Northrop Grumman announced an award for a phase three navigation system related contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to continue improving geo-registration accuracy for positioning and pointing applications for the nation’s war fighters.
"We continue to refine our new positioning and geo-registration solution to offer greater situational awareness to war fighters, especially in GPS-denied situations," said Charles Volk, vice president, Advanced Navigation Systems business unit, Northrop Grumman.
Under the first two phases of the Maintain Accurate Geo-registration via Image-nav Compensation (MAGIC) program, the aerospace and defense manufacturer integrated geo‑registration algorithms in a vision-aided inertial navigation system. Geo-registration of data provides critical interaction between systems, such as locating targets and handing off coordinates of depicted items to other aircraft.
Improved geo-registration allows aircraft to create more accurate maps by stitching together photos and correlating them with their geographic location for use in intelligence gathering and targeting, according to Northrop.