Grizzly Analytics Blog

Grizzly Analytics is excited to announce that we will be conducting the indoor positioning testbed at the Geo IoT Conference , in May, 2016, in Brussels.  Participating vendors & researchers can demonstrate their technology solutions and have them measured along a wide variety of metrics, including accuracy, latency (update speed), resilience, infrastructure requirements, setup time, power requirements, etc. Analysis and comparisons will be segmented, including between mobile systems and hardware/chip solutions. Want to participate in the indoor positioning testbed? Want to speak at the conference, sponsor it, exhibit or participate in other ways? See details and submit your name on the conference site , or contact us to sign up or ask questions.

A French company called Move 'N See produces a line of camera robots. Their devices act as a smart tripod, holding a video camera and automatically moving and zooming the camera as people of interest move around a site. The idea is simple but amazingly innovative. Photo selfies are easy to take, but video selfies are next to impossible. How can I video myself playing football or doing gymnastics, without setting the camera so far back as to be useless? Do spectators want to spend an entire sporting event carefully videoing their friend or relative moving around the field? Enter Move 'N See's "personal robot cameramen." Their devices aim, pan and zoom a video camera as one or more people move around an area. The people of interest wear armbands whose locations are tracked, enabling the camera controller to know where to aim the camera. The camera controller also includes enough smarts to adjust the camera smoothly and to capture multiple people evenly. T...

Grizzly Analytics just released its latest report, on Chip-Based Indoor Location Positioning Technologies . This niche-area report analyzes tech from 19 companies. Why is chip-based indoor location technology interesting? Aren't the algorithms the same as those implemented in software? First, chip-based location tracking can be incorporated into electronic devices, such as Internet of Things devices, Wearables, Smart Home devices, robots, drones, toys, and more. These devices don't have mobile operating systems to run apps, but they can do incredibly cool things if they can track locations accurately. New chips profiled in this report are delivering location positioning in a way that can be implemented effectively in devices - accurate, low power, small chips, easy integration, and more. Second, some of the chips profiled are next generations of chips already in the market, either GPS chips, Wi-Fi chips or sensor analysis chips. If previous generations of these chips are ...

Indoor location technology start-up  Loctronix has just announced that it is being acquired by TeleCommunication Systems (TCS).   Seattle-based Loctronix has developed a wide range of highly technical methods for location positioning. Their algorithms improve both motion sensing and radio-based location measurement. The company had previously been working to have its technology implemented in chips or device hardware, because of the level at which their algorithms operate, but this appears to be pivoting in light of their acquisition by TCS. A partial list of their innovative technologies include: DAIN: Doppler Aided Inertial Navigation, including sensor fusion motion sensing and step estimator SCP: Spectral Compression Positioning RSS: Radio Signal Strength Profiler MEP: Mobile Explorer Platform TCS is quietly a true leader in mobile location systems, with systems deployed on both feature phones and smartphones worldwide, primarily in conjunction with carrie...

At the recent  PLACE Conference in New York I had the pleasure of seeing a demo of Acuity's indoor location positioning based on LED light modulation. Acuity acquired ByteLight a few months ago, and Acuity's indoor location solution is now incorporating ByteLight's technology. We've discussed LED modulation for indoor location positioning before ( here and here ), and Acuity is not the only company bringing it to market. But the demonstration that I saw was very impressive, and Acuity is a huge player in the lighting space. The fact that a huge lighting company is focusing heavily on indoor location shows how strong the interest is in this area. LED modulation is a technique that enables every LED lightbulb to transmit a unique identifier by making tiny changes to the lightwaves they shine. These tiny lightwave modulations cannot be seen by the human eye, but can be detected and decoded by the camera on a smartphone or tablet. Software on the devices can detect w...

Indoor location positioning is currently one of the holy grails of the mobile technology world. With hundreds of millions of people using mobile-based GPS applications every day, the demand is clearly huge for location-aware mobile apps. There are over 150 companies developing indoor location technology , and a number of well-known technology approaches, but bottom line, it's still reaching market. One of the key challenges in developing and deploying indoor location technology is clearly how accurate it is. Many indoor location systems, including those based on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signals, are accurate only to within 5-8 meters. In many applications this is fine. If I want my phone to know what store or coffee shop I'm in, 5-8m accuracy is sufficient to distinguish Starbucks from JC Penny. But if I want my phone to know if I'm standing in front of the pretzels or the potato chips in the supermarket, I need better. As a side point, GPS outdoors is only accurate to within...

Grizzly Analytics founder Bruce Krulwich will be speaking and moderating a technology panel at the PLACE Conference in New York City, on June 9. Contact us at info@grizzlyanalytics.com for a discount code for $200 off the registration price, or to schedule a face-to-face meeting before or after the conference. PLACE is the premier conference for indoor location technologies, particularly their use in retail. See you there!