Fixposition’s Vision-RTK 2 features a GNSS module from fellow Swiss company U-Blox and uses deep sensor fusion to provide high precision positioning even where satellite signals are degraded or unavailable.

The U-Blox Zed-F9P acts as the key receiver within Fixposition’s Vision-RTK2 flagship product.

Real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS receivers integrate GNSS correction data to achieve centimetre-level positioning accuracies in open-sky environments. But, as with all satellite-based positioning, 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. 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 Zed-F9P can deal with difficult GNSS environments, but even the most sophisticated products combining GNSS and inertial sensing technology drift significantly when GNSS outages last more than one minute when odometry information cannot be used.

The Vision-RTK2 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 extend the performance of the Zed-F9P GNSS modules into environments that are beyond the traditional reach of GNSS signals.

“The U-Blox Zed-F9P is one of the best on the market in terms of performance, power consumption, size and price,” said Zhenzhong Su, CEO of Fixposition. “Our partnership with U-Blox is bringing us one step closer to developing state-of-the-art products.”

Mårten Strom, director of product line management at U-Blox, added: “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. Vision-RTK 2 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.”

Fixposition is a Swiss company developing global positioning products, combing computer vision techniques and satellite navigation to deliver accuracy in open field and in GNSS challenging environments. The technology is an enabler for the mass-market adoption of autonomous products.

With headquarters in Thalwil, Switzerland, U-Blox has offices in Europe, Asia and the USA.