Recently, u-blox teamed up with Bosch, Mitsubishi Electric and Geo++ to form a joint venture company, Sapcorda Services GmbH, to provide high-precision GNSS positioning services for mass market applications and to create a new solution.
Thomas Seiler, CEO of u-blox, said that the joint venture Sapcorda provides globally applicable GNSS location services via the Internet and satellite broadcasts, enabling GNSS positioning accuracy to be in centimeter-level, with services targeting high-value automotive, industrial and consumer markets. In addition, the small size of chips and modules has always been the research direction of u-blox. Therefore, in July 2016, u-blox introduced the NEO-M8P module. In July 2017, u-blox introduced the VERA-P1 module conforming to the IEEE 802.11p standard, which measures 4.5mm x 5mm. The module is the latest addition to u-blox's range of automotive-grade transceiver modules, enabling a new generation of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that provide an automated driving experience.
U-blox has achieved centimeter level in positioning technology. For the next step, Thomas Seiler said that although the positioning technology can achieve centimeter-level positioning, if there is building blockage, it will cause signal loss and cannot be located, so underground Parking GPS positioning is not yet possible. So the next challenge for u-blox is to achieve indoor positioning, mainly through Bluetooth, WiFi and cellular networks, and there are some differences between satellite positioning.
