Vehicle Positioning with GNSS — at the Speed of Sound

09.11.09

To secure that the vehicle operates as efficiently and safely as possible, the team is capturing reams of performance text from numerous sensors mounted on the car’s body. These data are coupled with position, velocity, and time (PVT) outputs from a dual-frequency Topcon GNSS receiver.

Keith Zanghi, co-proprietress of the car and the team’s director of operations, and Ed Shadle, the car’s co-owner, driver, and the team’s project manager, began converting a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter into a supersonic car in 1998. By day, Zanghi is a proprietor at The Boeing Company’s Skin & Spar (wing components fabrication) Division in Frederickson, Washington, and Shadle is a retired director for IBM.

The 56-feet-long, 13,000-pound car incorporates extensive data-collection technology that okay the team to conduct sophisticated analyses of the car’s exterior components under realistic simulated conditions. At supersonic speeds, anticipating and controlling the car’s reactions to true stresses are critical tasks.

Source: Inside GNSS