A newly launched indoor positioning solution from u-blox marks the company’s entrance into the end products market, which was born out of this “large demand” u-blox saw coming from customers, according to a recent media briefing hosted by Magnus Johansson, Product Manager at u-blox.
He spoke exclusively to IoT Insider at the media briefing, providing in-depth information on how the technology worked, use cases, and why this technology was introduced in the first place. On the question of why, Johansson explained that u-blox’s expertise is in working with core components like chips and modules, and they saw large demand from customers for more.
The indoor positioning solution, u-locate, is based on Bluetooth LE AoA (Angle-of-Arrival) which strives to strike a balance between accuracy, performance and affordability. The solution is targeted at real-time location systems (RTLS) solutions providers and system integrators, with applications and use cases within the manufacturing, warehousing, healthcare and more verticals/markets.
“If you look at the core location-enabler technology you can apply it to tools, trucks, forklifts and assets, and then create higher level features, for example inventory management,” explained Johansson. “Do I have the right assets in the right place? Can I save time by putting them somewhere else? In healthcare, this relates to finding where the doctors are, where the nurses are. Where is the critical equipment?”
Johansson stated that Bluetooth LE AoA was chosen as a technology because it provided the best compromise between accuracy, cost and power consumption. “You can have technology that provides higher accuracy but then face different drawbacks like cost and performance. We have found what we believe is a gap filler between the two,” he elaborated.
This kind of technology suits system integrators who build their solution around a customer’s requirements – for example, a warehouse management system – but are looking for additional functionalities like tracking assets. Johansson explained that u-blox’s indoor positioning solution suits these system integrators well because they are focused on efficiency, optimisation and reducing time to market: “Another factor that is an important consideration for system integrators is the complexity. They want to get something they can use quickly and don’t necessarily want to invest in new RF design, hardware, software development, and so on, but they want to have something that works with their solution.”
In an example provided, if you wanted to track assets within an office, for instance, u-locate works by mounting anchors (u-locateAnchor) to the premises, either on the ceiling or the walls. They operate by picking up signals from tags (u-locateTag) placed on the assets.
“u-locate is compliant with omlox, the open locating standard, which enables cross-technology solutions,” explained Johansson. “An example of this is when you combine the Bluetooth LE AoA tag with a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) chip. This would allow the tag to be tracked both in outdoor and indoor environments.”
This means if an asset, like a person, is walking around outdoors, they can be tracked accordingly, and when they enter the office premises the position is transferred to indoor tracking.
Johansson was keen to stress the performance aspect of the product, with tracking down to a 10cm accuracy in what he called “optimal conditions”. He said: “If this is deployed in an average office you’ll get 50-60cm accuracy because you’ll have conditions like walls or people in the way; lots of obstacle types.”
The solution complies with the omlox™ interoperability standard which defines software APIs (Application Programming Interface) and data formats to provide interoperability and be hardware agnostic. “We think interoperability will become a bigger problem, because it is a fragmented market, and we comply with omlox standards to prevent that. We don’t want to lock in any customers.”
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