GPS World

Tag: Atlas

The Remaking of Hemisphere
When Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Co. Ltd. in Beijing, China, acquired the Hemisphere GPS OEM business back in January 2013, and the significant Hemisphere GPS agriculture business went off on its own under the new AgJunction name, it’s possible that people may have gotten the impression that the OEM business might have been weakened by the break-up. (Read my column about the changes here.)

There was word of a long-term supply agreement where the newly created Hemisphere GNSS was to still supply AgJunction with OEM receivers, but the OEM business now had to stand alone and fully support itself — perhaps a challenge for the teams in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Calgary, Alberta, that became part of the new company.

After the first transition year in 2013, Jon Ladd, chairman of the new Hemisphere GNSS board of directors and former CEO of Novatel, along with the other Hemisphere board members, decided to hire Chuck Joseph in January 2014. Prior to joining Hemisphere GNSS, Chuck Joseph was president and CEO of an energy technology company, and he was also senior VP and general manager of a tactile feedback technology company focused on GPS centric mobile and industrial applications. But the key experience that may have brought Chuck to Hemisphere GNSS was probably when he was corporate VP of marketing and sales at Magellan Corporation and executive VP and general manager of Trimble.

I talked at length with Chuck Joseph and his team recently about how things have gone since he joined Hemisphere and the changes that have brought them to some new product launches now being announced.

Chuck reviewed some of his experiences from Trimble — a time when even Trimble was struggling in the early days and he helped with a reorganization that pulled them back from some big losses around the time of the first Gulf War — and how that has helped him at Hemisphere GNSS. Focusing on the consolidation of products and markets that work, and moving away from things that don’t work as well — this is always a key element for any recovery.

As a part of Hemisphere GPS, the OEM business may have been at a major disadvantage when it was tied so tightly to the success of its own agriculture business — all of its receiver-development efforts were focused on agriculture applications and on whatever worked best for agricultural customers. So the rest of the company’s efforts to create a self-sustaining OEM business all came in second. But with some of the brightest innovators and developers in the GNSS OEM business, Hemisphere had a wealth of experience and a store of existing Intellectual Property (IP) ready to open up when the opportunity came around as a part of the new organization.

Chuck likes to talk about Hemisphere GNSS being a “start-up inside a reinvention” — a phrase that describes how life may have been re-energized and changed for the people in the new company. With UniStrong support, there was no need to seek other outside external investment for company expansion and sustainment, so all management effort could be initially focused on the re-engineering effort. Staff working groups were formed that were able to brainstorm and come up with new concepts, explore how they fit with their market and existing customers, and over time create viable approaches, turn them into strong business cases and then go find the support they deserved. “Disruptive” market ideas were at the forefront — ideas/products/services that would allow Hemisphere to make advances in the OEM market that would offset the strengths of the competition and allow them to succeed. Closer partnering with new and existing customers to provide improved value was a major leading concept.

The first product to hit the market from the new Hemisphere GNSS process came out of a 10-person team who set out to re-engineer and improve Hemisphere RTK — the release of Athena was announced at the beginning of May. As the announcement goes, this new RTK “excels in virtually every environment where high-accuracy GNSS receivers can be used.”

Customers have already validated Athena’s performance in long baseline, in open-sky environments, under heavy canopy, and in geographic locations with significant scintillation. Key features include:
- Initialization in less than 15 seconds at better than 99.9% reliability
- Robustness under the most aggressive of geographic and landscape environments
- Industry-leading position stability for long baseline applications, with position quality often exceeding the performance of the best-of-breed RTK systems on the market
- Sustained accuracy within GNSS scintillation-affected areas
Testimonials in the Athena release support Hemisphere’s claims — from independent testing (Andy Carbognin, Vecto Geomatics), marine construction and hydrographic survey (Cable Arm), land survey and machine control (Carlson Software) and agriculture precision steering (Novariant).

And Hemisphere GNSS has more new products coming — the company just announced its Atlas GNSS global correction service on June 15. Hemisphere is marketing Atlas using a “disruptive” approach, intended to not only provide end customers with the best value and best performance global correction service available today, but also to support the sales channel that the customers buy through. The sales angle chosen is to allow the sales channel to actually sell and bundle the Atlas service directly to the customer and make money from the sale of the service. This approach is not currently used by other correction service distributors, who tend to have manufacturers and customers deal with them directly for service, sales and support.

Hemisphere GNSS put together a team of seasoned developers to build Atlas that between them have already generated a huge amount of IP around corrections technology. Together, they have now developed the Atlas GNSS correction service, available via L-Band satellite broadcast and over the Internet, which uses the very latest technologies to deliver a correction service that matches or exceeds existing competitive system performance:
- Positioning accuracy: Atlas provides competitive positioning accuracies down to 2 cm RMS in certain applications, often exceeding competitive systems’ capabilities
- Positioning sustainability: Position quality maintenance in the absence of correction signals, using Hemisphere’s Tracer technology.
- Convergence time: Industry-leading convergence times of 10-40 minutes.
- Receiver-agnostic capability: Atlas is the most receiver-agnostic positioning system available. SmartLink technology allows an AtlasLink antenna to be used as an Atlas signal extension for any GNSS system which uses open communication standards.
- Network RTK augmentation: BaseLink technology allows Atlas-capable receivers to self-calibrate, self-survey, and automatically manage the transmission of RTK corrections to augment or extend established or new GNSS reference networks in areas of poor Internet connectivity.
- Atlas subscriptions: Subscriptions are now available for a range of Hemisphere GNSS’s multi-frequency, RTK-capable products — AtlasLink, R330u, V320, and VS330u — and will soon be available via the Atlas web portal and from a number of channel partners and OEMs such as Carlson Software.
Available Hemisphere GNSS Atlas service levels:

Service Level Position Accuracy

H100 100 cm 95% (50 cm RMS)

H30 30 cm 95% (15 cm RMS)

H10 8 cm 95% (4 cm RMS)

The provision of “agnostic” corrections via the SmartLink service is a new twist that allows customers to buy the best correction service they choose, rather than being tied to a particular receiver manufacturer and/or their corrections services supplier. Using the Hemisphere GNSS AtlasLink smart antenna, corrections can be supplied over a standard interface to any make of GNSS receiver, provided it has an interface that is compatible with “open-standard” correction data, such as RTCM data format. It remains to be seen if this “receiver-agnostic” approach to corrections supply changes the way that PPP and other correction services are supplied across the industry.

The service can also be used to set up base stations to transmit corrections to an existing network using the BaseLink service option, which Hemisphere is also making available.

Meanwhile, back at UniStrong in China, Xinping Guo, president and CEO of UniStrong — or ‘XP’ as he is known to the Hemisphere GNSS team — has been actively seeking further funding through potential additional stock offerings, not only to maintain support for Hemisphere, but also to buy additional companies in China. While Hemisphere GNSS has ramped up revenue since being purchased by UniStrong and is on its way to a record year in 2015, it is clearly doing more things and announcing more new products and initiatives than its normal revenue ramp would solely support. So, just as in the case of a start up, UniStrong is supplying supplemental resources to support this very fast track growth.

Coordination of activities across the UniStrong and Hemisphere GNSS companies continues as the Hemisphere GNSS company/brand relaunch rolls out during the second half of this year. Product designs will flow back and forth across the group, too, with Hemisphere GNSS software used in UniStrong products, and BeiDou capability going into Hemisphere GNSS fourth-generation chips. The collaboration of the UniStrong and Hemisphere product development teams is producing products unique to each market place, to be sold and supported by the respective sales, support and marketing teams, helping both companies. While UniStrong may be able to claim to be leading in China in the single-frequency product (GIS, etc.) market, it’s also easy to see that bringing Hemisphere GNSS multi-frequency capability into China could also improve its domestic market share.

So, it’s been a good start to the reshaping of Hemisphere GNSS as a company, its capabilities and its approach to its chosen markets. Let’s see how this roll-out and the anticipated growth continue through the rest of the year, and we’ll check in again in detail with them in the fall. Many thanks to Chuck Joseph and his team for this inside look into what’s going on in the remaking of Hemisphere GNSS.

Tony Murfin
GNSS Aerospace
June 17, 2015
Hemisphere GNSS Debuts Atlas GNSS Correction Service
Hemisphere has released Atlas, its new entrant into the GNSS global correction services market. Atlas is delivered via L-Band or the Internet at accuracy levels ranging from meter level to sub-decimeter level. Atlas support is being introduced across a wide range of hardware, including Hemisphere’s new AtlasLink smart antenna, also launched.

“Atlas comes out of a change of culture and focus,” Hemisphere CEO Chuck Joseph told GPS World in an extensive interview that also included Rodrigo Leandro, Hemisphere’s director of engineering, GNSS Positioning Systems. For the full interview, see the second half of this news story.

Starting June 19, Atlas will be available for subscription at the dedicated Atlas web portal across a range of Hemisphere’s multi-frequency, RTK-capable products, such as AtlasLink, R330u, V320 and VS330u. Atlas will also be available from a number of Hemisphere’s channel partners and OEMs such as Carlson Software, Inc.

“Since joining Hemisphere I have heard from customers large and small that they need a different option when it comes to high-accuracy corrections, one they can buy from their provider of choice and with little to no impact on their operating budgets,” said Chuck Joseph, Hemisphere GNSS CEO and president. “We listened hard to what they told us and built Atlas to answer their needs — a totally new service that delivers freedom of choice to our customers along with industry leading corrections at dramatically reduced prices.”

“We formed a team of our most experienced GNSS professionals with the task of developing a roadmap for the future of correction services business and technology in the world — assessing current needs, and also what users across the globe will be looking for over the next decade or two,” said Rodrigo Leandro, Hemisphere director of engineering. “Atlas not only introduces Hemisphere as a business and technology leader in the correction services industry today, it also provides an essential platform for delivering multiple levels of correction services to a very wide range of users spanning commercial business and consumer application use.”

Systems supporting Atlas utilize the newly released and proven Athena GNSS engine. To be able to utilize Atlas corrections, users of supported systems will simply need to update to Athena firmware and purchase a subscription through the Atlas portal.

To build Atlas, Hemisphere GNSS put together a team of seasoned developers whose collective experience matches the best in the GNSS industry. Together they have developed a GNSS correction service, available via L-Band satellite broadcast, which utilizes the most powerful technologies available to deliver a service that matches or exceeds competitive systems across a range of metrics:
- Positioning accuracy: Atlas provides competitive positioning accuracies down to 2 cm RMS in certain applications.
- Positioning sustainability: Position quality maintenance in the absence of correction signals, using Hemisphere’s Tracer technology.
- Scalable service levels: Atlas is designed to serve all. It is capable of providing virtually any accuracy, precision and repeatability level in the 5 to 100 cm range.
- Convergence time: Convergence times of 10-40 minutes.
- Exclusive agnostic capability: Atlas is an agnostic positioning system. SmartLink technology allows an AtlasLink antenna to be used as an Atlas signal extension for any GNSS system compliant with open communication standards.
- Network RTK augmentation: BaseLink technology allows Atlas-capable receivers to self calibrate, self-survey, and automatically manage the transmission of RTK correction data to augment or extend established or new GNSS reference networks in areas of poor Internet connectivity.
“High-quality corrections are essential to our customers,” said Randy Noland, director of Machine Control, Carlson Software, Inc. “The way all the existing services are purchased, delivered and supported is completely separated from the rest of the positioning ecosystem. We see Atlas as an opportunity for us to deliver corrections under our own brand as part of a holistic package — all of which means empowering our ability to provide a stronger solution and a better experience for our customers.”

“Atlas completely changes how augmentation services are delivered and supported,” said Andy Smith at Saderet Ltd. “For the first time, distributors and dealers can fully participate in selling to and supporting our customers, strengthening our relationships by providing them with a much better experience.”

“I’ve extensively tested Atlas, and the performance is exceptional, making it a great fit for our GIS and survey customers” said Jean-Yves Lauture at Eos Positioning Systems, Inc. “Even better, we can now offer global augmentation services with our Arrow GNSS receivers to our customers as part of an integrated solution. After many years in this industry, that’s a major change.”

Atlas service levels and position accuracies can be customized to meet OEM needs, the company said.

Exclusive Interview with Hemisphere’s Chuck Joseph and Rodrigo Leandro

A Startup Inside a Reinvention

“Atlas comes out of a change of culture and focus,” Hemisphere CEO Chuck Joseph told GPS World, in an extensive interview that also included Rodrigo Leandro, Hemisphere’s director of engineering, GNSS Positioning Systems. “We are reinventing a storied brand, and to do that we have to act more like the startups I have directed since leaving Trimble — move fast, be flexible, and focus on innovation. Effectively we are building a startup inside of a reinvention.”

“On my first day on the job, we divided the staff into five working groups and told them: you are now startup companies, entrepreneurs, with six people each team. Go away and come back with big ideas. Go build a business plan. Out of that we got Athena, released last month, Atlas, AtlasLink, and a couple more new products coming out in the months to come.”

A Different Kind of Corrections Service

Joseph and his colleagues at Hemisphere describe the distribution, pricing, and overall business model of Atlas as “disruptive.”

“Our approach comes directly from talking to customers in agriculture, machine control, and to our channel partners. Other corrections service providers did not allow them to participate, forced them to give up their end user list, and to buy directly from [the service provider] — who in some cases was their competitor in that market.”

“When you step back you can see the impact of those restrictions — after 10 plus years the corrections service marketplace generates probably $150 million in total revenue — it should be bigger than that by now. We think a different approach combined with a very aggressive price point will substantially broaden the marketplace.”

“We’ll be making announcements of OEM signings in the months to come. For us it’s all about what works for our partners — some of them will private-label the service, some will choose to use the Atlas brand. We really don’t care if our name is on the product or not — we’re an OEM play. Whatever brand they choose, we will provide them with the infrastructure to be successful, even down to the portal their customers will use to manage their devices and subscriptions — we will develop that for them, and provide the back-end e-commerce.”

A Look at the Technology

Rodrigo Leandro added, “The basic architecture is not extremely different from other L-band reference services. However, within that, we have really pushed to develop leading-edge technology. For example, our correction method format is well-developed for new constellations and different applications it can serve, and our corrections message structure is the most advanced of those available today. As a result, we have a number of patents pending on technologies included in Atlas.”

Chuck Joseph interjected, “When we were doing the initial planning for Atlas we agreed that it was absolutely critical that our performance meets or beats the competition’s, otherwise we wouldn’t want to offer it to customers out there. We have been benchmarking the competition at every stage of our development, and know that we are delivering a market leading product.”

“This slide shows the same, single antenna connected to Atlas and to a competitor, and it shows being able to converge down to decimeter level.

“This one gives more details on time to converge.

“And here, this one shows pass-to-pass results, the relative accuracy between 2 tracks of the tractor — this is important for people more interested in agriculture applications. We can get down to 2.5 centimeters.”

“The new AtlasLink antenna is designed to be a main channel for customers of our service. It can be used in GIS, machine control, marine applications and so on. Features inside it include a very big internal memory storage, a web server application, multi-GNSS multi-frequency capability, L-band and RTK — it supports Atlas and Athena out of the box. Other innovations will come later, for instance, incorporating Galileo. We believe it is the most powerful multi-purpose GNSS smart antenna in the industry.”

“At the same time there is easy support and easy configuration by the user. It takes literally about six clicks from log-in to register the receiver, out of the box. In 20 minutes you’re running Atlas. It’s very easy to get up and running.”

Broadening the Market

Leandro continued, “The Atlas service isn’t the only area of innovation however. We also spent a lot of time working on how we could deliver the service to the broadest possible audience, and the resulted in two key features of our AtlasLink antenna — SmartLink and BaseLink. Those features free customers from the restrictions of their current hardware and current service — they really change the game.”

“Customers don’t want to have to buy a new $10-$20K receiver [in order to get a corrections service]]. If you’re happy with the hardware you’re currently running, there’s no need to change it, you can still get this service. We are not in the business of using the service to sell hardware. We are using the hardware to sell the service.”

Joseph concluded, “This is all good for OEM customers. For them the SmartLink and BaseLink capabilities are huge. They can go back into their installed base and not have to push people to upgrade receivers or get a brand new receiver. At the same time, it enables them to go after their competitors installed base, and opens up markets that previously weren’t available such as recreational marine service, for example, the lower end of the marketplace. Fundamentally, we want to change this market — enable more users to get access to correction, and deliver real choice to those that have it already.”
June 15, 2015