According to Manuel del Castillo, VP, Sales and Marketing at FocalPoint, accurate GNSS is the future to facilitating smart transportation
Every day, people encounter modern navigational challenges while travelling to their intended destinations. Delivery drivers relying on accurate positional data, commuters waiting for the bus to arrive ten minutes later than scheduled, car owners driving around for half an hour to find a parking spot—the modern world is full of inconveniences due to underlying inefficiencies in our transportation systems.
A less-than-optimal transportation infrastructure affects the economy, hastens environmental impact and lowers the overall quality of living. Making transportation work faster and more efficiently and for more people keeps city planners up at night.
On the bright side, the good news is that new Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technologies and approaches to transportation management systems allow us to start addressing these inconveniences. The solution is smart transportation.
The rise of interconnected technologies like electric vehicles, geolocation and mobile technology have made it possible to orchestrate how people and goods flow from one place to another, especially in densely-packed urban areas.
Several global cities, including London, Paris, Amsterdam and Rio De Janeiro, have invested in smart transportation as a key component of their smart-city initiatives. There are now universities that study smart transportation – the entire world, it seems, is fixated on solving transportation issues and increasing mobility because it produces so many benefits for citizens and the economy.
In urban contexts, the increasing density of electronic devices equipped with GNSS receivers and complementary positioning technologies is attracting research and development efforts devoted to an improvement of the quality of life as smart cities evolve.
Vehicular and pedestrian positioning and navigation capabilities are among the major drivers for innovation in this process. Ultra-low-cost electronics such as smartphones and sensors aim at providing accurate, safe and reliable positioning solutions through a set of promising solutions.
In a smart city context, a relevant aspect is the provision of location-and navigation-related services for both the users and within the network itself. This appears immediate when applications such as traffic management, geofencing, autonomous mobility, public health and safety, critical infrastructure, or security are among the aims that drive the innovation of modern urban scenarios.
One of the key enablers of such services is the GNSS, through its global coverage and free of charge provision of absolute positioning solutions. Together with the growing adoption and availability of GNSS signals, frequencies, and services, user technologies have evolved and disseminated in a multitude of devices and applications.
Without reliable real-time knowledge on the whereabouts of each individual e-scooter, delivery driver, e-bike, or e-motorcycle in a fleet, today’s platform-based business model in micromobility would simply fall apart. All providers typically depend on satellite-based positioning information. As a result, micromobilty has, in just a few years, become a key market for GNSS receiver manufacturers.
With the abundance of shared e-bikes and e-scooters on the road today, locating the exact one you just reserved or that was flagged for maintenance can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Higher positioning accuracy helps customers (and service staff) cut the time it takes to find the bikes they are looking for, translating to less hassle, time saved, and an altogether better experience. Delivery drivers can also reap the same benefits when navigating urban environments to meet customer demands, whether this be Uber or Deliveroo for example.
Simply tuning the antenna can deliver significant improvements in a GNSS receiver’s sensitivity and accuracy. Tracking the signals of multiple GNSS constellations on multiple frequency bands can lead to further gains in accuracy. For instance, the runner who wants an accurate log of where they have been running or even the ability to track a personal best time, or commuter that has arrived in a new city and requires navigational assistance from their smartphone, the importance of for a manufacturer to be investing in even higher accuracy has never been so important to consumer experience in terms of efficiency, empowerment and safety. For a business, their priorities in adopting such technology are for the benefit of productivity and cost control. Improved accuracy across such devices supports this and more.
Accuracy of GNSS in the future
As cities enforce stricter regulation to manage the ballooning number of shared e-two-wheelers, centimeter-level geofencing could gain in importance as a means of enforcing speed limits, keeping rides out of restricted areas, or ensuring that vehicles are only left on designated spots. And as micromobility evolves from being merely a convenient way to get from one place to another to a means of staying fit, high precision positioning could enable superior performance metrics.
In fact, high precision positioning solutions that use GNSS correction data to achieve up to centimetre-level positioning, could soon become a prerequisite to being able to keep up with new innovative functionalities as they hit the market.
One example is the demand for better advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and advanced navigation solutions including 3D mapping. As manufacturers roll out hands-free driving on roads, the demand grows for similar capabilities in urban areas. Consistently accurate positioning to a lane level is a key requirement for advancing ADAS solutions so they can work safely and reliably in cities. With current GNSS systems suffering from the problem of multipath, leading to inaccuracy and a consequent lack of confidence on our roads, manufacturers are beginning to demand a higher performance specifications from GNSS receivers to enable both the safety and broad accessibility of autonomy.
The rise of ubiquitous data collection and automation has led local governments to embrace smart transportation. It is made possible by the fact that virtually every citizen and commuter has a smartphone that can transmit and receive messages and data. For governments the implementation of mobility as a service positively affects several issues with transportation, such as pollution deriving from car emissions, congestion and greater accessibility of public transportation to the needy and elderly.
Several smart transportation solutions have existed for some time—for example, a city department of transportation providing real-time arrival data of buses and trains, electronic toll collection, bike sharing, dynamic pricing on cars entering the city and public transportation smart cards. But several disparate technologies do not make an intelligent transportation system. It requires a comprehensive strategy and multiple smart technologies working in tandem.
Smart transportation helps better allocate resources so cities can do more with less and avoid unnecessary energy consumption and resource costs. Cities prioritising smart transportation provide a more inclusive and equitable living experience for all of their citizens and can be greatly improved through enhanced GNSS.
Author: Manuel del Castillo, VP, Sales and Marketing at FocalPoint
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