GPS World

Tag: Pole Star

  • PNT Roundup: Inertial, acoustic, lidar, Wi-Fi and beacon news

    Independence, redundancy at sea

    Acoustically aided inertial navigation technology will enable a specialized sea vessel maintain dynamic positioning through GNSS disruptions in challenging environments.

    Sonardyne Inc.‘s dual Ranger 2 Pro DP-INS systems aboard the ultra-light intervention vessel Brandon Bordelon will track remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) during inspection, repair and maintenance activities, providing an independent position reference for the ship’s Marine Technologies Class 2 dynamic positioning system.

    The Lodestar motion sensing instrument platform (attitude and heading reference system, or AHRS) is tightly integrated with Sonardyne’s acoustic positioning components, providing power and control of surface and subsea transceivers as well as instruments such as Doppler velocity logs. The seamless integration of acoustics and inertial technologies exploits the long-term accuracy and precision characteristics of acoustic positioning with the continuous availability and fast update rate from high-grade inertial sensors.

    Specialized vessels such as this normally rely on GNSS and ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustics as their primary sources of dynamic positioning reference data. However, a vessel’s station-keeping capability can be compromised if the USBL is affected by noise or thruster aeration and the GNSS signal is simultaneously interrupted. GNSS signal interruption is particularly common around Equatorial regions and during periods of high solar radiation.

    Wideband Acoustic. The integrated acoustic-inertial system addresses this vulnerability, exploiting the long-term accuracy of Sonardyne’s Wideband  2 acoustic signal technology with inertial measurements.

    The resulting navigation output can ride through short-term acoustic disruptions and is completely independent from GNSS.

    The equipment includes Sonardyne’s ship-mounted inertial navigation sensor and two HPT 7000 acoustic transceivers. The HPTs have been installed on the Brandon Bordelon through hull deployment poles and are optimized for tracking and dynamic positioning in ultra-deep water.

    The equipment includes three ring laser gyroscopes that measure the angular rate and three accelerometers that measure the specific force of the moving platform. The INS output is low noise and accurate in the short term, but degrades over time. Therefore, it must be seamlessly aided with complimentary acoustic positioning observations.

    Ranger 2 DP-INS uses a tightly coupled integration of range and bearing measurements from seabed transponders to aid the INS and control integration drift.

    Industry effort pushes beyond-LOS UAV flight

    At the International Lidar Mapping Forum in February, two organizations announced an industry consortium to push for removal of barriers to use of drones in long-distance inspections.

    The presentation by Sharper Shape and Edison Electronic Institute made the point that UAVs — specifically, lidar-equipped UAVs — offer potential for more frequent and more affordable inspection and data capture for overhead assets such as power lines. Currently, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations restrict commercial operations to visual line of sight (VLOS). The EEI Sharper Utility project will advocate for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights.

    The presentation explored such issues as:

    • Types of information obtainable during UAV inspections and how that information can be used to improve infrastructure and asset management programs.
    • How UAVs provide a cost-effective alternative to traditional inspection methods, and the critical factors contributing to cost-efficiency.
    • Why industry-wide coordinated effort is required to institute change.
    • Steps and the key principles to enable commercial-scale drone operations for the electricity industry.
    • Identification of stakeholders and the regulators.
    • The anticipated date of permitted BVLOS drone flights in U.S. utility inspections.

    The Eyes of Texas. In related news, Xcel Energy announced a UAV flight research and development mission that traveled beyond the operator’s line of sight during survey of a transmission line in the Canadian River Breaks region north of Amarillo, Texas, in early February. Two contractors piloted the lidar-equipped Vapor 55 drone. Xcel began using unmanned aircraft to visually inspect substations in 2015, and is the first utility to receive and use the FAA’s certificate of authorization to perform a mission for research and development purposes beyond visual line of sight.

    Xcel Energy inspects 320,000 miles of electricity and natural gas infrastructure, including more than 1,000 substations, gas regulator stations and dozens of major power plants in eight states. GPS World will carry further news of this flight in a subsequent issue.

    Indoor Nav at Vast Mobile World Congress

    Add Infrared Aiding in Retail Show

    A scalable indoor positioning hybrid technology from Pole Star of Toulouse, France, combining GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, and motion sensors, and MOCA of Barcelona, Spain, with a location-based mobile engagement platform, provided show navigation, guidance and tracking for the GSMA Mobile World Congress in February.

    The joint solution delivers three service levels that combine users’ geolocation with other data to provide expanded contextualized messages. As many as 95,000 show attendees — iOs and Android users alike — were guided through the 240,000 square meters (2.6 million square feet) of the FiraBarcelona, receiving personalized notifications from an intelligent recommendation system based on proximity.

    Using geofencing, the 2,200 exhibitors could interact with attendees and attract them to theirs booths. Finally, indoor location analytics enabled the event organizers to visualize and correlate behavior and preferences of attendees.

    Infrared. Pole Star also announced at the Retail Big Show in New York in January that it is integrating its NAO Campus indoor positioning technology with the Pricer Product Location solution based on Infrared trilateration. The combination will enable shoppers, once inside a store, to optimize their shopping route and be guided to the products and promotions they are looking for. Hyper-local targeting for shoppers and Indoor location-based analytics for retailers and brands are among the benefits touted.

    Pricer, based in Uppsala, Sweden, offers in-store automated product positioning using infrared (IR) communication, combined with tracking algorithms to calculate the position of its electronic shelf labels (ESLs). A typical Pricer label response signal is seen by multiple points in the communication network reading different signal strengths depending on the distance from the label.

    Automated in-store product positioning in retail is a “holy grail” for retailers, according to the company. By mapping in real time where the products are placed on the sales floor using the IR technology, companies can engage customers in the aisles, help customers find products and manage product placement compliance.

  • Pole Star, MOCA provide MWC 2016 with geolocation

    Pole Star, with its end-to-end scalable indoor solution, and MOCA, with its location-based mobile engagement platform, are the official providers for the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2016, being held Feb. 22-25 in Barcelona, Spain.

    Pole Star’s technology integrated with the MOCA solution provides visitors, exhibitors and organizers with geolocation and context-aware marketing services. The joint solution is based on three service levels that combine users’ geolocation with other data to expand the value of contextualized messages.

    The combination guides visitors through the 240,000 square meters of the Mobile World Congress, providing personalized notifications based on proximity along with an intelligent recommendation system aimed at enhancing networking efficiency.

    Using geofencing, the exhibitors will be able to interact with attendees and attract them to theirs booths.

    Finally, indoor location analytics brings a powerful analysis tool to the event organizer, providing the necessary knowledge to understand the behavior and preferences of attendees.

    Pole Star is exhibiting in Hall 5, Stand 5B41, French Tech Pavillon. MOCA is exhibiting in Hall 8.1, stand B75.

  • Mobile World Congress Sees Rise in Indoor Location Companies

    Kevin Dennehy
    Kevin Dennehy

    This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was the biggest ever, with 95,000 attendees and thousands of booths, conferences and people with sore feet walking a cavernous exhibition hall. While the Geneva Auto Show ran close to the same dates, connected vehicle companies and technology were prominently featured. What was interesting, however, was the rise of indoor positioning companies and mobile advertising agencies with interest in location.

    BARCELONA — Joining the 95,000 or so Mobile World Congress attendees were about three dozen companies who are offering indoor location and location advertising services. These companies have exhibited at previous conferences, but not in the numbers this year.

    At the huge Fira convention center where MWC was held March 2-5, Los Altos, Calif.-based Pole Star installed more than 600 beacons for indoor location. Visitors were able to be guided to booths and other areas through an interactive map. “Business was good in 2014, we sold 10,000 beacons. We are making money,” said Christian Carle, Pole Star CEO.

    One analyst said that the big change at MWC wasn’t the number of indoor positioning companies and demos, but the maturity and breadth of the technology. “Intel announced indoor positioning capabilities in their Wi-Fi chip, and had a demo that was very impressive. Many smaller companies that in past years were showing raw technology were showing polished solutions this year, such as Quuppa, MTI and Sensewhere, said Bruce Krulwich, Grizzly Analytics president, who has authored a report identifying 150 indoor positioning companies. “I definitely see a shake-out coming up, but it won’t be one technology prevailing over another. Different technologies meet different needs in the industry, and different technologies fit different sites. There are technologies that deliver universal indoor positioning, without any infrastructure or preparation, such as Wi-Fi multilateration and sensor fusion.”

    Krulwich said that there is a shake-out that’s already started because there are too many companies working on similar technologies. “Start-ups in the area that don’t have differentiating innovation, don’t have integration into retail or other back-end systems, and don’t have market penetration, are already finding themselves in a challenge. But companies with clear innovations and commercial deployments will do fine,” he said.

    United Kingdom-based Sensewhere is using crowdsourcing in its indoor positioning software. The software uses radios to scan for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to allow an IP location to reference the sources and form a location database.

    “It’s what we call the universal indoor positioning versus venue specific indoor positioning, which can work anywhere — we just need a crowd of people. Our target partners are handset manufacturers, network operators, social media, social network providers, and also chipset guys as well,” said Rob Palfreyman, Sensewhere CEO. “So, there are obviously a lot of companies like Google looking at venues; there is Micello and TomTom looking at add-ins in the indoor location, which is great news, but it just needs to have a technology that can drive the blue dot on their map, and we feel that Sensewhere is the right place to provide that blue dot because of the crowdsourcing global nature of our approach.”

    One company, which has developed a popular mobile game, is using its network to attract advertisers for its location-based ad platform. “We already have the infrastructure in place because of our mobile game. With our platform, we can allow advertisers to launch campaigns using our beacon signals and geofencing,” said Pedro Jahara, CEO of Brazil-based RevMob.

    New location technology like the ability to track SIM cards was rolled out at MWC. W-Locate, which is partnering with Morpho in Thailand, is tracking SIM cards with its XimLoc product, which the company said is more accurate indoors than other technology.

    Even such companies as Geotab, which is a strong player in the fleet market, are leveraging MWC to continue a foothold in the European market. The company displayed its IOX-CAN system that can send data from a mobile device to the MyGeotab system, which can be viewed an analyzed by fleet managers, said Maria Sotra, Geotab marketing manager.

    Geotab also partnered with Telefonica in November 2014 to focus efforts in Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, Sotra said.

    At MWC, location-based advertising market is gaining traction as advertisers are seeing the benefit of locating and attracting customers. New York-based xAd said it has doubled its revenue for the second year. “We have billions of mobile ads processed and billions of ad impressions. The company is profitable,” said Dipanshu Sharma, xAd founder and CEO.

    He said the company has expanded into France and Germany and added China to its global ad network.

    Another company that is using location technology as a differentiator is Airpush, which had another big presence at MWC. The company’s Abstract Banners was a big draw to attendees. Location, particularly geofenced areas, have created a call to action for consumers, which is attractive to advertisers, said Cameron Peeples, Airpush vice president of marketing.

    Connected Car Still Big Opportunity at MWC

    Although the Geneva Auto Show was starting as the MWC was ending, there were still several big announcements by connected car companies in Barcelona. Even the well-publicized Samsung S6 and S6 Edge and HTC One M9 handset rollouts included Mirrorlink, the connected vehicle standard from the Connected Car Consortium.

    In another big announcement, Audi and AT&T said that all 2016 model vehicles equipped with Audi connect will come with the carrier’s 4G LTE or 3G coverage. This increase in services is big because the auto giant just rolled out 4G AT&T service in Audi A3s last year.

    AT&T selected Airbiquity to provide end-user registration and device management connected vehicle services for select customer programs. “Airbiquity will deliver these services to AT&T using our Choreo cloud-based connected vehicle services delivery platform and project management, engineering, and operations teams,” said David Jumpa, Airbiquity chief revenue officer. “This is a ‘white label’ agreement whereby AT&T will integrate Airbiquity’s service delivery capability into AT&T’s connected vehicle customer solutions.”

    Another location company is making huge inroads in connected vehicle markets with its Glympse for Autos product. Glympse will be installed in select Volkswagen and Peugeot models through MirrorLink, said Bryan Trussel, company co-founder and CEO.

    The app allows users to share location from their vehicle by setting the recipient and timer, and hitting send. The company has a similar app for Gogo inflight aviation networks to allow a person on the ground to know where an airplane is for picking up passengers.

    In other connected car news, Accenture is providing Fiat Chrysler Automobiles the capability of in-car, Internet-based services. Starting with the new Fiat 500X, Uconnect Live services, which was co-developed by Accenture, will power an infotainment system that offers music and news services, social network access, the ability to monitor driving style and a range of diagnostic services.

    Accenture also partnered with Visa for an IoT-based connected car commerce test. At MWC, the company tested a scenario where drivers could order food from the car using cellular, Bluetooth and beacon connectivity. Accenture deployed a similar system with BMW’s ConnectedDrive, which allows customers to choose services in real time for a vehicle.

    Health Market Even Has Location Potential

    Niche location applications are growing as Internet of Things, or IoT, markets start to grow. One company taking advantage of the mobile market is Annapolis, Md.-based TCS, which featured its VirtuMedix platform in its MWC booth.

    The platform is tailored to emergency physicians as part of the growing market for video telemedicine products and mobile health, said Jay Whitehurst, TCS commercial software group president. “It’s already saving lives,” he said of the platform, which combines encryption, navigation, mapping and messaging.

    While the product, now being rolled out in a North Carolina emergency medicine group, provides patients with an alternative to urgent care centers and emergency rooms, it also can be used for longer term cases such as assisted living and rehab centers, the company said.

    Whitehurst said TCS has made several company acquisitions that have played a part in new product rollouts, which include the company’s Trusted Location. The application allows financial firms, online gaming companies and others to identify and prevent credit-card fraud. The application identifies and validates a device’s location worldwide.

    In other Mobile World Congress news:

    • Spirent said its simulators have the capability to evaluate Wi-Fi Offload and Wi-Fi performance of mobile devices on its test framework. The new product allows companies to test multiple devices on a single unit to cover Wi-Fi/LTE mobility and interoperability. The testing is important in light of wireless carriers’ strategy to extend VoLTE in areas where cell coverage is limited, said Saul Einbinder, Spirent vice president, venture development.
    • Google Waze said its Google Mobile Service (GMS) will be available as a preinstall option on mobile devices. OEMs and carriers can preinstall the app on their handsets so consumers can use the service immediately, the company said.
    • Trimble’s ALK said its ALK Maps and route visualization software is now available in Europe. ALK Maps, launched in the United States in 2012, allows users to overlay routing, geocoding points, weather and other features, the company said.

  • Pole Star Offers ‘in the Box’ Indoor Location Platform

    Pole Star has launched its new indoor location platform, NAO Cloud. NAO Cloud simplifies the deployment of indoor location solutions by introducing an automated deployment process that dramatically reduces time-to-market and the costs of indoor location-based services, Pole Star said.

    NAO Cloud integrates the NAO Campus Software Deployment Kit (SDK), and enables customers and partners to deploy NAO Campus, Pole Star’s indoor location solution, in just a few hours, by using cloud-based software tools as well as positioning databases already available and shared by worldwide partner program members.

    In addition, third parties will have access to NAO Cloud’s crowdsourcing capabilities, eliminating field interventions for a simpler, faster and more affordable deployment and maintenance process, Pole Star said. Behavioral analytics or geofencing are also supported by NAO Cloud to maximize the monetization of value added location-based services.

    The NAO Cloud platform targets a wide range of businesses such as venue owners, advertising platform providers, application developers, global solution integrators or network operators. NAO Cloud makes deployment, integration in mobile apps and maintenance of indoor positioning services a simple process, from a single venue to a worldwide multi-site coverage, Pole Star said.

    “The indoor location services market has reached maturity. Multi-venue owners, marketing agencies and major telcos understand the challenges and the value of hyper-local information and real-time interactions with customers and related Indoor Location Analytics. Indoor positioning is the core technology that brings high value,” said Christian Carle, CEO of Pole Star. “NAO Cloud is the result of years of innovation and deep market experience through very large and complex field deployments around the world.”

    In 2012, Pole Star achieved several major innovation milestones, such as the integration of Bluetooth Low Energy and Inertial Sensors in its NAO Campus fusion engine, in addition to Map Data, Wi-Fi and GPS signals. The dynamic combination of these technologies provides today the best indoor location performance results in the market, while addressing any type of building and minimizing network infrastructure, deployment and maintenance costs, Pole Star said.

    The NAO Campus solution is now available for more than 80% of the smartphone market, compliant with Android and iPhone devices and embedded in consumer applications on the Google Play Marketplace and the Apple App Store.

    Today, Pole Star’s indoor location solutions have been deployed in more than 43 million square feet, in 15 countries such as airports (Paris Charles de Gaulle), shopping centers in Europe and North-America, museums and department stores. In 2011, Pole Star opened its North American headquarters in Palo Alto and has expanded its international presence in 2012, building deep partnerships with companies in Europe, North-America, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. Finally, at the end of 2012, in time for the holiday season, Pole Star launched, its “living lab” mobile application, Mall Buddy, that covers 9 of the biggest malls in Silicon Valley, from San Francisco to San Jose and demonstrates the worldwide extension capability of Indoor location services.