

B.    Inertial Navigation Applications, Mike Johnnie, Northrop Grumman, NSD

C.    Global Navigation Systems, Len Jacobson, GSAM Inc.

D.    Future Navigation Systems and Applications, Steven P. Fleischut, Penn State

The published conference proceedings contained a total of 108 papers and approximately 100 papers were presented at the conference. The technical papers contained valuable technical information and the presentations were well received and provided additional insight into the papers. From published and presented papers, six were selected to receive awards. The papers that received the awards were: 

Walter Fried Best Paper

Autonomous Deployment of a Self-Calibrating Pseudolite Array for Mars Rover Navigation, Masayoshi Matsuoka, Aerospace Robotics Laboratory, Stanford Univ.; Stephen M Rock, Aerospace Robotics Laboratory, Stanford University; Maria G Bualat, NASA Ames Research Center.

Best Student Paper

Robust Airborne Navigation Algorithms for SRGPS, Moon-Beom Heo, Illinois Institute of Technology; Sam P Pullen, Stanford University; Jennifer D Gautier, Stanford University; Per Enge, Stanford University; Boris Pervan, Illinois Institute of Technology; Demoz Gebre-Egziabher, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Track 1 Best Paper

Progress in Integrated Gyroscopes, John A Geen, Analog Devices Inc.

Track 2 Best Paper

An Unscented Kalman Filter for In-Motion Alignment of Low Cost IMUs, Eun-Hwan Shin, The University of Calgary; Naser El-Sheimy, The University of Calgary.

Track 3 Best Paper

Multipath Mitigation in the Frequency Domain, Yujie Zhang, Ohio University; Chris G. Bartone, Ohio University.

Track 4 Best Paper

LOCO GPSI: Preserve the GPS Advantage for Defense and Security, Kenneth S Simonsen, SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego; Mark L Suycott, SAIC; Robert K. Crumplar, Whitney, Bradley & Brown, Inc.; John Wohlfiel, FALON, Inc.