Electronics Weekly Electronics Design & Components Tech News
u-blox is aiming at centimeter-level positioning for industrial navigation and robotics with a pair of GNSS (global navigation satellite system) correction receivers and a corresponding up-grade to its existing ZED-F9P high-precision GNSS receiver module.
The correction receivers stream correction data from communication satellites.
The “new correction service receivers offer broad geographical coverage across Europe, continental US and Japan,” according to the company. “NEO-D9S will initially cover the European and US markets before rolling out to the other areas of the globe. Meanwhile, NEO-D9C will cover Japan.”
NEO-D9S receives SSR SPARTN format correction data using a satellite L-band channel. It cryptography can handle PPP-RTK GNSS correction data, as used in u-blox’s PointPerfect service.
NEO-D9C (left) uses the subscription-free CLAS (centimetre-level augmentation service) broadcast over mainland Japan provided by the Japanese QZSS (quasi-zenith satellite system) constellation on the L6 band.
The software upgrade is for u-blox’ existing ZED-F9P-04B precision GNSS receiver, and supports a secure SPARTN GNSS correction data format and connection to the correction receivers.
“While u-blox GNSS receivers are designed to work with most correction services on the market,” said the company, “pairing the ZED-F9P with NEO-D9C or NEO-D9S enables customers to save data transmission cost and operational efforts.”
Applications are foreseen in robotic lawnmowers (without boundary wires), UAVs (unmanned autonomous vehicles) and other semi-automated machinery or fully-automated machinery.
Another feature of the ZED-F9P-04B update is called ‘protection level’, “which increases the trust applications can place in its position output by continuously outputting the upper bound of the maximum likely positioning error”, said u-blox. The aim is to allow UAVs, for example, to adjust real-time path planning.
Samples are available today, and the correction receivers will be available in automotive grade.
