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Short indoor location video from DecaWave chip launch

Grizzly Analytics was happy to be invited to the product launch of DecaWave's new chip for indoor location positioning in early November. Their chip uses UWB radio to precisely measure the distance between two chips. If their chips are put inside "beacon" devices in a room, and also inside "tags" on objects that move around the room, a system can track the locations of the objects moving around the room very precisely, to within 12-15cm.

We were unable to video a complete large-scale demo, because of the big crowd in the room, but we did get the following video that shows how precisely the system is able to track objects as they move around. The demo was done with four beacons in the corners of the room that are used to triangulate the locations of chips moving around the room. The demo as shown does not do any smoothing or post-processing of that triangulation.


DecaWave's chip is the latest in more than 50 solutions coming to market for indoor location positioning, using a wide variety of approaches. DecaWave's technology cannot be used on mobile devices until their chips are incorporated into those devices. But for industrial applications, and in the future if their chips are incorporated into mass-market devices, the precision that they offer is stunning.

Another company offering very high accuracy positioning is Quuppa (click here for a description and video).  Several others, including BeSpoon, are in the works. Most other indoor location solutions are less accurate, estimating locations within 5-8 meters, but have the obvious advantage of running on today's smartphones.

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