CES Attendance Down, Attending Vendors Upbeat
Scaled back conference meant more personal interaction
LAS VEGAS—CES was noticeably scaled back as many automakers and suppliers pulled out of the massive electronics conference because of increased risk from COVID. Prior to the conference, General Motors, BMW, Mercedes and several location companies cancelled their physical appearance at CES.
The conference cancelled the last day, but featured more than 2,200 exhibitors and an estimated 50,000 attendees—a far cry from the 171,000 who attended in 2020.
Still, several companies attended and rolled out new products and services:
In its CES media day presentation, Qualcomm [QCOM] focused on connected car products via its Snapdragon product line. The company announced Snapdragon Auto Connectivity that allows automakers access to LTE, 5G, Wi-Fi, and GPS for connected vehicles to other vehicles, cloud and internet.
Intel announced that it will expand its partnership with Ford [F] to include Mobileye’s Road Experience (REM) mapping technology into Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving system. Mobileye also announced its EyeQ Ultra, which is capable of 176 trillion operations per second (TOPS), for autonomous vehicles.
In its CES press conference, John Deere [DE] rolled out a fully autonomous tractor that the company said was ready for large-scale production. The machine, available later this year, combines John Deere's 8R tractor, TruSet-enabled chisel plow, GPS guidance system, and new advanced technologies, the company said.
In other CES news:
General Motors’ CEO Mary Barra, at a virtual keynote address, said the auto giant will sell fully autonomous vehicles by the middle of the decade.
Sequans Communications [SQNS] announced that its Cassiopeia CB410L CBRS module is providing the cellular connectivity for a new IoT tracker introduced by Monogoto.
See next week’s issue for full CES coverage. Go to our website, www.locationbusinessnews.com, for breaking CES news.
HERE Technologies Makes Slew of Announcements at CES
HERE Technologies, appearing virtually as did most location industry companies, made a number of announcements at CES, centering on its HERE Navigation cloud-based navigation product for passenger cars, electrical vehicles, commercial vehicles and trucks.
Since these the products were announced, seven OEMs have chosen the navigation platform, or HERE Software Development Kit, said Edzard Overbeek, company CEO. “Our Heritage comes from the automotive industry. We are continuing in that industry, but also branching out into transport logistics as it the most makes sense as an adjacent market,” he said. “[Transport logistics execs] are very much aware what location data can do for them.”
HERE announced two major trucking partnerships at CES, one with Scania to power a new infotainment platform with the HERE SDK. The other contract was with Volta Trucks, an electric commercial vehicle manufacturer that will integrate HERE navigation services.
Overbeek believes that the trucking market, particularly with platooning technologies, will spur autonomous vehicle growth. “Four or five years back, when everyone was declaring that they would have their level 4 or 5 self-driving car by 2020, we have all come to the realization this is much more complex. Not just from a technology [standpoint], but a regulatory point of view,” he said. “One area we are seeing fast inroads is the trucking market, particularly the technologies around platooning. This will be a big market for us coming to fruition over the next one to three years.”
Overall, Overbeek, who was an executive at Cisco, sees HERE as more of a big data location company, not just a mapping entity. The company’s real-time traffic data, hazard warnings and connected vehicle services are powered by anonymized sensor data from 30 million connected vehicles in 2022.
HERE also made the following announcements at CES:
HERE HD Live Map deployed in Mercedes-Benz DRIVE PILOT automated driving system.
Partnered with Ericsson to bring custom map making and location services to the mining industry.
Launched an Indoor Map as a service with SBB AG as first customer.
Partnered with APCOA and Propark Mobility to add more than 400 indoor parking garages to its indoor map.
8 out of 9 major automakers choose HERE ISA Map to support EU Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) mandate.
The company’s location services will be integrated into Goodyear Total Mobility one-stop fleet management solution.
Contact: Jordan Stark, HERE, jordan.stark@here.com.
Ford, NavInfo Partner To Create Location-based Services
Ford [F] has partnered with Beijing-based NavInfo on next-generation location-based services that will be tailored to future connected vehicles, according to published reports. NavInfo already works with BMW, Daimler, Volvo and Toyota.
The article says that the companies plan on offering LBS technology that does not compromise data security. In addition, the LBS technology will use closed-loop data collection, transmission, storage, application and service.
Ford continues to develop assisted and connected driving technology. After 500,000 miles of testing, Ford is offering its new BlueCruise hands-free highway driving system, Location Business News reported in April. The Tesla Autopilot competitor, which will be a SAE Level 2 driver-assist technology, will be have over-the-air software updates and will be offered on 2021 F-150 and 2021 Mustang Mach-E models.
Ford plans to sell more than 100,000 vehicles equipped with BlueCruise in the first year, based on company sales and take-rate projections. Currently, more than 100,000 miles of highways across North America are dedicated “Hands-Free Blue Zones” in the Ford GPS mapping system, the company said.
Deeyook Partners with Infineon Technologies
Infineon Technologies [IFX] and Deeyook have announced a partnership to offer location solutions. Deeyook, location-as-a-service (LaaS) company, has invented and patented a tracking solution to determine indoor and outdoor locations of items, assets, and employees, the company said.
Both companies will integrate Deeyook’s algorithms into Infineon’s AIROC Wi-Fi portfolio to enable a new location solution, the company said.
“Deeyook’s firmware is integrated into the Infineon chipset firmware. This integration enables the utilization of the modem information for our patented direction finding,” said Gideon Rottem, CEO and Co-Founder of Deeyook, who said the company’s largest market is the supply chain—manufacturing, logistics and retail. “The solution has very low latency, it is passive and requires no association or authentication with an access point, hence it is ideal for mobility use cases, including automobiles.”
Contact: Scott Rosenblum, for Deeyok, (646) 776-1222, scott@levelpr.co.
Ligado Networks Partners with Point One Navigation
In what appears to be its first partnership with a satellite navigation company, Ligado Networks has partnered with Point One Navigation to provide satellite capacity to support Point One’s Polaris GNSS correction service.
The partnership will provide L-Band service to electric vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and will expand to additional sectors in the coming years, according to a press release.
Point One says its Polaris service unlocks better than 10-centimeter accuracy for mobile assets with a nationwide footprint in the United States and coverage across Europe.
“Point One’s innovative positioning network and Fusion Engine software advance operational capabilities in the same critical industrial segments that Ligado will support with our 5G mobile private network solutions,” said Doug Smith, Ligado CEO, in a statement. “Commercial transportation, agriculture and industrial operations increasingly constitute critical infrastructure and require assured coverage, availability and security from the mobile networks and technology platforms on which they rely.”
Beginning early next year, Point One expects to initially deploy the mobile satellite-enabled service to commercial electric vehicles. Through the multi-year Ligado agreement, the company will add other automotive, transportation, agricultural, and other mobile robotic platforms, the company said.
Aaron Nathan, Point One CEO, said that the partnership with Ligado uses that company’s satellite data capabilities, which have no concerns from the the GNSS community. “At issue is Ligado’s land based transmitter ambitions (ATCs) which I personally believe the GNSS community and Ligado need to work closely to come up with a solution that should hopefully involve a change in how filters (in both LNAs and receivers) are designed in new equipment and how Ligado lays out the topology of the ATS network and the actual transmit power,” he said.
GPS Industry Not Happy With Ligado…
Such companies as Thalwil, Switzerland-based u-blox [UBXN] said it cautions against negative impacts of the FCC’s approval of the use of a previously protected portion of the L band for terrestrial communication on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) such as GPS.
Because of a Jan. 2021 FCC decision, Ligado will be free to use frequencies “very close to those used by GNSS receivers, to transmit downlink signals from cell towers and uplink signals from user equipment,” u-blox said.
The company contends the signals threaten to disrupt GNSS receiver operation from “any manufacturer operating in the vicinity of a Ligado base station or compatible cellular handset.”
The FCC voted down a request by U.S. government agencies to stop its decision that allows Reston, Va.-based Ligado Networks to deploy a nationwide mobile broadband network. At that time, such companies as Lockheed Martin [LMT], Iridium Communications, Air Line Pilots Association, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, International Air Transport Association and Airlines for America filed petitions to ask the FCC to reconsider Ligado’s bid.
Contact: Mark Shapiro, for Point One, (619) 249-7742, mshapiro@srs-techpr.com, www.pointonenav.com.
Comtech and Outerbridge Agree on Board of Directors
After months of negative crosstalk, it appears that Comtech [CMTL] and investor Outerbridge Capital Management have agreed on who will be on the location company’s board of directors.
Outerbridge, which owns 4.9 percent of Comtech’s stock, just a couple of weeks ago, said the company needs to bring in more experienced board members–and believes there are conflicts of interest among the current directors. At the time, Comtech fired back, saying that Outerbridge has made misleading statements and nominated unqualified directors.
Now, Outerbridge will support the nomination of Judy Chambers and Larry Waldman to the board. In addition, the board will appoint Wendi Carpenter, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, effective when executives Michael Porcelain and Mark Quinlan are also named as members.
The corporate story has changed dramatically over the past few weeks as Porcelain, Comtech president and COO—and now incoming CEO—said “it has become clear that Outerbridge is a knowledgeable and engaged shareholder seeking to enhance value for all stakeholders.”
This announcement last week is a long way from Outerbridge’s comments earlier in the month:
“[Comtech’s] sham CEO succession process appears to be focused on keeping Chairman and CEO Fred Kornberg and incoming CEO Michael Porcelain, a long-time underperforming Comtech executive, in control. This speaks to the Board’s lack of independence and oversight, especially considering issues surrounding Mr. Kornberg such as the loss of his security clearance, excessive compensation, and related party transactions, and Comtech’s long-time underperformance under the leadership of Messrs. Porcelain and Kornberg,” Outerbridge said in a press release.
Other Location News:
News tip? Send them to kdennehy@driverlessreport.com. Go to www.locationbusinessnews.com for more news and an archive of stories.
😮 Halo Series B Funding Round Completed at $400 Million Valuation. Huge valuation for a GPS-GNSS dog collar startup.
🛰 Boeing Wins $329 Million Contract To Support Orbiting GPS Satellites. “The U.S. Space Force awarded Boeing a $329.3 million contract to support operations of GPS satellites for the next 10 years.”
Carto Raises $61m To Lead the Way in Cloud Native Spatial Analytics. Carto last month announced the closure of a $61 million Series C round led by New York-based global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners.
✔ MachineQ, CoreKinect Team for LoRaWAN-based IoT, Starting with Vehicle Tracking Project. “MachineQ, the IoT unit of broadband service provider Comcast, and IoT hardware firm CoreKinect announced that they are collaborating to offer a LoRaWAN-based outdoor asset tracking solution for inventory management.”
😮 Apple's 3D Navigation in Apple Maps Makes Google Maps and Waze Feel Outdated. “The non-U.S. coverage of Apple Maps still leaves a lot to be desired, and the overhaul the company announced last year is still yet to reach the majority of international markets.”
🚗 The 5 Biggest Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Trends in 2022. “Autonomous deliveries picking up the pace.”
👍 Volvo Deploys Anti-theft Car Tracker. The GPS tracker, priced at around $787, uses Vodafone’s VTS S5 connectivity module and a connected car protocol from Trinsic Connected Car to pinpoint a Volvo vehicle’s location to an accuracy of 10 meters.
🚘 Mobileye Says Mapping Every Road Is the Key To Self-driving Cars. “The company plans to crowdsource the data it needs to build and maintain its map from cars that have MobilEye driver assistance systems installed.”
😦 GM’s Barra Dismissed Cruise CEO Ammann Over Mission, IPO. “The two executives didn’t agree on how to focus the breakthrough self-driving technology that the Silicon Valley unit is preparing to launch with a taxi service.”
👌 Mapbox: A Year in Review 2021. GM deal was huge…
😬 CalAmp Shares Slide After Earnings, Revenue Miss. CalAmp [CAMP] reported a loss of 8 cents per share on revenue of $69 million.
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Location Industry Briefs
Send your news releases to kdennehy@driverlessreport.com. Go to www.locationbusinessnews.com for more news and an archive of stories.
Hexagon Partners with Dayou
Hexagon's Autonomy & Positioning division has partnered with Chinese positioning company Dayou to bring TerraStar X precise point positioning technology to the Chinese market for autonomous vehicles and smartphones. Hexagon said the deal allows the companies to offer products globally. The GNSS corrections generated from TerraStar X technology enable lane-level accuracy to support ADAS, autonomous applications and other uses, the company said.
Contact: Jessica Fielding, Hexagon, (403) 919-3388, jessica.fielding@hexagon.com.
Motorola Solutions Acquires Location Services Provider Datamaster
Motorola Solutions [MSI] recently announced it has acquired 911 Datamaster, a next generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) data solutions provider. 911 Datamaster’s NG9-1-1 location solutions ensure that emergency calls are accurately located and routed based on the caller’s location, the company said. Financial details were not disclosed.
Contact: Mary Alice Johnson, Motorola Solutions, (703) 606-2413,
maryalice.johnson@motorolasolutions.com, www.motorolasolutions.com.
Volkswagen-TomTom Partner on Navigation Product
Volkswagen’s automotive software and technology company CARIAD recently partnered with TomTom [TOM2] for a product that combines hybrid navigation and traffic services. The multi-year deal between TomTom and the Volkswagen Group covers all worldwide markets except China.
CARIAD will develop the navigation UI/UX as well as the map visualization, creating a navigation experience for the customers of Volkswagen Group brands, the company said. TomTom has developed a navigation solution that will integrate into the Volkswagen Group’s digital cockpits—with over-the-air updates.
In other company news, TomTom announced that Amazon Music is now available on TomTom IndiGO digital cockpit software.
Contact: TomTom, tomtom.pr@tomtom.com, www.tomtom.com.
Catalina and PlaceIQ Partner
Catalina and PlaceIQ have partnered to bring location-driven planning, measurement and attribution to CPG retailers. The deal allows Catalina to leverage PlaceIQ data in real time to inform planning, audience targeting, measurement and analytics, the company said.
Catalina will use PlaceIQ's Firehose Visits product to enhance its measurement, audience creation and analytics offerings, the company said. PlaceIQ will extend its large Point of Interest (POI) database to include more than 30,000 custom locations to support Catalina's growing out-of-home and place-based media service.
Contact: PlaceIQ, www.placeiq.com.
Radar Partners Provides Panera Bread With Location Services
Radar, a geofencing platform, has announced that they will power location services for Panera Bread’s omnichannel business. The company’s geofencing platform enables Panera to offer enhanced and customized digital capabilities, including contactless dine-in and delivery and automatic MyPanera loyalty membership identification, the company said.
Contact: Radar, www.radar.com.
Qorvo Offers Location Service to Google Pixel 6 Pro
Qorvo [QRVO] said it is supplying Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology for Google’s Pixel 6 Pro flagship smartphone. The Qorvo DW3720 UWB solution allows such applications as “find my stuff” and indoor location/indoor navigation. This includes secure peer-to-peer financial transactions and other location-based “secure association” applications, the company said.
Contact: Alexis Mariani, Qorvo, (336) 678-5605, alexis.mariani@qorvo.com, www.qorvo.com.
Pozyx Rolls Out New RTLS Tools
Pozyx has launched its new tool to simulate the behavior of assets in real-time location system scenarios and to test and validate Trigger zones. The Pozyx Trigger feature captures the business logic of RTLS use cases and translates xyz data streams into actionable events, the company said. The company’s Simulator Engine, created for integration partners as well as end-customers, generates moving asset data, the company said. In addition, the company’s Random Walk generates random location data streams for a selected number of tagged assets on a pre-defined zone on the floor plan, the company said.
Contact: Elly Schietse, Pozyx, 32479761825, pozyx.io.
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