A new partnership hopes to bring centimeter-level positioning to autonomous vehicles, medical drones and precious cargo. Vodafone and Sapcorda recently tested the technology to remotely track a vehicle to within just 10 centimeters, the company said.
The companies used Vodafone’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform, with 118 million connections, during the tests. The company plans to offer the service as part of its ‘Telco as a Service’ (TAAS) model.
Vodafone plans to integrate the service into its IoT platform and try to scale it to its millions of customers, said Justin Shields, company business platforms and solutions director, in a prepared statement. At our deadline, emails to Vodafone were not returned.
Vodafone will concentrate on markets that require such precise positioning and location technology as autonomous vehicles, particularly within factories, airports, dockyards and other areas with heavy traffic. In addition, the company said that “large enterprises” will benefit from the service not only to locate critical assets, but align machines such as driverless trains at platforms.
Sapcorda, which specializes in GNSS augmentation services and based in Berlin, was created as a joint venture by Bosch, Geo++, Mitsubishi Electric and u-blox.
Vodafone is able to equip any number of vehicles with an in-built IoT SIM, and deliver the positioning data at speed using its gigabit-capable networks.
During testing, Vodafone tracked vehicles in their exact lane during a combined journey of more than 100 kilometers in varying weather conditions, the company said. Sapcorda provided the data feed, which enabled the GNSS signal to be corrected, to deliver the level of positional accuracy, the company said. The Sapcorda precise positioning service (PPS) will work alongside existing Vodafone asset tracking and fleet telematics products that are installed in 54 countries.
Source : Location Business News
