GPS World

Tag: Starling positioning engine

  • Swift travels across US with Skylark lane-level positioning

    Swift travels across US with Skylark lane-level positioning

    Swift’s first-of-its-kind, cross-continental drive demonstrates the performance of Skylark. (Image: Swift Navigation)
    Swift’s first-of-its-kind, cross-continental drive demonstrates the performance of Skylark. (Image: Swift Navigation)

    Swift’s first-of-its-kind, cross-continental drive demonstrates the performance of Skylark.

    Swift ​​Navigation​, ​​a San Francisco-based tech firm redefining GNSS and precise positioning technology for autonomous vehicles, has completed a cross-country drive test.

    The goal of this first-of-its-kind drive, from San Francisco to New York and back, was to measure the efficacy of Swift’s recently expanded Skylark cloud corrections service and to demonstrate true nationwide lane-level GNSS correction coverage at the accuracy, reliability and availability levels required by Swift customers.

    The drive took the Swift team across 26 states and Washington, D.C., with 6,614.7 miles (10,645.4 km) driven over 116 hours and 14 minutes logged. A Swift vehicle was equipped with 20 different GNSS devices, tested using six unique chipsets that included: Swift’s Piksi Multi, Duro and multiple leading GNSS silicon providers.

    The results of the drive confirmed that Swift’s precise positioning solution — composed of Skylark and the Starling positioning engine — delivers consistent lane-level accuracy at continental level. Skylark delivered 100% availability, with sub-decimeter accuracy, over the entire United States, wherever cellular coverage was available.

    Performance highlights from the drive:

    • +Sub-meter horizontal accuracy (2-sigma) achieved across all environments
    • 100% Skylark availability
    • Highly repeatable results with Starling + Skylark across variety of dual-frequency GNSS chipsets

    “This is the longest continuous GNSS-based precise positioning drive test of its kind and we are proud of the engineering team at Swift for undertaking this ambitious task,” said Anthony Cole, executive vice president of engineering. “The results show that Skylark performs as intended and expected in both open sky and urban environments and demonstrate that Skylark is truly a cross-continental corrections network delivering the high integrity and high availability required by automotive OEMs, last-mile applications, rail, mobile and micro-mobility companies.”

    In addition to full contiguous U.S. (CONUS) coverage, the Skylark corrections service is now available in Europe and is being built out to support autonomous applications across the globe.

    Download a complete write-up of the cross-country drive test at www.swiftnav.com.

  • Swift Navigation Starling GNSS engine tested with Broadcom BCM47755 chip

    Swift Navigation Starling GNSS engine tested with Broadcom BCM47755 chip

    An open-sky freeway environment on Interstate 280 in California where Starling + the BCM47755 were tested and data collected and processed in real time. (Image: Swift Navigation)
    An open-sky freeway environment on Interstate 280 in California where Starling + the BCM47755 were tested and data collected and processed in real time. (Image: Swift Navigation)

    Swift Navigation has announced that its Starling positioning engine is available with Broadcom’s dual-frequency GNSS receiver chip, the BCM47755.

    The new solution is capable of delivering centimeter accuracy with minimal power consumption and small footprint for rapidly expanding precise positioning applications, the company said.

    The Starling Positioning Engine is a modular and portable GNSS high-precision positioning engine that leverages Swift’s Skylark Cloud Corrections Service. Platform independent, Starling is an advanced GNSS processing engine that enhances the measurements from commercially available GNSS receivers to provide true precision and integrity capabilities.

    Swift’s Starling software is GNSS receiver agnostic and works with a variety of GNSS chips and inertial sensors. According to the company, Starling features multi-band, multi-constellation support to provide centimeter-level accuracy and supports the calculation of integrity outputs to provide absolute position, velocity and time (PVT).

    Broadcom's BCM47755 chip now works with Starling. (Image: Broadcom)
    Broadcom’s BCM47755 chip now works with Starling. (Image: Broadcom)

    Swift showcased the integration of Starling with the Broadcom BCM47755 chip — the latest generation of Broadcom GNSS receiver chip — during a recent test drive in California. The synergistic benefits of integrating Starling with the BCM47755 measurement engine include low system-level power consumption and a smaller PCB (printed circuit board) footprint.

    The successful integration illustrated the accuracy of the combined solution and forthcoming offerings for autonomous vehicles including unmanned aerial vehicles, robotics, asset tracking, fleet management and other applications requiring precise positioning.

    The BCM47755 simultaneously supports GPS and GLONASS in the L1 frequency band or GPS and Galileo in both the L1/E1 and L5/E5a frequency bands, the company added. Starling combines the GNSS raw observations from the BCM47755 with corrections from Swift’s Skylark Cloud Corrections Service to deliver centimeter-level positioning.

    Horizontal Position

     

    Horizontal CDF (Cumulative Distribution Function). (Chart: Swift Navigation)
    Horizontal CDF (Cumulative Distribution Function). (Chart: Swift Navigation)

    “Broadcom is delighted to work with Swift in their integration of Starling and Skylark with our BCM47755,” said Vijay Nagarajan, senior director of product marketing for the Wireless Communications and Connectivity Division at Broadcom. “This is an exciting development for Swift and Broadcom, bringing together innovative hardware and software for the precise positioning market.”

    ​​“Swift has taken its mature Starling positioning engine that has long been powering Swift’s Piksi Multi and Duro receivers and made it interoperable with other industry leading chipsets to provide customers with a broader selection of precise autonomous navigation solutions,” added Samir Kapoor, executive vice president of engineering and product at Swift Navigation. “We are excited to offer an integrated solution with the Broadcom BCM47755 GNSS receiver chip.” ​

    Evaluation Kit

    Swift has developed an out-of-the-box evaluation platform for the combined Swift/Broadcom solution, called the Starling + BCM47755 Evaluation Kit, which will be available to order in the fourth quarter of this year.

    The Evaluation Kit includes:

    • Starling Evaluation Board
    • Cortex-A7 Processor Running Starling Positioning Engine on Linux
    • Broadcom BCM47755 Chip
    • I/O – RS-232, Ethernet, USB, CAN
    • Supports SBP, NMEA and RTCM3 Protocols
    • Built in NTRIP Client
    • Built in Client for Skylark, Swift’s Cloud-Based GNSS Corrections Service
    • Dual Frequency, Multi-Constellation Antenna
    • External Cell Modem
    • Power Supply, Cabling and Accessories
    • Evaluation Kit Hardware Design Documentation, including Schematics and Layout
    • Evaluation Kit User Manual, Swift Console PC Application and Firmware Image