TRX awarded NIST funding for NEON Personnel Tracker

September 3, 2021  - By
NEON personnel tracker by TRX. (Photo: TRX Systems)

TRX Systems was awarded funding through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Public Safety Innovation Accelerator Program (PSIAP) to test, validate and harden the TRX NEON Personnel Tracker solution to support wide-scale public safety deployment. TRX is partnering with the Arlington County Fire Department (ACFD) to conduct extended testing during which the TRX 3D location technology will be used by all personnel at Station 5, serving Pentagon City and Crystal City, to validate usability and performance and to better align the solution with first responder needs.

Through a previous NIST PSIAP award, TRX improved the accuracy and capabilities of its NEON Personnel Tracker solution. With this subsequent Technical and Business Assistance (TABA) award, TRX will take the next steps toward wide-scale deployment by validating and tuning the NEON solution in a challenging live environment. Combined, these projects aim to accelerate the availability of improved 3D location accuracy, easy to use 3D map data tools, and actionable 3D visualizations for first responder use cases.

Over the course of this program, TRX will partner with ACFD to conduct an 8-month field trial that exercises the TRX NEON Personnel Tracker solution 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a fully operational environment. The key objectives of this extended deployment are to identify and close any gaps that could inhibit widescale deployment, validate usability and tracking accuracy, and demonstrate the operational feasibility and value of the solution.

First responders typically operate in environments that are indoors, underground, or in other areas where reliable access to GPS signals is impeded. TRX’s NEON Personnel Tracker system delivers reliable and real-time 3D location in these GPS-denied environments by using patented mapping and tracking algorithms that fuse inertial sensor data to compute the user’s path and position. This solution lets on-scene and remote commanders track the real-time location of personnel during an incident, helping them to ensure the safety of their teams and improve the efficiency of their response.

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About the Author: Matteo Luccio

Matteo Luccio, GPS World’s Editor-in-Chief, possesses more than 20 years of experience as a writer and editor for GNSS and geospatial technology magazines. He began his career in the industry in 2000, serving as managing editor of GPS World and Galileo’s World, then as editor of Earth Observation Magazine and GIS Monitor. His technical articles have been published in more than 20 professional magazines, including Professional Surveyor Magazine, Apogeo Spatial and xyHt. Luccio holds a master’s degree in political science from MIT. He can be reached at mluccio@northcoastmedia.net or 541-543-0525.