Ubisense adds WiFi deployment option

Ubisense adds WiFi deployment option to its world-leading UWB-based precise real-time location system and is shortlisted as a finalist in the IET Innovation Awards for 2009

Cambridge, UK -October 13, 2009 - Ubisense, shortlisted for the Institute of Engineering and Technology 2009 Innovation Awards for development of its precise real-time location system (RTLS), announces a new wireless deployment option for its systems, allowing customers to reduce installation costs whilst still achieving class-leading 3D RTLS accuracy.

Andy Ward, Ubisense's Chief Technology Officer, says: "Ubisense sensors can now operate in a 'wireless' mode, where they only need a local power supply and communicate over standard WiFi networks with the rest of the RTLS. This allows cost-effective coverage in areas which have existing mains power supply but would be expensive to reach with data cabling."

Ubisense has seen strong interest in this capability from the manufacturing, transit, and worker safety sectors, particularly in large open areas where sites have existing coverage for power (for example, for lighting or security systems), but where cabling costs for RTLS deployment might be prohibitive. Both wired and wireless sensors can be mixed within the same Ubisense RTLS, providing a spectrum of deployment options through which the RTLS can be tailored to the requirements of each specific site and application.

"We are delighted to offer this new capability to our customers. It's important to minimise installation costs in any RTLS deployment, and this added flexibility helps us do just that", says Richard Green, Ubisense CEO. "By reducing the number of cable runs that need to be made we can dramatically cut the cost of ownership of these systems and achieve a return-on-investment even more quickly."

The new functionality has already been deployed with customers at transit and shipyard sites, and is available to both existing and new Ubisense customers as part of the latest revisions of the Ubisense location platform software.

Link

Ubisense launches Transit Yard Manager

Ubisense launches Transit Yard Manager with the world's leading precise real-time location system at the American Public Transportation Association Annual Meeting in Orlando Oct 5-8, 2009.

Orlando, Florida - October 8, 2009 - Ubisense, the world leader in precise Real-Time Location Systems, announced today that it has released the Ubisense Transit Yard Manager which provides complete visibility to yard and garage operations for transit organizations of any size. Traditionally, Transit companies have had visibility of where their vehicles are when they are on routes but once they enter garages and yards the location is collected using manual, paper-based tracking. With Ubisense, transit agencies are provided in real-time with the exact parking space location of vehicles and assets allowing processes to be improved and operating costs to be reduced.
Transit Yard Manager provides a 2D and 3D web based view of any garage and yard and automatically generates electronic versions of mark up sheets that can be accessed from any Internet enabled PC or mobile device. Benefits include eliminating search time for vehicles, improving yard pull out efficiency through more intelligent staging, integration with maintenance management to easily identify or hold vehicles in need of maintenance reducing road side call outs, and automated vehicle entry and lane assignment. Transit Yard Manager, when integrated with scheduling, dispatch, maintenance, and GPS-based automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems provides a real-time, seamless and intuitive view of all transit operations.

"Transit Yard Management is one of a suite of industry-focused applications we are launching which utilize the Ubisense superior location technology and software platform to deliver significant value for particular industries, including transit, manufacturing, military, and agriculture," said Richard Green, CEO of Ubisense. "Transit Yard Manager demonstrates how the combination of a precise real-time location when combined with software tailored to a specific set of industry needs can transform an organization to the next level."

Ubisense has recently been deployed by Metro Transit in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. At Metro Transit, dispatchers are given instant access to the location of each bus along with up to date maintenance information for each vehicle. Access to location also gives maintenance supervisors a fast way to check if buses have left a service bay. It also helps staff more quickly recover items reported lost by customers and benefits transit supervisors who need to quickly retrieve security video on buses with VHS recording systems.

"It's important that transit agencies use technology to gain efficiencies", said Brian Lamb, General Manager at Metro Transit. "This new dispatching system will help us work smarter. We know instantly where every bus is at every garage."

Ubisense is deploying transit solutions across North America and Europe teaming with leading transit solution providers.

Link to transit information

Aston Martin knows precisely where their cars are in production in real-time with Ubisense

Aston Martin, famous the world over for precision engineering and performance has turned to the number one supplier of precision real-time location systems to gain complete visibility of its production processes.

Cambridge UK — 3rd September 2009 — Aston Martin, the prestigious sports car manufacturer, is using the Ubisense precise real-time location system in its daily production operations at the company's headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire.

The Ubisense system enhances already rigorous off-line finishing processes, through analysis and optimisation of each process, ensuring its efficiency at all times.

Ubisense tags are attached inside the windscreen of the prestigious cars as they begin their off-line finishing process. From that moment on, Ubisense Process Tracker provides production engineers complete visibility of each Aston Martin as it progresses through the facility. The tags are only removed when the car is dispatched to sales.

Using a web browser, a production engineer can locate any car on a map, and watch its progress in real-time. They can also view a log of which process steps a car has been through and the time spent in each step. An alert is raised immediately if a car deviates from the process. The system operates over a standard network and is managed day to day by internal Aston Martin production employees.

Richard Green, CEO of Ubisense, says “We are very proud to have installed this bespoke system within Aston Martin, one of the worlds leading sports car manufacturers. We work with many automotive and manufacturing companies demonstrating the accuracy and strength of our system.”

Link to full article

Ubisense announces immediate availability of Korean compliant product

Ubisense announces immediate availability of Korean compliant product and announces production installations in World’s most hostile environments

Cambridge, August 28th, 2009 Ubisense, the world Leader in Precise Real Time Location Systems, announces availability of its award winning solution in Korea and acceptance of the worlds most reliable RTLS System at POSCO’s Finex Plant in Pohang, S. Korea

“The Korean version of Ubisense will allow us to satisfy the enormous demand we have witnessed since first introducing the product to research institutes in 2006”, says HB Choi, General Manager, Ubisense Korea. “We already have deployments in 25 organisations and with immediate availability of a fully compliant product we will be able to satisfy the enormous pent-up demand we have seen from the Industrial and Manufacturing Market”

Korean Manufacturers include some of the highest volume automotive plants in the world, so the timing of the availability of Ubisense, already with a worldwide reputation at reducing costs and improving productivity for leading companies such as BMW, Honda and Caterpillar is pertinent, says, Simon Holloway of Manufacturing Consultancy, Bloor Associates.

About POSCO

The fourth largest steel producer in the world and a bedrock of Korea's industrial development, POSCO is an innovative leader in Korean industry, ranked by Business Week in 2007 as the “most admired company in Asia”.

Link to Complete Release

Ubisense gaming in Ireland

Scientists are developing sensor- based computer games to get children moving while they think. CLAIRE O’CONNELL reports

IT’S A scene many young families have faced over the dismal summer – rain stops play outside, and soon the indoor attention turns to computer games that engage kids in little more physical activity than twiddling their fingers while hunched over a console.

Of course, innovations such as the Wii have helped get kids off the couch, using sensors to transform living rooms into virtual tennis courts, boxing rings and even snowy pistes.

But an Irish research consortium has been exploring computer games at a new level, developing approaches that get young players moving across larger spaces and engaging with each other.

It’s all down to the most simple of sensors, nothing too grand, explains Prof Alan Smeaton, deputy director of Clarity, a Science Foundation Ireland centre that links Dublin City University, University College Dublin and Tyndall National Institute in Cork.

“We do all kinds of complex measurements here on phosphates and water quality and we look at the pH of sweat – it’s all very high end,” says Smeaton. “But sometimes the simplest of sensors can give you applications that you wouldn’t have thought of before. So we started to think about what could we do based on games.”

Out of that grew two approaches – one based on sheep-herding where players run around a virtual “field” steering sheep into a central pen, the other on a dance-mat that encourages children to jump on the correct answer.

And how did they iron out teething problems with the new computer games? By recruiting crowds of kids to put them through their paces – once a week, participants in DCU’s summer camp have been visiting the labs to put the game to the ultimate road test.

“It has been known on this corridor all summer that Tuesday morning is not a good time to get any work done because of the screaming and roaring,” says Smeaton, as we walk into a sparse room with a large screen at one end showing an animated field. In a few minutes the de-cluttered lab will be full of seven and eight year olds running around in pairs or egging on players from the sidelines, but for now he demonstrates how the game works, popping a small gadget called Ubisense into his pocket.

“It has got accelerometers and sensors in it,” he explains. “When [Ubisense] is moved it emits pulses many times a second and those are picked up by [receivers], which use Inter Cert trigonometry to calculate where you are.”

The system maps Smeaton onto the onscreen field and tracks him as he dashes around the room, chasing virtual sheep into a central pen that corresponds to a marked section on the floor.

“This is great as a little toy but at the back of it we are scientists and we have been working with School of Health and Human Performance to figure out how the game should evolve,” he says of the system, developed by Marc Gowing.

“Getting the sheep into the pen builds spatial awareness and co-ordination, but you can then progress that further by insisting the kids only move backwards, or hopping on one foot.”

Nor does it take long for the seven and eight-year-old testers to learn the basics – within minutes of filing into the darkened lab from the summer camp they are working in pairs to herd the sheep around the field with plenty of sideline instruction from their peers.

But while the sensors are cheap, the cost of the indoor prototype runs to thousands of euro, making it too pricey at the moment for general use.

Less costly, but no less active, is the other “exerlearning” game, which involves a souped up electronic dance mat. Instead of throwing shapes to music, individual players jump on particular squares on the mat to answer maths problems or to spell out answers to questions.

“Again it’s simple sensors but it’s surrounded by an application that gets the crowd going,” says Smeaton of the system, developed by Brendan O’Huiginn at UCD, who used off-the-shelf or free components and software.

And as with the sheep chasing, the children immediately engage with the dance mat setup, shouting out answers to the player in the hotspot and cheering as the scores go up.

As well as having fun, the testers have been helping to improve the games, explains Smeaton. “We are not keeping data on the kids, we are not storing any information apart from the high score – and there’s plenty of competition for that. But we are learning how the game works and to maximise it.”

And where Smeaton really sees the sensor-based computer games coming into their own is using differential GPS to track players as they move around outdoors.

There’s even a project that uses sensor-kitted wireless headphones to construct a virtual soundscape that changes as the player moves around.

“We all have very good sound source localisation to about five degrees and this can reach the same level,” says Smeaton. “It can pick up which way you are facing and we can generate the correct right-left balance. So your changing location is picked up and adjusted so you hear these sounds.”

And while the large headset is still somewhat clunky and under development, Smeaton envisages it becoming as streamlined as an MP3-player-sized gadget with ear buds that allows the player to navigate by sound through a virtual soundscape such as an orchestra, maze or zoo.

“It’s really about the limits of your creativity,” he says.

LINK to article

BMW revolutionises vehicle assembly using new Ubisense solution

Final acceptance of Tool Assistance System to automatically relate vehicles and torque tools successfully achieved at BMW plant in Regensburg. Solution extends the automation of vehicle assembly, reducing both defect rate and production costs.

Cambridge, August 3^rd 2009 – Ubisense has successfully completed the implementation of a new Tool Assistance System (TAS) at BMW’s production facility in Regensburg. TAS is based on the Location Identification System, which, as the name implies, is designed to locate and identify production assets. LIS/TAS has been developed jointly by Ubisense and IBS AG and is the result of bringing together the Ubisense real-time location system (RTLS) and the IBS software systems, which provide the link between the location system and the existing BMW IT environment.

The Tool Assistance System rolled out in Regensburg provides automatic recognition of the vehicles being assembled as well as automatically detecting their proximity to production automation equipment such as intelligent tools and test equipment. TAS eliminates both the need to scan barcodes on vehicle work-orders, in itself not a value adding activity, as well as manually generated defects arising from scanning the wrong asset. The system works by evaluating the spatial relationship between production automation systems and the vehicles continuously in real-time. A positive “relationship event” is generated when a mobile tool enters a pre-defined zone around the vehicle or when a vehicle enters a zone around an item of automation equipment.

LIS/TAS is fully integrated into BMW’s production IT environment via the IBS Communications Platform which provides all the necessary interfaces to the relevant systems. In particular this includes the administration of the tools and vehicles as well as passing on the tool control events via IP telegrammes. A relationship event causes a new vehicle-specific program to be loaded into the tool or starts an automation system with the correct program for the particular vehicle detected. Typical tools and equipment in this context are torque tools, riveting hammers, diagnostic equipment, and programmable logic controllers.

The system is in production across the entire Regensburg assembly plant where around 120 tool systems are used to produce approximately 1,000 cars per day. The vehicle location in 3D is performed in real-time via Ubisense tags located on the cars. These tags are small transponders which are located using ultra-wideband radio technology by sensors mounted at fixed locations along the production line. The location and identification information is analysed for relationship events and the information passed on directly to the BMW IT environment. Ultra-wideband technology enables high precision location by transmitting extremely short pulses with very low energy (less than 0.1 milliwatts per m²) which means there are no negative effects on other systems or the health of the staff.

“The introduction of LIS/TAS has resulted in the elimination of the need to scan vehicles in order to identify them”, comments Andreas Lehner, project manager at BMW in Regensburg. “All the project objectives have been met on time and within the planned budget. From the standpoint of value creation, the project is a complete success”.

Richard Green, CEO of Ubisense, is very pleased with the results achieved. “Ubisense, together with our partner IBS, is the only RTLS vendor able to fulfil all BMW’s requirements and LIS/TAS is a unique tool for the automotive industry. We have here a clear differentiator and are delighted with the praise from BMW.”

Ubisense 60 day software evaluation

This Evaluation Suite is a free-to-download fully-functional copy of the Ubisense Location Platform and Developer Software available under a 60-day evaluation license. It includes everything you need to build, test and deploy real-time location-aware applications.

For more information please see http://eval.ubisense.net

Smarter dairy farming

SMARTERFARMING and Ubisense revolutionise Livestock Management

Horsens, Denmark, Cambridge, UK, Jul 23rd 2009 - SMARTERFARMING and Ubisense, the world Leader in Precise Real-Time Location Systems, announce the results of their first three “CowDetect” installations in working Dairy Farms in Denmark

Aage Hindhede, a tenth generation dairy farmer based in Ringkøbing-Skjern, Denmark, is a man with a vision who continues to keep his family business at the forefront of modern farming methods. While managing his dairy herd, Aage thought that if he could detect changes in behavior of his cows in real-time then he would have a much better view of their health and welfare. His vision coupled with the innovative skills of his partner Keld Florczak, CEO of SMARTERFARMING, allowed him to realize his vision and “CowDetect” was born. A system that visualizes and monitors the behavior of cows in real-time to a positional accuracy of 15 cm! The system has been installed not only in the Hindhede family farm but also in an additional two farms tracking over 1000 cows every second.

The Danish science office AgroTech has already made some calculations to understand the value and possible benefits of knowing the real-time position of each animal. AgroTech - Institute for Agri Technology and Food Innovation - is a Danish Government Authorised Technology Service Institute working with knowledge transfer in the field of biology based natural science and technology. For cows in lactation the potential value of this knowledge is said to be EUR 315 – 355 per animal if the information is converted into action by the farm manager. In addition there are many soft benefits derived by using the system such as better animal welfare and health. One example is a well-known eating behaviour known as ketoses. Normally 3.6 days before the disease can be seen, the cow’s eating time decreases significantly. This change in behavior can automatically be detected by the real-time location system and the dairy manager can be alerted.

“Knowing the precise real-time location of animals will revolutionise the industry”, says Professor Don Broom, University of Cambridge and world expert in animal welfare. “For years farm managers and vets have needed to know more precisely the patterns of movement that will allow them to correlate behavior with health and it appears that SMARTERFARMING and Ubisense have made that possible”.

Farmer John Torrence, of UK Farmers Cooperative, said “Having seen the system first hand, it is clear that there are immediate benefits and a payback in less than 12 months”.

About SMARTERFARMING AS

SMARTERFARMINGAS is based on an idea from a farmer in need of better management data for improving the production in his barn. From idea to real technology has been a long process, but thanks to patient investors and energy from the people involved “CowDetect” is now a reality. SMARTERFARMINGAS is a public company having the needed financial strength to bring the knowledge and technology to the market and further improve and add features to the system.

www.CowDetect.com

Measuring emotions at a museum

Swiss Academy of Art and Design together with Ubisense integrate precise real-time location and biometric sensors to research art museum experience

In a unique setting at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland, the BaselAcademy of Art and Design has implemented a solution which monitors museum visitors as they move through the exhibition, providing new insights into emotional and cognitive reactions to art objects.

Dortmund, St. Gallen, July 22 2009 - eMotion is a multi-faceted research and media art platform combining the disciplines of art sociology and art psychology, art administration and art pedagogy, curatorial practice and museum research, media art and performance.

“The museum experience is analysed from a psycho-geographical perspective, encompassing the emotional, cognitive and physical effects upon viewer reception, and how those factors influence the implicit decision making processes of visitors”, explains Dr. Martin Troendle, the eMotion project initiator and manager.” Methodologically, the project sets in motion a trans-disciplinary platform integrating both scientific and artistic modes of ‘knowing’ and strategies of dissemination, directly within the museum”.

Upon registration at the art museum entrance, visitors receive a special glove which contains biometric sensors and a Ubisense active location tag. The visitors respond to a series of questions regarding their familiarity with and expectations of the exhibition as well as biometrically relevant data such as whether they smoke cigarettes or have just drunk a cup of coffee. The art exhibition is equipped with 20 Ubisense sensors which record the positions of the visitors as they move among the exhibits to an accuracy of 15cm and at a sampling frequency up to 4 times per second. In parallel, the heart rate and electrical conductivity of the visitor’s skin is measured and transmitted to a central server which records and analyses the results. At the end of the exhibition, the visitor can view the results on a table top plasma screen. Statistical data on the most viewed objects and the aggregate motion patterns of visitors is presented audio-visually in a number of innovative ways.

“We are delighted with the performance of the Ubisense tracking system”, declares Roland Waespe, director of the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. “Our museum building presents a number of architectural challenges for radio based systems and we have been impressed with the reliability and precision of the system in this environment.”

eMotion is a research project at the Institute for Research in Art and Design, University of Applied Science Northwestern Switzerland, Academy of Art and Design and has been generously supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and Ubisense. “We are very grateful to Ubisense both for the financial support and the dedication of the professional team which helped this project become such a success”, adds Troendle.

More information can be found at http://www.mapping-museum-experience.com/en.

Ubisense tracking cows

Just had to post this great picture of a cow modeling one of our Compact Tags.