Australia-based Aptella is offering free access to its AllDayRTK high-accuracy positioning service for volunteers and organizations involved in bushfire and flood recovery efforts.
Reliable positioning aids in coordinating recovery operations, assessing damage and restoring essential infrastructure. However, extreme weather events often disrupt permanent GNSS base stations due to power outages and loss of internet connectivity.
To address this challenge, AllDayRTK has developed a Synthetic Base Station system, enabling high-accuracy positioning even when permanent bases are offline. This technology creates a virtual reference station network that ensures continuity of service in disaster-affected regions, supporting emergency response teams and volunteers where traditional infrastructure cannot.
Key Benefits:
Free access for registered volunteers and recovery organizations.
High-accuracy GNSS positioning for mapping, surveying and logistics.
Synthetic Base Station technology ensures service continuity without reliance on damaged or offline permanent bases.
“Aptella is always willing to do what we can to support volunteer services with high-accuracy positioning that assist with recovery after natural disasters and extreme weather events,” said Greg Macklin, CEO at Aptella. “Our commitment is to ensure that those on the front lines have the tools they need to rebuild communities quickly and safely.”
SoftBank Corp., ALES Corp. and u-blox AG have signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in GNSS augmentation services for global markets.
SoftBank provides the “ichimill” GNSS augmentation service in Japan, its subsidiary ALES operates a business that generates and delivers positioning correction data, and u-blox is a global provider of positioning services for the automotive, industrial and consumer markets.
U-blox also provides electronic components for wireless communications and the PointPerfect GNSS augmentation service in Europe, the United States and other countries and regions.
Through this business collaboration, SoftBank, ALES and u-blox will construct GNSS augmentation infrastructure for Japan, Europe and the United States, develop GNSS receivers and devices, and expand service areas.
Collaboration Background
Since November 2019, SoftBank has been offering ichimill, a GNSS augmentation service that offers highly accurate positioning with a margin of error of a few centimeters in the Japan market. In addition to providing technology that enables the generation and delivery of correction data, ALES has been offering a centimeter-level positioning service to consumers in Japan since August 2020.
In July 2021, u-blox began providing PointPerfect, a PPP-RTK-based GNSS augmentation service, which is now available in the contiguous United States and Europe.
GNSS augmentation services like these are mainly offered separately by country and region. Client companies, which include global automotive manufacturers and agricultural machinery manufacturers, sign up for separate service contracts in each country and region, making GNSS receiver configuration more complex.
Collaboration Overview
To offer global GNSS augmentation services, SoftBank, ALES and u-blox will study the following initiatives.
Develop a global correction data delivery infrastructure. GNSS augmentation services use correction methods that differ by country and region, and there is a wide variety of correction signal formats. In 2022, the three companies will consider developing a correction data delivery infrastructure that delivers unified correction signal formats for use in any country or region. With this infrastructure, companies using ichimill or PointPerfect will be able to conduct GNSS augmentation if they are in range of both services, which will eliminate the need for separate service contracts by country or region.
Jointly develop global-compatible devices. In addition to correction data delivery, an environment that allows for the easy implementation of GNSS receivers and other devices is necessary for GNSS augmentation services. In conjunction with the launch of ichimill, SoftBank developed its own GNSS receivers and is offering them in Japan. The three companies will consider jointly developing GNSS receivers and modules that can be used globally.
Greater GNSS augmentation accuracy and service area expansion. The companies will collaborate closely to ensure that the performance of the services in all the regions covered are comparable. This is important to provide a consistent customer experience across all regions. Furthermore, the three companies plan to study service expansion into other areas, including Asia. SoftBank is promoting the deployment of non-terrestrial network (NTN) solutions that encompass satellite- and stratospheric-based telecommunication platforms to provide connectivity to the sea, the sky, developing countries and rural areas lacking internet infrastructure so everyone around the world has access to the internet. The three companies will consider the development of NTN-linked services, such as correction data delivery using small amounts of data in a way that is suitable for NTN bandwidths.
Offshore construction company Sulmara Subsea has exclusively used Hexagon | VERIPOS solutions since inception to achieve precise, redundant and reliable vessel positioning for a variety of marine construction projects. Projects involving the precise positioning of offshore vessels and subsea assets and vehicles such as ROVs and trenchers are vital to success — even slight errors or loss of connection in surface navigation can lead to problems and down time that can cost millions.
“Sulmara has set out to be an industry leader in innovation and technology from the start. Key to the success of any project is the ability to achieve accurate and reliable global positioning,” said Cory Goodyear, Sulmara’s Americas business unit director. “The support from Veripos to provide not only a cost-effective but reliable service is vital to our operations.
“2020 has seen an unprecedented decline in the oil and gas market, and a growing demand for renewable energy,” Goodyear said. “This has created an even larger demand for lower costs and increased reliability in our services. As a new-start survey company with a goal of establishing itself as a serious competitor, positioning services supported by Veripos was the obvious choice.”
Veripos offers customers several marine receiver options for hydrographic/offshore surveying, dredging, offshore construction, seismic exploration and dynamic positioning. The LD8 ruggedized compact dual-antenna, multi-constellation receiver is best for short-term projects or where space is limited. The larger LD900 can receive Veripos services through a multi-channel L-band demodulator. The multi-constellation receiver is configurable to allow GNSS heading and inertial positioning. It has an intuitive color display for configuration and monitoring. A kit allows the receiver to be installed within vessel equipment racks.
SoftBank plans to introduce a centimeter-accurate, real-time satnav-based positioning service, specifically using Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), to guide autonomous vehicles across a range of industries in Japan. The company said it will install more than 3,300 control points at base stations across Japan to deliver centimeter-level accuracy over its mobile network coverage area to provide real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning.
Testing begins in July with a scheduled launch of commercial service by the end of November. Test partners include Yanmar Agribusiness Co., Ltd., a provider of autonomous assisted driving for agricultural machinery, Kajima Corporation, which performs construction site management with automatically controlled drones for aerial photography and monitoring, and SB Drive Corp., a provider of autonomous and assisted driving technology for buses.
SoftBank is developing proprietary low-cost GNSS receivers so that “new services and market expansion can be realized.” A Positioning Core System provided by ALES Corp. will generate correctional data based on signals received and transmitted by SoftBank’s own control points over SoftBank’s mobile communications network to agricultural and construction machinery, self-driving cars, drones and other equipment carrying GNSS receivers. The company expects that centimeter-level positioning can thus be done in real time.
In addition to control points at its own base stations, SoftBank will use the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan’s approximately 1,300 GPS-based control stations.
SoftBank is also developing services to enablec loud-based RTK positioning for devices without GNSS receivers. Cloud-based RTK will provide centimeter-level, location-based services for equipment that needs to be miniature and energy-efficient, such as infrastructure surveillance sensors and wearable devices.
SoftBank Group Corp. is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Tokyo. It owns operations in broadband, fixed-line telecommunications, e-commerce, internet, technology services, finance, semiconductor design and more. It is the 36th largest public company in the world, and the 2nd largest in Japan.
ALES is a joint venture established by SoftBank and Enabler in July 2018. Enabler employs GNSS and related technologies to produce such products/services as a synchronization solution for mobile base stations for subway stations and a patented indoor positioning/time synchronization infrastructure platform in Japan.
