Food Delivery Giant Grab Launches Mapping Service
Company hopes to "grab" part of a $1 billion market...
Hoping to gain part of an estimated $1 billion Southeast Asia mapping and location-based services market, Grab Holdings [GRAB] has announced the launch of GrabMaps for enterprise customers. The new service, first developed for in-house use, will provide location-based intelligence and services for all of its verticals, located in seven countries, by the third quarter, the company said.
“The back alleys and narrow side streets common across Southeast Asia cities often don’t show up on conventional maps, but are navigated by our driver and delivery partners every day,” said Tan Hooi Ling, Grab co-founder, in a statement. “We’ve invested to turn this intelligence into a competitive advantage, allowing us to serve our users and partners with a great experience, at the same time driving efficiency and cost-savings for the business.”
The B2B version of GrabMaps will feature driver-delivery planning, ETA calculations, route planning, underlying points of interest and route intelligence. Through its Base Data Map, companies can license data from Grab, such as places, road and traffic and imagery. In addition, GrabMaps currently has more than 33 million POIs and point addresses in Southeast Asia and expects to grow this to 37 million by the end of the year, the company said.
The company will also offer map-making tools and software-as-a-service to enterprise customers to build their own maps. Grab’s map-making camera, Kartacam, is currently being piloted by partner companies in Paris, Johannesburg, Dubai and Seattle, the company said.
GrabMaps powers more than 800 billion API calls per month across its services—and draws data from millions of orders and rides, the company said. This includes real-time feedback from partners on road closures, business address changes and more, the company said.
Point One Enters Vertical Location Market with Pressure Sensor Corrections
Point One Navigation has announced enhancements to its base station network and cloud service that allow pressure sensor corrections for accurate user altitude determination.
The new correction service will enable 10-centimeter horizontal position accuracy to help developers and device manufacturers enhance vertical position accuracy in multi-story buildings, highways and tunnels, the company said. To do this, the company said it integrated advanced pressure sensors into its base station design—to meet the FAA Class A meteorological performance.
Point One CEO Aaron Nathan said the company’s advanced sensors will allow device manufacturers to transform barometric pressure sensors into an accurate source of vertical location information. “Barometric pressure has long been a method for determining altitude. In aviation, altimeters use pressure to understand where planes are in elevation,” he said. “Having a reference pressure on the ground lets you know the "ambient" pressure, allowing you to turn the difference of your pressure and the station pressure into a difference in height.”
Nathan said that, from a consumer point of view, vertical accuracy is just as important as a normal X and Y axis. “It could be as mundane as resolving which parking deck you parked on in the airport or as critical to having the emergency responder locate the apartment where someone is having a heart attack, vertical accuracy is often overlooked but incredibly important in particular in metropolitan areas,” he said.
The company has built its own network of more than 900 base stations nationwide, which track all GNSS constellations, to deliver position and climate monitoring. “Much of our innovation has been how to roll out a high performance, security oriented network rapidly and cost effectively,” Nathan said. “We've dramatically reduced the complexity of installing these stations, streamlined calibration and adopted modern software practices to monitor the stations and get in front of issues before they result in outages. This is only possible because of the years of innovation that went into vertically integrating the base stations—and our real estate partners, of course.”
Point One previously announced that the base stations enable cold coverage times of less than 10 seconds—faster than current market offerings, the company said. In addition, the lease partnerships the company has made will give it access to more than 5,000 locations for base station development, to include dense urban areas, the company said.
Contact: Aaron Nathan, Point One, sales@pointonenav.com.
Jaguar Land Rover, What3words and HERE Deliver Navigation Solution
Jaguar Land Rover, through HERE Technologies navigation software, plans to deliver what3words capability over the air to customers with vehicles already on the road. What3words, which has divided the globe into 3-meter by 3-meter squares, allows customers to navigate by using three unique words that are tied to a location.
Jaguar Land Rover, which has worked with what3words since 2018 and HERE for 25 years, says the new software-over-the-air (SOTA) upgrade follows one in which it gave more than 200,000 existing vehicles access to Amazon Alexa. In total, the company has made more than 1.3 million vehicle software updates.
The system, once updated, will allow customers to input what3words addresses into the navigation bar on a vehicle’s Pivo Pro Infotainment system, the company said. HERE’s driving services include turn-by-turn guidance, real-time traffic and the ability to find off-street parking.
Integrated what3words is available in all new and existing Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles with the Pivi Pro Infotainment system, the company said.
In other what3words news:
Yext has integrated what3words, which means 100 million listings can now use it to tell their customers exactly where they are, the company said.
Yext allows companies to sync business information, like opening hours and location, across platforms including Google, Amazon Alexa, Apple Maps and Facebook.
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Other Location News:
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🛰 UK-based Satnav Trial To Augment GPS Performance. “Inmarsat's system is in a trial phase at the moment. British partners on the project include Goonhilly Earth Station Limited in Cornwall and GMV NSL, which specializes in developing positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies.”
💰 San Diego Startup Nets $165M for Military Drone Software. “Its core AI software stack is called Hivemind, which powers Shield AI's Nova-class unmanned aerial vehicles. These drones are small surveillance UAVs that operate in high-threat, GPS-degraded environments.”
😐 ZTE Wins Bidding for National LBS Platform From China Broadnet. “ZTE will build two sites (active/standby) in Beijing and Nanjing for the national LBS platform of China Broadnet.”
🚗 Lyft Plans To Build a Hybrid Network of Autonomous and Driver Vehicles, Co-founder Says. “Lyft Autonomous’ AV partners include Ford Motor and Argo AI, Motional and Waymo. Lyft announced in 2021 that it will launch a driverless robotaxi service in Las Vegas next year through its partnership with Motional.”
🙁 Bird Is Laying Off 23% Of Staff. “While the need for and access to micro-electric vehicle transportation has never been greater, macro economic trends impacting everyone have resulted in an acceleration of our path to profitability,” Bird told TechCrunch.
🛩 Amazon Says It Will Begin Delivering Packages by Drone in California.
👍 Ford CEO Jim Farley Says ADAS Revenue Stream Will Be Massive. “Ford [F] has big plans for connected vehicle services, a part of its business that it expects will net the company $20 billion in annual revenue by 2030, with another $45 billion coming from the new Ford Pro commercial business by 2025.
👌 MapmyIndia and ISRO Join Hands To Provide Detailed 3D Maps of India. “MapmyIndia announced on Friday that it will be partnering with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in order to enhance mapping quality, especially 3D maps.”
👏 Snap Map Launches Restaurant Recommendations. “Snap Map geo-tags users and their Snaps on a map interface. 250 million Snapchatters are out and about using it to find each other.”
🤨 Apple Maps Copying Google Maps Isn’t a Bad Thing. “But no matter if Apple indeed looked at Google Maps or not before rolling out multi-stop routing in Apple Maps, the iPhone maker copying its rival’s ideas isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
☹ Navigation Sensor On Mars Helicopter Dead, NASA Says. “One of the four-pound rotorcraft's navigation sensors has given out — an unfortunate new development, especially considering Martian winter is almost upon it.”
🛩 Germany's Quantum Systems Raises $32M To Develop Autonomous Drone Swarms. “Germany-based Quantum Systems, the maker of fixed-wing Trinity and Vector/Scorpion eVTOL drones, has raised $32 million through a mix of equity and debt financing in its Series A funding round.”
Location Industry Briefs
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Trimble Names First Customer for Map-Based Localization System
Trimble [TRMB] has announced that Japan-based IHI Corp. will retrofit its existing containers and haulage trucks with its map-based localization system for land-based autonomous vehicle applications. IHI Corporation will retrofit its fleet with a customized Applanix POS LV system. The map-based localization provides precise positioning, orientation estimation and augmenting GNSS/inertial data, the company said.
Contact: Trimble, autonomy.trimble.com.
Strategy Analytics Ranks HERE No. 1 for Location Data and Services
Strategy Analytics has named HERE Technologies as the top ranked location platform by its industry analysts that also evaluated such companies as Google, Mapbox and TomTom across seven categories. This year, Strategy Analytics ranked HERE as the leader in mapmaking, automotive and industry growth vision.
Strategy Analytics evaluated each company in these areas: mapmaking and maintenance, developer community, automotive, non-automotive, map and data visualization, growth and leadership, and environmental sustainability. Overall, Strategy Analytics expects location services to increase with the penetration in mass market and electric vehicles, ADAS and the upcoming European ISA regulation as well as automated driving.
Contact: Jordan Stark, HERE, (312) 316-4537, jordan.stark@here.com, www.heretechnologies.com.
U-blox Rolls Out Its Smallest GNSS Module Series
Thalwil, Switzerland-based u-blox [UBXN] has announced the launch of its smallest GNSS module series, u-blox MIA-M10, which is built on the company’s M10 platform. The company said it is targeting the market for people, pets, and livestock trackers, as well as industrial sensors and consumer goods.
MIA-M10, which will have its first samples available in July, is available in two product variants. The module targets the growing market of highly size-constrained battery-powered tracking devices, the company said. MIA-M10 will be on display at Sensors Converge and Embedded Technologies, in San Jose, Calif., at booth 1228.
Contact: Natacha Seitz, u-blox, 41 76 436 0788, natacha.seitz@u-blox.com, www.u-blox.com.
Pozyx and ART4L Deliver Location Guidance and Vision Picking Solution
Pozyx and ART4L are working on an AR-based operator location guidance and vision picking solution that pinpoints the optimal route and helps order pickers, the company said. The system, based on a combination of Pozyx’s UWB-based RTLS and ART4L’s Smartpick offering, features positioning with augmented reality technologies.
The use of real-time location data adjusts the route to steer clear of such moving obstacles as forklifts or temporary aisle blockers like stocking pallets, the company said. The combined solution is live in Fabriek Logistiek, a Belgian test and demo center, which is equipped with warehouse and logistics technologies.
Contact: Elly Schietse, Pozyx, marketing@pozyx.io, www.pozyx.io.
Samsara Partners with Free2Move
Samsara Inc. [IOT] has partnered with fleet company Free2move to allow Stellantis factory-installed telematics devices to be pulled into Samsara's Connected Operations Cloud. Samsara’s integration with Free2move is available for fleet customers in the U.S. with equipped 2018 or newer Stellantis vehicles, including Ram, Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep, the company said.
Drivers will have access to Stellantis’ embedded telematics data, such as GPS location, engine hours, fuel usage, and tire pressure. The company also announced that General Motors [GM] OnStar-equipped vehicles, 2015 or newer, will also have access to its integrated solution.
Contact: Andie Rodriguez, Samsara, (650) 704-3044, andie.rodriguez@samsara.com.
Vitals Aware Services Joins NextNav’s Partner Ecosystem
NextNav [NN] has announced that Vitals Aware Services has joined its partner ecosystem. Vitals offers first responders to have shared information from individuals, families and caregivers, the company said. The Vitals App, combined with NextNav’s vertical location service, allows first responders to find individuals in a building.
In other company news, NextNav this week partnered with RapidDeploy, a cloud-native emergency response platform, for its z-axis location information. The partnership provides RapidDeploy Radius Mapping users access to z-axis location information for improved dispatch and reduced response times, the company said.
Contact: Mahmood Abu-Rubieh, for NextNav, nextnav@launchsquad.com.
OneNav Opens First European Office in Finland
OneNav has opened its Finland Oy office in Tampere. The company, which is developing the pure L5 GNSS system that leverages the E5/L5/B2 signal bands, said that it will add additional engineering support for Florian Curticapean, director of position engineering, who heads those efforts in Finland.
Contact: Ellen Kirk, oneNav, (650) 678-0240, info@onenav.ai, www.onenav.ai.
Motorola Solutions Modernizes 911 Call Routing
Motorola Solutions [MSI] is presenting its location-based 911 call routing technologies at this week’s NENA 2022 in Louisville, Ky. Motorola Solutions is among the first NGCS providers to use the caller’s location to route 911 calls to an Emergency Call Center, the company said. Motorola Solutions uses the caller’s location for call routing—rather than current technology that routes the call based on its proximity to the nearest cell tower.
Contact: Mary Alice Johnson, Motorola Solutions, (703) 606-2413, maryalice.johnson@motorolasolutions.com, www.motorolasolutions.com.
Septentrio Signs Distributions Agreement with CompoTEK
Septentrio has signed distribution partnership with CompoTEK for Germany, Austria and Switzerland for its mosiac RTK module with AIM+ Advanced Interference Mitigation technology. CompoTEK works with its customers during the design-in phase and offers long-term product support, the company said. Septentrio will be exhibiting mosaic and other GPS/GNSS and INS products at the Embedded World show in Nüremberg, Germany next week.
Contact: Septentrio, septentrio.com.
Garmin Introduces the Edge 1040 Solar GPS Bike Computer
Garmin International [GRMN] rolled out the Edge 1040 Solar GPS bike computer. The product features solar charging and multi-band GNSS technology.
The multi-band GNSS technology provides more accurate GPS positioning in challenging ride environments, such as dense urban areas or under deep tree cover, the company said. Edge 1040 Solar features maps that use Trendline popularity routing, the company said.
Contact: Stephanie Schultz, Garmin, (913) 397-8200, media.relations@garmin.com, www.garmin.com.
Inpixon’s INTRANAV Joins SAP’s Partner Program
Inpixon [INPX] has announced that subsidiary INTRANAV joined SAP's partner program as an SAP PartnerEdge – Build member. The SAP partner program allows INTRANAV to share its intellectual property portfolio and to market its smart factory, smart warehouse, and digital supply chain solutions to SAP's 440,000 customers worldwide, the company said. The company also partners with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services to deliver real-time location system (RTLS) cloud solutions to its customers.
Contact: Inpixon, marketing@inpixon.com, inpixon.com/contact-us.
Digital Matter Receives Asset Tracking Award
Digital Matter has announced that its latest indoor/outdoor battery-powered asset tracking solution, Oyster Edge, has received a 2022 IoT Evolution Asset Tracking Award from IoT Evolution. Oyster Edge also functions as a Bluetooth Low Energy Gateway, allowing the device to track the location of assets in transit or in storage.
Oyster Edge features cloud-based location processing and operates for up to 10 years on 3 AA batteries. “Coming out of the pandemic, we are seeing an increase in demand for item-level asset tracking and remote sensing solutions as organizations seek to improve their operations and hedge against future problem scenarios,” says Ken Everett, Digital Matter CEO and founder, in a statement.
Contact: Shay Kettner, Digital Matter, 61 8 6280 1217, shay@digitalmatter.com, www.digitalmatter.com.
Mikrotik Introduces Bluetooth Tag for Asset-Tracking
Mikrotik has rolled out a Bluetooth tag solution for asset-tracking and telemetry setups. The product uses InPlay's NanoBeacon SoC IN100, a Bluetooth beacon chip that features no software programming and low-power consumption to allow developers to build a Real Time Location System asset tracker product in a matter of weeks, the company said.
Contact: Emmy Chang, InPlay, (949) 378-6361, Emmy.chang@inplay-tech.com.
EnVue Telematics to Exhibit at Texas Trucking Show 2022
Longview, Texas-based EnVue Telematics will exhibit at the Texas Trucking Show later this month. The company offers GPS tracking systems for vehicles, powered assets and non-powered items. The company said it offers consultancy services for fleets.
Contact: Randy Read, EnVue Telematics, (203) 858-5154, rread@et-envue.com.
People
Aeris Communications has named Brendan Foley as Vice President of Marketing. Foley was Head of Regional Marketing-Americas for HERE Technologies.
Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has announced that John Deere Chairman and CEO John May will be a keynote speaker at CES 2023.
Jobs
Product Manager. IntelliShift.
Product Manager, Telematics Devices & Services. Positioning Universal.
Head of Product Management Mobile Mapping. NavVis.
Research Fellow in PNT Technologies. Cranfield University.
