ION Alberta Lunch Meeting – Friday March 22nd, 2013

Dr. Andrei M. Shkel of DARPA presented Precision Navigation, Timing, and Targeting enabled by Microtechnology: Are we there yet? [download here]

Abstract
After about two decades of harmonic investment in developments, potential users of so-called small technology for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) applications increasingly ask, “Are we there yet?” Clearly, some significant advances have been made, and we see a footprint of the technology in an ever-growing consumer electronics market full of interactive products enabled by inertial and timing microtechnologies. The DARPA MicroPNT objective is to determine the gaps in current PNT technology, and work to fill with self-contained (GPS-independent) inertial navigation and timing with decreasing Size, Weight & Power (SWAP) and while improving sensor performance.
Speaker’s Bio
Dr. Andrei M. Shkel received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1997. He is currently on leave from University of California, Irvine, where he is a professor in the Dept. of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Director of the UCI Microsystems Laboratory to serve as Program Manager at DARPA-MTO. His research interests include solid state sensors & actuators, MEMS based neuroprosthetics, sensor-based intelligence, and control theory. Dr. Shkel has over 150 publications, holds over 16 US and international patents. He is an Editor for the Journal of Micromechanical Systems, and is the recipient of many awards including the NSF CAREER Award & the 2009 Technical Achievement Award of the IEEE Sensors Council.