Bridgestone To Buy Fleet Tracking Firm for $391 Million
Bridgestone Agrees to Purchase Azuga Holdings From Sumeru Equity Partners, Danlaw and Other Shareholders
Bridgestone Americas has agreed to purchase fleet tracking software company Azuga for $391 million. Pending regulatory approval, the deal brings all of Azuga’s products, facilities in the U.S. and India, and employees into Bridgestone’s mobility solutions division.
The company’s co-founder and CEO, Ananth Rani, will also join Bridgestone. Rani, who has been a vehicle tracking pioneer since his days at the helm of Xora, co-founded founded Fremont, Calif.-based Azuga in 2012.
The acquisition of Azuga, which builds upon Bridgestone’s recently announced investment in autonomous long-haul trucking company Kodiak Robotics, includes the company’s flagship fleet management platform, which leverages data capture with GPS, video telematics, driver behavior management and accident reduction products. Bridgestone said the acquisition will promote the company’s increased marketing to small and enterprise-sized fleets.
Key Takeaways:
Bridgestone is no stranger to the fleet tracking market, having purchased TomTom’s telematics unit in 2019 for an estimated $1 billion.
Azuga has more than 6,000 fleet customers in North America.
Location Companies Part of Verizon and Newlab’s 2021 5G Studio
Several companies in Verizon and Newlab’s 5G Studio integrate location technology in their offerings. The startups, which leverage Verizon’s Ultra Wideband 5G network and Mobile Edge Compute (MEC) capabilities, include those specializing in autonomous robots and autonomous drone data collection, bi-directional EV charging stations, machine learning and AI, and others .
One company, Easy Aerial, offers a military-grade, autonomous drone-in-a-box-based monitoring, inspection, and surveillance solution for commercial, government, and military applications. The company tested 5G-enabled solutions that included AI-enabled object detection and telemetry transmission designed to help infrastructure, enterprise and government users unlock safe, drone-based data collection at scale, the company said.
Another company, Fantasmo, offers 3D maps and hyper-accurate positioning for location-based services that include e-scooter, food delivery, ride-hailing and augmented reality. Fantasmo’s Camera Positioning Service (CPS) provides hyper-accurate positioning, which they say is 20 times better than GPS, for any camera and works in GPS-degraded environments including cities and indoors.
Through their testing, Fantasmo said it was able to update their maps in near real-time using camera data as well as to pinpoint the exact location of an e-scooter moving between geofences. “This opens up the opportunity to enable hyperlocal positioning for a variety of mobile platforms including delivery robots, drones, HMDs, handheld devices, and autonomous vehicles,” the company said.
Contact: Leila Qualheim, Verizon, (303) 641-8617, Leila.Qualheim@verizon.com.
U-blox Launches Location-as-a-Service
Our coverage of Thalwil, Switzerland-based u-blox [UBXN] incorrectly said Location-as-a-Service would be launched soon. However, the company has informed us the service is available now.
Location-as-a-Service that incorporates the company’s recently introduced PointPerfect, AssistNow, CloudLocate and CellLocate products. While PointPerfect brings GNSS to a mass market, the other services concentrate on different markets and technology requirements.
INRIX Rolls Out Location Analytics
INRIX Inc. last week launched its INRIX IQ Location Analytics, a cloud-based LBS application that provides retailers, investors, and other businesses insights to open new stores, increase revenue, and maximize return on investment, the company said.
INRIX said that when selecting a new location, businesses need to understand who their customers are, where they came from, how they got there, and where they're going next. To do this, the company said its Location Analytics software combines a variety of mobility, demographic, behavioral, and location-based datasets.
The product links people, vehicles, roads, cities, and businesses to provide insight into the movement of people and goods to, from, and around locations, the company said. Location Analytics is available through the company’s INRIX IQ, a SaaS application suite.
Contact: INRIX, iq.inrix.com.
Other Location News:
News tip? Send them to kdennehy@driverlessreport.com.
😬 Warship Positions Faked Including UK Aircraft Carrier. “Nearly 100 naval ships may have had their [automatic identification system] position altered, environmental groups SkyTruth and Global Fishing Watch found. The ships included vessels from European and U.S. navies, including 11 from the Royal Navy.”
🤞 New Indoor Navigation Technologies Work Where GPS Can’t. “Boston-based Skyhook Wireless, is one of many companies offering positioning based on Wi-Fi (and cellular signals and GPS, where those are also available).”
😒 China Antitrust Officials Delay Review of Nvidia’s $40 Billion Arm Acquisition. “It’s not just Chinese tech companies that are facing difficulties with China’s ruling party. Take Nvidia’s $40 billion takeover of chip designer Arm. While China’s competition regulators have been talking to the two companies since early this year, the agency’s formal review hasn’t even started yet, according to people with knowledge of the process.”
✔ Aeris Communications and Sobus Insight Forum Sign Mou To Establish Technology-Driven Ecosystem. “Aeris’ IoT platform, IoT solutions, and services, as well as applications and interfaces, will be used in the technology-driven, current, and future social projects launched by Sobus in their Centre of Excellence (CoE).”
👍 US Navy Unveils Strategy for Autonomous Vehicles. “The U.S. Navy’s research arm has released a strategy for developing intelligent autonomous systems and integrating them with the fleet.”
🛩 Autel Evo II Gets Compulsory No-Fly Zone Geofencing Database With Latest Firmware Update. “Autel EVO II drones are now equipped with geofencing capabilities in the US, Japan, Australia, as well as the Greater China area. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that these capabilities will be enforced.”
🛰 Here’s How Shield AI Wants To Boost V-Bat’s Capability on a Contested Battlefield. “Shield AI, which started with a quadcopter capable of flying indoors in GPS-denied environments, now wants to advance its artificial intelligence and autonomy technology by buying a drone company that has caught the attention of the military.”
👞 Honda-Backed In-Shoe Navigator Could Help Guide the Visually Impaired.
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Cansel Signs Distribution Deal For Survey Robot
Cansel signed a deal to Denmark-based TinyMobileRobots to distribute the TinySurveyor robot in Canada. The markets for TinySurveyor include surveying, civil engineering, construction, and infrastructure industries. The report features a Trimble [TRMB] GNSS receiver.
The company says it has the ability to execute tasks 10 times faster than traditional surveying and stakeout methods. Some of the things the robot can do are: Pre-marking, stake- out/set-out, data collection, as-built surveys and more, increasing quality, efficiency and safety for the construction industry.
Contact: Martin Trudelle, Cansel Survey Equipment., 514-233-6004, Martin.Trudelle@cansel.ca, https://tinymobilerobots.com.
Esri Opens Office For Entrepreneurs in St. Louis
Esri said it opened an office within the Geospatial Innovation Center at T-REX in St. Louis. The Geospatial Innovation Center focuses on innovation, education, and workforce development, the company said. Esri will provide startup companies with access to the company's ArcGIS Developers tools and services at no cost under the Esri Startup program. Participants in the program receive free cloud services, training, software, and support to drive development and success as their companies grow, the company said.
Contact: Jo Ann Pruchniewski, Esri, (301) 693-2643, jpruchniewski@esri.com, go.esri.com/TREX.
Tuya Smart Launches Location Beacon
Tuya Smart [TUYA] this week launched its Tuya Beacon that upgrades smart devices with location-based technology.
The beacon uses Bluetooth Low Energy to send continuous broadcast signals to any nearby mobile devices, the company said. Markets include smart homes, outdoor courtyards, fitness and healthcare, and smart business scenarios. The beacon allows developers to integrate and control location-based smart devices.
Contact: Tuya Smart, www.tuya.com/events/oth/officialnews-en/signup.
NGA 911 Partners With Roadside Telematics
NGA 911 has partnered with Roadside Telematics Corp. to support linking connected cars with next generation 9-1-1 systems and first responders nationwide. The company’s RoadMedic is the first telematics service provider-agnostic data delivery platform enabling automaker-sponsored 9-1-1 Vehicular Emergency Data Set (VEDS), the company said. The NGA 911 cloud-native Next Generation Core Service (NGCS), Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet), and Call Handling Solution (CHS) will deliver the RoadMedic data to 9-1-1 centers with the telematics call, the company said.
Contact: Brandi Holder, for NGA 911, (877) 899-8337, 315135@email4pr.com.
MiX Telematics Reports Quarterly Results, Signs Bus Operator Deal
MiX Telematics Ltd. [MIXT] has announced that the UK's largest independent bus operator, McGill's Group, has chosen MiX Telematics as its connected fleet technology partner. The company reported first-quarter revenue growth of 26.9 percent of $34.9 million, which beat the analyst estimates of $33.1 million. Subscription revenues rose 20.2 percent, year-to-year to $31.1 million. In addition, the company generated $4.7 million in operating cash flow and $46.1 million in cash and equivalents.
Contact: Marion Calvet, MiX Telematics (Europe), 44 121 717 5360, Marion.Calvet@mixtelematics.com.
