The container shipping industry uses between 20–25 million containers, only a small number of which are tracked. A company called Traxens is on the verge of changing that.
In July, the Switzerland-based Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) joined worldwide container shipping company CMA CGM to invest in the French start-up. Under the deal, both CMA CGM and MSC will be represented on the board of directors of Traxens.
Traxens cargo tracker. (Photo: Traxens)
CMA CGM and MSC transport about 25 percent of the world’s shipping containers.
Established in 2012, Traxens has been developing solutions for the cargo logistics sector and has created a new multi-modal container monitoring and coordination system to provide real data for logistics.
By the last quarter of 2016, CMA CGM and MSC will have installed Traxens devices across their fleets.
“We see container monitoring as an important innovation in providing our customers with a high quality of service, while also being able to monitor our outputs accurately,” said MSC CEO Diego Aponte. “We believe that shipping lines should naturally compete on service, but should cooperate in the area of technology and innovation.”
“This should be the start of deployment on a massive scale,” said Tim Baker, Traxens director of marketing and communications.
CMA CGM, which has been backing Traxens since 2012, said that the investment is a part of its global digital strategy. Its 536 vessels call on more than 420 world ports. MSC operates an integrated network of road, rail and sea on more than 200 trade routes.
Each Traxens device has GPS on board, but other methods can be used to save battery life, which affects the overall cost of ownership of the solution. “For instance, once we have determined that a container is on board a ship, we can use the AIS ship-positioning data rather than the GPS on the device — especially as the device may be under deck with no view of the sky,” Baker said.
Also to save power, critical decisions on location are made by the devices locally rather than transmitting position up to the cloud and making decisions there. “It is much less power hungry to evaluate GPS position on the device, compare location with expected location, and then decide whether the information is worth transmitting than to send each position to the cloud just in case it happens to be interesting,” Baker explained.
The Olympics are great for technology. Yes, the competition held every four years highlights amazing athletes. But its vast support network relies on numerous technologies, including GNSS.
GNSS technology helped fans follow the canoe sprint and rowing events in Rio in more detail than before. With GPS devices attached to every vessel, spectators were able to see key data such as speed and direction — information that helps when following a lengthy race taking place offshore.
For the first time, Olympic athletes used high-tech wearables to give them an edge. Solos Smart Eyewear was designed for the USA’s Cycling team with features that allowed cyclists to see key metrics such as speed, power, distance, cadence and heart rate, plus more data from any number of connected sensors.
Drones Aloft. Drone technology has exploded since the London 2012 Olympics. In Rio, broadcasters experimented with hovering cameras. The BBC worked with Open Broadcast Service to provide international broadcasters with drone coverage of the rowing.
As for hobbyists, drone-maker DJI updated its firmware with Olympic geofences, preventing drones from flying over events. Not every drone manufacturer implements geofences, so the Brazilian military was equipped with new devices to jam drone-control signals mid-flight. The IACT DroneBlockers blast incoming drones with radio signals, effectively jamming the signal from the controller.
Beware Zika. Meanwhile, mapping technology is helping to track the spread of the Zika virus. Before the games, the World Health Organization launched a Zika app to provide information about the disease.
After the Olympics, IBM will provide local authorities with ways to track weather, social media data and travel patterns. Esri is supporting local authorities and coordinating field workers to track and contain the disease in Brazil and elsewhere.
A team of Rohde & Schwarz engineers have found a new way to hack Pokémon Go, the massively popular app that debuted last month.
The engineers are generating GNSS data with a Rohde & Schwarz signal generator, and feeding the signal directly into the mobile device, making it possible to collect dozens of Pokemon right in the lab.
The team produced a video showing the hack, which has received almost 400,000 views on YouTube, and received coverage from Bloomberg and The Verge.
The Munich-based Rohde & Schwarz team provides the following hardware diagram of the setup:
The team also describes the technical details:
“The setup is a little proof of concept by simulating GPS signals with an HIL — hardware in the loop — interface, which can also be used for a flight simulator or similar applications.
“A R&S-SMBV100A vector signal generator serves as a source to simulate real-life GNSS RF signals. We use a custom PC software with a joystick controller for the ultimate gaming experience *wink* — it may as well be controlled with a mouse. This software streams HIL commands to the signal generator over a LAN interface and interpolates position and velocity changes. The interpolation will be done according to a desired inertia model — pedestrian/car/plain — we actually used a slow car here with a maximum speed of ~15km/h. This is useful, for instance, if you assume that cars will not make 90° turns.
“We set the GNSS coordinates of the signal generator to some arbitrary position in the world and start the HIL mode — this will result in a ban if you jump quickly from Moscow to Sydney! You have to wait a reasonable amount of time in between.
“The signal generator simulates a real-life GNSS RF signal, which is fed indirectly into the mobile phone and to a u-blox M8 GNSS receiver. This is why we use an RF splitter. The losses from antenna to device are roughly 30 dB. We therefore generate a signal of -80 dBm in order to achieve the common GNSS signal strength of -110 dBm at the device. The idea behind the shielding box is to protect the device from the signal from outside. You could also build the setup in a cellar.
“We use the corresponding u-center v8.11 software, which is connected to the GNSS receiver to visualize our current position using a Google Maps plug-in. The u-blox is connected via USB to the computer.
“By doing so, we create a closed-loop realtime GNSS simulation with user feedback and interaction.”
Common sense tells us not to hold a smartphone while driving. But a new game is so addicting, it’s causing people to forget that rule.
Released July 6 for both Android and iOS, Pokémon GO instantly became the top free app and the top grossing app on Apple’s App Store, shattering social media records and shooting Nintendo stock through the roof. And it hasn’t even been introduced in Europe and Asia yet. (Japan, of course, is the birthplace of Pokémon.)
The game uses augmented reality to place the coveted virtual monsters (Pokémon) into real-world locations, so users have to travel to add to their collections.
However, much like in the early days of GPS navigation, when people ended up driving down railroad tracks or into ponds, the Pokémon GO app has led to accidents. Some users are playing the location-based game from inside their vehicles, stopping suddenly, while pedestrians are staring at device screens as they walk through busy cities, sometimes onto private property.
In the first week:
A 28-year-old Auburn, New York, driver ran his vehicle off the road and crashed into a tree.
A Massachusetts man woke up to a garden full of wandering Pokémon players after his home — once a church — had been marked as a “gym” (multi-player battleground).
A group of Missouri teenagers were arrested for armed robbery after allegedly using the app to anticipate secluded locations for holdups.
Police departments around the country are warning that anyone caught using the app while driving or jaywalking could end up with a hefty fine.
But there’s an upside, too. Gamers are going outside, getting exercise and making new social connections.
And, apparently, helping police. One 19-year-old Wyoming woman, on a quest to catch a Pokémon from a natural water resource, instead discovered a dead body floating in the Big Wind River.
Decawave, which specializes in precise location and connectivity applications, has reached a milestone for its micro-location, impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) technology, surpassing one million Decawave chips shipped.
The chip’s popularity reflects the increasing demand for accurate micro-location solutions from end users and customers within Internet of Things (IoT), consumer and industrial markets. According to the company, Decawave has a target to reach five million units shipped in the course of 2017.
Decawave offers IR-UWB wireless technology for precise location and connectivity applications that can identify the specific location of any object or person within a guaranteed indoor location accuracy of 10 centimeters.
IR-UWB is becoming a key factor in the IoT market and is impacting how developers are taking devices and smart applications to the next level of context awareness, Decawave said in a press release.
The increase in demand for accurate location-based applications is evident across sectors including consumer markets such as connected homes, phone accessories, drones and sports analytics; industrial with connected buildings, factory automation and healthcare.
Decawave technology also will be embedded in cars in 2017.
The industrial market has been the first market to leverage Decawave’s technology and several Decawave customer solutions are already in the field. Decawave has 15 industrial partners that can deliver software, hardware or turn-key systems to end customers.
“The market for next-generation indoor location technologies with improved accuracy is beginning to advance with solid use cases and adoption. UWB is clearly carving out its space, with ABI Research forecasting strong growth across a range of verticals,” said Patrick Connolly, Principal analyst at ABI Research. “The market opportunity is quite large and companies like Decawave that are leading the charge in UWB are well positioned to experience continued growth.”
Consumer products. The consumer products — some of which were presented at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January — are starting to ship now. For instance, Pixie tags allow customers to accurately locate, protect and organize their valuables.
Also at CES, Decawave highlighted ShotTracker, developed with sporting-goods company Spalding, for multi-player basketball tracking. The chip was also featured in Jaguar’s connected car demonstration.
ShotTracker captures every basketball player’s statistic for multiple players in real time.
In the consumer segment, there will also be opportunities in access control, remote controls, connected light, home robot and trusted-zones applications that leverage IR-UWB accuracy, reliability and immunity to relay attack schemes to grant or deny access to wireless-networks and connected devices.
“Two years after launching the technology, Decawave continues to gain traction with 1,800 customers across 68 countries using Decawave’s IR-UWB and an extra 70 to 80 new customers each month,” said Ciaran Connell, CEO of Decawave. “This is phenomenal and shows our commitment as well as market interest and future demand. We’re thrilled that UWB is finally seeing market momentum. We know its potential and now our customers are experiencing it as well.”
Decawave’s partner Quantitec showed its RTLS indoor positioning at Nokia’s booth at Mobile World Congress and at the Bosch Connected World where it was featured in the company’s advanced localization technology, as a key element of a Track and Trace solution.
Handheld Group has launched the new Nautiz X2 enterprise handheld, which integrates a high-quality scanner, camera and mobile phone.
The rugged Nautiz X2, available now, can be used in challenging outdoor environments with moisture, dust, extreme temperatures and potential drops, the company says.
The Nautiz X2 features include:
Computing power from a quad-core processor and Android 5.1 Lollipop OS.
High-quality, high-speed scanners with 1D or 2D capability.
An integrated camera with8-megapixel clarity, autofocus and flash.
4G/LTE Android phone functionality.
Google GMS, which gives users access to Google Maps and Play Store apps.
A sunlight-readable, 4.7-inch capacitive display with multi-touch sensitivity.
“The challenge in designing market-leading devices in a given product category is to balance key factors like technology, design, materials and general usability as well as keeping the cost in mind,” says Johan Hed, Handheld Group director of product management. “The brilliance of the Nautiz X2 is that it has that tangible in-the-hand sense of form and fit of a high-end technology device, and we are still able to offer it at an impressive value.”
The Nautiz X2 measures 150 millimeters by 73.5 millimeters, is 16 millimeters deep at the keyboard and weighs 230 grams.
It has an IP65 ingress protection rating against dust, sand and water immersion, the company says. The handleld also meets stringent MIL-STD-810G military test standards for overall durability and resistance to humidity, shock, vibrations, drop, salt and extreme temperatures, and the touchscreen is made of Gorilla Glass for durability.
Extraordinary though satellite navigation may be, GPS and other satellite-based constellations are limited when there is not a line-of-sight or near-line-of-sight path to at least three (and preferably more) satellites. These systems also do not provide sufficiently accurate and reliable altitude information for most applications, especially indoors. Finally, power consumption is an issue for user equipment.
It has been easy to overlook these limitations as the enormous benefits of GNSS have become pervasive, but the increasing demand especially for indoor geolocation now requires a robust solution designed for the indoors and urban canyons. Support for Terrestrial Beacon System (TBS) location technologies was incorporated in Release 13 of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). These technologies are complementary to GNSS, and provide a comprehensive solution to these limitations.
One of the TBS in development is the Metropolitan Beacon System (MBS) implementation by NextNav, which is the subject of this article. NextNav is deploying the first MBS network in the United States, using spectrum in the 920–928 MHz band, on licenses that cover about 98 percent of the U.S. urban population.
3GPP is the standards development organization for cellular wireless specifications, and is in part responsible for the popularization of GPS through its standardization in the 3GPP Release ’98 specifications. Release ’98 enabled wireless operators to adopt GPS and bring their economies of scale to GPS positioning.
Release 13 support has similar potential for MBS, enabling support for MBS in any Release 13-compliant LTE network throughout the world. As with the original standardization of GPS in 1999, incorporation of MBS in this release was driven primarily by the need for wireless carriers to provide accurate indoor geolocation for E911 calls.
MBS complements GPS by providing precise geolocation and timing indoors, in urban canyons, and other locations where GPS signals are either unreliable or unavailable. MBS receivers work seamlessly with GPS so they are as transparent to the user as satellite-based systems. MBS can provide floor-level altitude and navigation in indoor environments.
Typical mall experience: green dots show NextNav computed positions relative to ground truth (red line).
How it works
MBS transmitters are similar in many respects to GPS satellites that are deployed terrestrially. Unlike communications systems, MBS is deployed with a view toward minimizing dilution of precision (DOP) so that the signals available at any indoor or outdoor location will meet the unique requirements for accurate geolocation. DOP is an indicator of the three-dimensional positioning accuracy of a radio positioning system’s signals as they are “viewed” by a receiver.
GPS signals are typically 30 dB below the thermal noise floor at the Earth’s surface, and thus GPS receivers require a significant amount of processing resources for acquisition and tracking. Acquisition time can be quite long, up to 12 minutes in the absence of almanac and ephemeris information. Modern commercial implementations with some assistance information is typically closer to 30 seconds.
Mall store accuracy tests depicting indoor tracking performance in suburban mall environment. Dots show MBS-drive information, with no additional data from inertial or other sensors.
Throughout this time the receiver is running at full bore, drawing a considerable amount of current, the bane of any battery-operated device. MBS mitigates these problems because the 30-Watt radiated power of each terrestrially located transmitter combined with a satellite-like link budget provides greater received signal-to-noise ratio.
The result is an acquisition time without assistance information of 6 seconds or less, and 1 second if assistance information is available. The ease of acquiring and tracking MBS signals has significant implications for power draw and power management strategies.
Metropolitan beacon rooftop transmitter.
Although deploying a wireless network of any kind is a complex endeavor, MBS benefits from the ability to cover an area using fewer beacons, thanks to its relatively high RF output power (but much lower than cellular signals) and robust processing gain.
The transmitters typically share space with existing cellular systems on towers and building rooftops and are compact. The antenna is typically a 5-foot, vertically mounted, omnidirectional element.
The system provides for redundancy at both the transmitter and network levels, and the signals are encrypted for security. Like GPS, location can be calculated by the user’s device.
Baseband Change. MBS was designed to be like another constellation on a multi-constellation GNSS processor, and primarily constitutes a firmware change to modern baseband designs. The primary receiver changes are related to the analog components (accommodation for a different frequency band and higher dynamic range).
Enabling MBS in a smartphone requires a few inexpensive passive components and slight modifications to the antenna. From an RF perspective, NextNav’s MBS operating frequency is sandwiched between bands currently used by wireless carriers, so few if any changes to a standard FR lineup is required.
Tackling cellular first
Most of the billions of mobile phones shipped every year incorporate GPS receivers. Because GPS does not work reliably inside a building, however, mobile devices must fall back to ad hoc positioning methods based on communications infrastructure. This has become increasingly important because mobile wireless devices are used predominately indoors at least 70 percent of the time, according to a study by J. D. Power and Associates. This makes reliable indoor geolocation essential for consumer, commercial and public safety interests.
The MBS architecture was designed to integrate into the GPS ecosystem and integrate organically within modern mobile devices, without the need for separate chips or elaborate reengineering.
The additional benefit of determining altitude along with horizontal position is also significant. Indoors, context is determined as much by the vertical as the horizontal — for example, in a multi-level shopping mall. In emergency-response scenarios, critical seconds or minutes can be shaved off of response time if the floor in which an emergency is occurring can be reliably determined.
Control-plane architecture (LTE) for NextNav E2E.
Power and the IoT. The Internet of Things offers substantial productivity gains. Nevertheless, there have been limitations to the rapid adoption of certain IoT technologies. Among these is a fierce battle among competing low-power wireless communication standards. Lower power operations are the key for many IoT implementations, and location is one area where power savings, especially for wide-area location, are critical.
While MBS is generally designed to complement GPS, in IoT operations it has the potential to replace GPS in some cases due to power savings available from the system. Due to its terrestrial nature, the MBS signal is much stronger than GPS, enabling significant power savings. Many applications are expected to be enabled by such a system, whether for very long-life applications with intermittent position reporting to always-on location (that is, persistent tracking). Location capabilities on wearable devices are also very desirable, but because of power constraints, provision of location through GPS has been difficult to realize.
The general benefits of a terrestrial constellation also apply to non-power-limited applications, especially in urban environments and those where altitude is a critical feature. Driverless cars and unmanned aerial systems, for example, rely on GPS but also need precise 3D location accuracy.
Vertical accuracy performance of mass-market devices.Another example of vertical accuracy performance of mass-market devices.
Applications in 5G small cells
The fifth generation of carrier wireless, 5G represents another potentially significant application of MBS technology. Achieving 5G’s ambitious goals — standards are expected to be complete by 2019 — will require a massive infrastructure increase, including small base stations, or femtocells, that must be time-synchronized to avoid interfering with each other. A large percentage of these are expected to be deployed indoors.
This means wireless carriers, neutral hosts and other infrastructure operators will need to bring timing synchronization signals inside. This typically requires GPS receivers to be placed on rooftops with the received signal fed to multiple indoor locations by running cables throughout the facility.
To an operator in a metropolitan area with hundreds or even thousands of indoor small cells, this represents a large investment in capital equipment and limits customer-based installation. MBS can provide a timing signal that can be received indoors through the use of a modified multi-constellation GNSS chipset, a low-cost and convenient alternative.
Beyond cellular
The enablement of MBS in 3GPP has drawn attention from those seeking geolocation for a range of other devices. EF Johnson Technologies, a provider of radios and other equipment for public safety applications, demonstrated the integration of MBS in its Viking P25 (Project 25) radios. As P25 radios are the standard for mission-critical voice in the public safety community, the ability to carry MBS information could be a key feature for first responders.
Elder care, monitoring family members, security guards, assets, and hospitality employees: any application that experiences service limitations due to indoor lack of availability is a candidate to augment service with MBS service, or, if power is a very serious issue, simply rely on MBS alone.
Summary
MBS complements GNSS systems by providing indoor coverage, altitude positioning and lower power consumption. By leveraging the existing GNSS ecosystem, low-cost, high-volume receivers can be adopted and service become seamless among satellite and terrestrial systems.
Other indoor PNT technologies
The 2013 CSRIC Trials administered by the FCC also tested technologies from Qualcomm, Polaris Wireless and True Position.
GPS World plans to publish articles about these and other alternative technologies in upcoming issues.
Horizontal indoor accuracy now, elusive z-axis by end of year
At their advent, mobile phones were conceived to be useful for when people were, well, mobile. And in 1996 when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) first required that a handset’s location be sent to 911 dispatchers and meet accuracy performance standards, the FCC was understandably solely interested in calls made outdoors.
Indoor FCC rules
(rmnoa357 / Shutterstock.com)
In recognizing the pervasive use of mobile phones indoors and gains in location-determining technology, last year the FCC adopted new rules that establish accuracy requirements for indoor 911 calls.
The FCC didn’t stop there and tackled vertical positioning, ordering that within six years, the elusive z-axis, or altitude, be added to requirements and meet accuracy standards in cases when there is no dispatchable location. The z-axis is critical in finding a person in a building of more than one story, whether a high-rise apartment building in Brooklyn or a three-story dormitory at a university.
This spring, a testbed for verifying location technologies began operations. The FCC required that nationwide wireless providers create an independently administered and openly transparent test bed to verify location technologies used in meeting the accuracy requirements. CTIA, the trade association for the U.S. wireless communications industry, established the 9-1-1 Location Technologies Test Bed as an independent company.
Testing is designed and administered by ATIS, an industry standards association. The testbed regions are located in metropolitan Atlanta and San Francisco and cover a wide range of building types and terrain.
Indoor testing will be performed in 20 buildings within each test region, spanning four morphology types (dense-urban, urban, suburban and rural). Test bed administrators will not divulge the technologies being tested.
No Silver Bullet. The FCC acknowledges that there won’t be one silver bullet location technology, one size fits all that will be the best location solution in all situations.
In the order released on Feb. 3, 2015, the FCC writes, “To be sure, no single technological approach will solve the challenge of indoor location, and no solution can be implemented overnight. The requirements we adopt are technically feasible and technologically neutral, so that providers can choose the most effective solutions from a range of options.
“In addition, our requirements allow sufficient time for development of applicable standards, establishment of testing mechanisms, and deployment of new location technology in both handsets and networks… Clear and measurable timelines and benchmarks for all stakeholders are essential to drive the improvements that the public reasonably expects to see in 911 location performance.”
The 9-1-1 Location Technologies Test Bed has begun indoor testing of currently deployed horizontal location technologies, and its results will be used as part of location accuracy compliance reporting to meet FCC benchmarks.
Toward the end of this year, location technology vendors will use the Test Bed to test near-term emerging horizontal and vertical location technologies, such as z-axis, that are not currently deployed by the nationwide wireless carriers.
JANICE PARTYKA is GPS World’s contributing editor for wireless. She is principal at JGP Services and provides strategy and marketing consulting to the mobile industry. She reported on a previous round of tests, the 2013 FCC-chartered Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) trials of NextNav, Qualcomm and Polaris technologies. See gpsworld.com/indoor-trial-results-next-fcc-chief/.
User location takes center stage in new Android OS
Raw GNSS measurements from Android phones. Yep, they are coming. At Google we have been working with our GNSS partners to give application developers access to raw GNSS measurements from a phone.
This is really exciting, and marks a new era for our GNSS community. At Google I/O in May, we announced that raw GNSS measurements are available to apps in the Android N operating system, which will be released later this year. This means you can get pseudoranges, Dopplers and carrier phase from a phone or tablet.
When can you get it? Well, it will take some time to proliferate throughout the ecosystem, but the first phone that will provide raw measurements will be the Nexus phone that we will launch later this year, and then next year you will see new Android handsets start to support it, as it will become a mandatory feature in Android.
Tutorial. At the Institute of Navigation’s ION-GNSS+ conference this September, Frank van Diggelen and I will teach a tutorial where you can learn to access and use these raw measurements. This will be a hands-on course where you collect, view and process raw measurements. You will leave the class with the data, Google software tools, and the knowledge of how to use them.
Then, to tailor this tutorial to your own needs, visit this online form and let us know what you’d like us to cover in the class.
The keynote presentation at Google I/O 2016, held May 12-20 at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.
More from Google I/O
Finally, I’d like to give you some highlights from Google I/O, the annual developer-focused conference held by Google in the San Francisco Bay Area.
During the keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai made many references to location, context and places. This was really exciting to see. We are innovating and working on a lot. It is amazing, even to me, after more than 13 years in the field of location, arriving at Google just under two years ago, to see how location and a user’s context are at the center of our connected world.
At Google, we are exposing as much as we can to the ecosystem so that innovation can thrive around us.
Sundar Pichai’s keynote address shows that user’s location is at the center for the knowledge graphs that we are building.
Conversational examples were shown on Google Assistant and on how it can be used to get things done in the world. Sundar spoke on how location and context are the key to this future, noting that a user standing next to a famous sculpture can simply ask: “Who designed this?”
All Google I/O talks from the Android Location and Context Team can be found at these YouTube links :
Nintendo has launched a beta test of a new Pokémon game that takes place in the real world. The beta testing began July 6.
Using Pokémon GO, gamers travel between the real world and the virtual world of Pokémon with iPhone and Android devices.
Pokémon GO is built on Niantic’s Real World Gaming Platform for augmented reality. It uses GPS to encourage players to search far and wide in the real world to discover Pokémon. The game allows players to find and catch more than a hundred species of Pokémon as they explore their surroundings.
Players are represented on an augmented reality map of the real world.
Moving around, the smartphone vibrates when near a Pokémon. When players encounter a Pokémon, they take aim on their smartphone’s touchscreen and throw a Poké Ball to catch it. the player is indicated on a map showing their actual location.
The game encourages users to explore the cities and towns where they live to capture as many Pokémon as they can. Also, PokéStops are located at interesting places, such as public art installations, historical markers and monuments, where players can collect more Poké Balls and other items.
Players can also join teams, and “battle” with their captured Pokémon at “gyms” that can be found at real-world locations.
The Pokémon GO Plus wearable can be removed from the band and worn on a shirt.
The Pokémon video game series has used real-world locations such as the Hokkaido and Kanto regions of Japan, New York, and Paris as inspiration for the fantasy settings in which its games take place. This is the first time the popular game franchise has used the real world as its setting.
While the game is free to play, Nintendo will be rolling out a $35 wearable that enables play without looking at a smartphone, such as for joggers on their morning run.
KIWI PLUS, a Korean software-development company, has launched a new children’s smartwatch developed in collaboration with u-blox.
LINE Kids Watch is a tiny and colorful wearable with LINE emojis functioning as an Android-based smartwatch and officially distributed by KT Corporation. It enables precise tracking of the whereabouts of children, while also offering educational and interactive content.
LINE Kids Watch uses KIWI PLUS’ own Internet of Things (IoT) platform for wearables, KIWI Edge. Designed with a simple LCD screen for one-touch calling, it also provides real-time accurate location tracking and convenient safety zone setting. An emergency notification can easily be initiated by the child and text messages are sent by speaking into a microphone. Other features include an education quiz and a Cashbee NFC money pocket function.
“We wanted to offer accurate tracking combined with high quality cellular communication, and u-blox has already demonstrated with leading brands of children’s watches its unique combination of GNSS positioning and wireless communication technologies. And considering the small size, low power consumption and powerful location accuracy of its products as well as the speed with which they helped us solved issues, u‑blox was the right choice,” explained Sangwon Seo, CEO of KIWI PLUS.
The u-blox cellular module SARA-U270 and u-blox 7 GNSS chip UBX-G7020-KT are embedded in the smartwatch. The SARA-U270 UMTS/HSPA module provides efficient and cost-effective high-speed mobile connectivity in an ultra-small LGA form factor.
The high performance UBX-G7020 multi-GNSS chip supports GPS, GLONASS, QZSS and SBAS and delivers exceptional sensitivity and acquisition times. It has ultra low-power consumption and a very small solution footprint of 30 square millimeters.
“It was very exciting to collaborate with KIWI PLUS, as we at u-blox are committed to support our customers by combining technologies for reliable solutions,” explains Shone Kim, Country Manager of u-blox Korea. “We foresee further collaboration with KIWI PLUS in the future, using our LTE technology.”
Wearables are small portable devices that support our daily life, and deliver on-the-spot services thanks to their wireless connectivity and positioning capability. Low power technologies offer a long battery life, and with outstanding radio capabilities, a robust user experience. The market for this type of high technology integration is growing strongly, so price levels are quickly becoming competitive.
TomTom has entered a technology collaboration with sensewhere, a provider of indoor positioning technology. According to the companies, the collaboration will enable the two companies to conquer GPS black spots and bring location-based services indoors.
TomTom Indoor delivers accurate customized indoor maps of public and private venues for site operators and other partners that enable increased efficiency, cost savings and an improved customer experience.
sensewhere has developed a proprietary and patented positioning solution for mobile devices. The combination of TomTom’s maps — both indoor and traditional navigation maps — and sensewhere’s accurate indoor positioning will enable a seamless navigation experience indoors and outdoors.
sensewhere algorithms enable location for indoor locations such as shopping malls, using sensors such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
“Access to indoor positioning technology, coupled with highly accurate indoor maps, means that guidance can be integrated into the day-to-day operations of a wide variety of venues, including enterprise facilities, shopping malls, airports, hospitals and more,” said Pieter Gillegot-Vergauwen, vice president, Maps Product Management, TomTom. “With the explosion of the Internet of Things, we believe that by partnering with sensewhere our customers will not only be able to gain efficiencies, but will also deliver a better experience to their own customers.”
“We are excited to help TomTom extend its navigation prowess indoors with this technology collaboration,” said Rob Palfreyman, CEO of sensewhere. “We believe this integration is a perfect fit for enterprises that need to combine location intelligence, resource planning and efficient execution.”
Where’s Waldo? sensewhere uses pinpoint people to illustrate how its system works in a home page video.
