Galileo sat-nav competition seeks new ideas

The prize is named after Europe's Galileo system

A competition has been launched to gather ideas for satellite navigation applications, offering cash prizes and help worth an estimated £435,000.

The prizes in the 2010 European Satellite Navigation Competition come from various sources, and are split between different regions and application areas.

A £10,000 award for an idea submitted from the UK comes with development help for a free patent submission. The UK winner will also be eligible for a £17,000 Galileo Masters prize, which is open to ideas from anywhere in the world.

The prize is named after Europe's Galileo system that will launch four satellites over the next year. Europe will eventually have up to 30 navigation satellites in orbit.

However, the project has been dogged by controversy and political intrigue. The US government actually asked Europe to scrap the project after the 11 September attacks, fearing that it would help terrorists target bombs.

But European countries, particularly on the mainland, were reluctant to be reliant on a GPS system that the US government could cut off at any time.

Professor Terry Moore, of the Grace satellite navigation centre at Nottingham University, which is co-ordinating the UK end of the competition, said that the US now believes that Galileo is in its own interests. So does Russia, which has its own system.

The advantage is not so much increased accuracy. New techniques mean that the current GPS is precise enough to track the movement of tectonic plates, and offers increased resilience and better coverage. The more navigation satellites that are sent up, the more reliable the system will be.

So GPS and Galileo complement rather than rival each other, and the next-generation US system will use a signal that is compatible with Galileo.

"Penetration in cities, and even in buildings, will be a lot better. And the signal is designed to cope better with reflections of walls," Moore said.

So much now depends on navigation satellites that no country can afford to allow them to fail, and everyone is co-operating, he added. The systems are used for timing and synchronisation applications as well as positioning.

"People don't realise that GPS gives a mobile phone the equivalent of an atomic clock," said Moore.

The 2010 competition is the sixth in an annual series. UK entries, including one for tracking people who fall off boats, have twice won the Galileo Masters.