Fixposition chooses u-blox to deliver GNSS positioning

Real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS receivers integrate GNSS correction data to achieve centimetre-level positioning accuracies in open-sky environments. But like all satellite-based positioning solutions, the technology struggles where GNSS signals are degraded, for example, in and around warehouses, shipyards, city canyons or where they are completely unavailable, such as indoors or underground for extended periods of time. This has prevented several specialised segments of industrial and agricultural applications from benefiting from the technology.

Today, many applications operating in challenging GNSS signal environments integrate data from inertial sensors – gyroscopes and accelerometers – to determine a GNSS receiver’s position when GNSS signal coverage deteriorates or is briefly interrupted.

The u-blox ZED-F9P is able to deal with challenging GNSS environments, but even the most sophisticated solutions combining GNSS and inertial sensing technology drift significantly when GNSS outages last more than 1-minute when odometry information cannot be used.

Fixposition’s Vision-RTK2 solution provides more possibilities, having developed a deep sensor fusion engine that combines the visually sensed data with position data generated using the GNSS receiver. The result is reliable and globally available position, orientation, and velocity data that extends the performance of the u-blox ZED-F9P high precision GNSS modules into environments that are beyond the traditional reach of GNSS signals.

“The u-blox ZED-F9P is one of the best solutions on the market in terms of performance, power consumption, size, and price,” says Zhenzhong Su, CEO and Co-Founder of Fixposition. “Our partnership with u-blox is bringing us one step closer to developing state-of-the-art products.”

“u-blox and Fixposition share the goal of expanding the scope of high precision positioning technology to grow the market and enable new use cases and business models,” says Mårten Strom, Director, Product Line Management, Industrial Navigation and Robotics, at u-blox. “Vision-RTK 2, their flagship solution, opens new opportunities for u-blox F9P GNSS receivers in a range of high-performance industrial markets. We invite customers to see for themselves how a vision system can add to their application’s performance.”