Triumph V.S. from JAVAD GNSS Lunges into the Future

June 29, 2010 By: Alan Cameron

Revolutionary is not a word to bandy about lightly, neither in politics nor in product development. But it this case it appears we may bandy. The new Triumph V.S. handheld device from JAVAD GNSS lunges fast-forward into the future, not just of surveying and the GIS industry, but of many other fields that are opening up to the capabilities of PNT.

Introducing the Triumph V.S. at his new corporate manufacturing facility in San Jose, Javad Ashjaee began by describing three products: a high-precision GPS/GLONASS/Galileo compact geodetic antenna; a 216-channel GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/GNSS receiver integrated with UHF, GSM/GPRS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ethernet antennas; and a wide-screen, touch-screen, high-resolution handheld controller with many software application features.

He then revealed that these three are all one, in a solid magnesium alloy case, about the size and weight of a professional camera — and by golly, it contains not just one but two cameras as well, a forward-looking one (video and still image) and a downward-looking one. And a recording microphone, two speakers, compass, inclinometers. The user interface of the 178x109-millimeter VS is a 800x480-pixel screen loaded with colorful application icons that make it resemble nothing so much as an engorged iPhone.

Ashjaee began his presentation with a nod to Steve Jobs of Apple, and he feels that the V.S., over which he has labored lovingly for two years, and which is so fresh and so advanced that even his own sales people struggle to catch up with all the new features, can play such a game-changing role as the iPhone. The V.S. clearly has a parallel level of technological advance; less clear is whether the state and size of the market for it are as primed and ready for blastoff. That, only time will tell.

Any adventurous surveyor — any technogeek of any stripe — will want to wrap his/her hands around this tidy package and take it through its paces, not only for the fun of it, but to verify Ashjaee’s claim that it will accomplish accurate RTK surveying in a few seconds, or a full-day’s worth of parcel survey within half an hour. GPS World’s rexpert (resident expert) Eric Gakstatter will fully evaluate it at our earliest opportunity.

One august visitor asked if the new form factor, accuracy, signal processing, easy-to-use applications, and flexible communication links mean a new product category has just opened up, like an Icelandic volcano emerging from the sea. Possibly so. The impact of this device on the surveying profession is hard to gauge. Will it make non-adopters obsolete? Will it enable non-professionals to enter many heretofore professional arenas? Beyond the surveying field, the V.S. indicates rapid advances to be made in GIS mapmaking, though their end-value would have to be high to warrant use of such a powerful device. In military, avionic, transportation, and other sectors, mounted on a moving platform, air, land, or sea, the V.S. could accomplish many things at which, currently, the mind can only boggle.

“And finally, about prices.” Ashjaee did not reveal this last bit of data, and appears not to have decided upon it himself yet. “Surprise yourself by visiting our website,” he invited, where he promises to pronounce more definitively on this subject by August 1. For a detailed glimpse at the V.S., see the 30- or 40-minute video; it can take a few minutes to load, depending on internet connection speed.

He earnestly invited feedback from the several dozen attending surveyors, engineers, distributors, and journalists. Although a finished product ready for rollout, the V.S. still has a beta aspect or two to it, with features to be embellished or changed by firmware updates, which might currently take place several times a day, one gets the impression.

At the very beginning of this morning, Ashjaee told us, “I have never worked a day in my life in this field. Michael Jordan would not say he works in basketball. I play in GPS and now GNSS.” He is a man of strong passions and beliefs, fully engaged and clearly enjoying the creative technical process. He has repeatedly produced exceptionally strong products over his career. Now he’s going all-out for the championship ring.

Here is the first of a four-part video on the handheld: