GPS World

Tag: Skylark corrections service

  • Telit Cinterion bundles Swift’s Skylark into integrated IoT positioning

    Telit Cinterion bundles Swift’s Skylark into integrated IoT positioning

    Telit Cinterion and Swift Navigation have announced an expanded partnership. Telit Cinterion will offer Swift Navigation’s Skylark Precise Positioning Service as part of an integrated IoT positioning solution.

    This service is available with Telit Cinterion’s dual-frequency GNSS modules and NExT cellular connectivity. IoT customers gain one source for the hardware, connectivity and Skylark Dx correction data needed for sub-meter positioning.

    What began in 2024 as a technical partnership has grown into a comprehensive joint offering, uniting hardware, connectivity, and corrections into a seamless solution for IoT customers.

    Telit Cinterion customers can now buy modules, connectivity and corrections under one contract. For many IoT projects, this cuts vendor coordination and avoids the cost and operational complexity of building or subscribing to an RTK base-station network.

    Skylark is available in three variants — Skylark Dx, Cx, and Nx RTK — to meet a broad range of requirements for accuracy, coverage, bandwidth, and power consumption.

    All Telit Cinterion dual-frequency L1 + L5 GNSS modules offer native support for Skylark Dx, which streams differential GNSS (DGNSS) corrections directly to the receiver over the cellular network. Skylark Dx runs over standard RTCM via Internet Protocol (NTRIP), using minimal bandwidth and power, and provides country-wide coverage. This makes it practical for IoT devices with limited bandwidth or tight power budgets.

    Typical applications include:

    • e-mobility
    • fleet and asset tracking
    • robotics
    • drones

    These are cases that don’t require centimeter-level RTK accuracy but do need reliable sub-meter positioning. Customers requiring higher accuracy can upgrade to Skylark Nx RTK on compatible module variants without redesigning their devices or changing suppliers.

    “Customers tell us they want precise positioning without complexity,” said Neset Yalcinkaya, president of IoT hardware at Telit Cinterion. “We’re bundling Skylark Dx with the GNSS modules and cellular connectivity we already ship. This gives customers one supplier and a single integration approach, plus a clear path to RTK down the road.”

    “At Swift Navigation, our mission is to make precise positioning a standard capability,” said Holger Ippach, chief operating officer at Swift Navigation. “This partnership advances that vision by embedding Skylark into Telit Cinterion’s GNSS modules and connectivity, giving customers direct access to reliable, sub-meter positioning without the integration overhead traditionally required.”    

    Service Availability

    Skylark Dx is available now with Telit Cinterion solutions in Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Coverage will expand as Swift Navigation adds regions.

    For more information, visit these links:

  • Swift integrates high-integrity GNSS with Nvidia Drive AGX platform

    Swift integrates high-integrity GNSS with Nvidia Drive AGX platform

    Swift Navigation is collaborating with Nvidia to enable a more scalable, cost-effective approach to autonomous driving by integrating the Nvidia Drive AGX platform with Swift’s globally referenced, centimeter-accurate GNSS positioning.

    Swift Navigation offloads absolute localization to the GNSS sensor stack using its Swift Automotive Suite. The suite is a complete, modular software solution for safe, high-integrity precise vehicle localization that combines the centimeter-level Skylark Precise Positioning Service with the Starling positioning engine, software that fuses raw GNSS data and corrections with inertial sensors (IMU) and wheel odometry to deliver high-integrity, centimeter-accurate positioning (PVT).

      By entrusting lane-level positioning to Swift’s high-precision stack, the vehicle’s optical sensors are relieved of the absolute positioning burden. This allows the perception stack to be optimized for obstacle detection and immediate safety, significantly reducing overall system cost and complexity.

      Integration with Nvidia Drive AG

      The integration is delivered through the Starling SAL Plugin for Nvidia DriveWorks. The Nvidia Drive AGX platform is the industry-standard, end-to-end platform for software-defined vehicles, scaling from assisted to fully autonomous operation. DriveWorks, its comprehensive SDK, provides a unified sensor abstraction layer (SAL) for seamless ingestion of data from all sensor types.

      Swift’s new plugin acts as a drop-in component within this architecture. Sitting between the vehicle’s raw GNSS sensors and higher-layer software, such as that for localization, the plugin invisibly handles the complex mathematics of GNSS corrections and sensor fusion, outputting a clean, corrected position stream directly into the standard DriveWorks interface.

      “We are removing the single biggest hurdle to widespread autonomy: the complexity and cost of localization,” said Holger Ippach, EVP of Product and Marketing at Swift Navigation. “By delivering Starling’s natively integrated, high-integrity GNSS to Nvidia DriveWorks, we are giving OEMs a direct path to globally referenced, lane-level positioning that is simple, scalable, and affordable.”

      The collaboration and the Starling SAL Plugin unlock several advantages for automotive OEMs leveraging the Nvidia Drive platform:

      • Cloud-native ASIL safety. Skylark is an ASIL-certified positioning service built entirely in the cloud, offering scalability and reliability at a lower cost than solutions reliant on physical data centers.
      • Comprehensive sensor fusion. The Starling Positioning Engine delivers robust, high-integrity positioning by fusing precise GNSS with IMU and wheel odometry, ensuring continuous, lane-level accuracy even in signal-challenged environments.
      • Plug-and-play precision. Developers no longer need to build localization stacks from scratch. High precision is toggled on simply by adding the Starling plugin to the DriveWorks configuration.
      • Hardware independence. Because Starling is software-defined, Nvidia customers can achieve high performance using a wide variety of mass-market GNSS receivers, rather than being locked into expensive, proprietary navigation units.
      • Pre-validated integration. The Starling plugin has been rigorously tested and validated within the DriveWorks environment. This eliminates the complex, months-long burden of validating custom sensor drivers and fusion algorithms, allowing engineering teams to focus immediately on high-level path planning and control.

      The Starling SAL Plugin for Nvidia DriveWorks is available now.

    1. 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.