UK startup Focal Point offers smartphone positioning technologies
U.K.-startup Focal Point Positioning has unveiled two new positioning technologies. S-GPS and D-Tail represent step changes in consumer GPS processing and smartphone indoor positioning, the company said.
S-GPS is a new signal processing, sensor fusion and machine learning scheme that dramatically improves the accuracy and availability of satellite-based positioning signals, the company said. The patent-pending S-GPS technology provides increased sensitivity and multipath mitigation capabilities that allow modern smartphones to maintain accurate GPS fixes deep indoors and in complex urban environments.
The improvements have the capability to address challenging navigation problems such as locating emergency mobile phone calls, navigating autonomous vehicles through dense urban environments, and improving consumer interaction with location-based services (LBS).
D-Tail is a human motion modeling system that can accurately track users in three dimensions using the inertial sensors in their smartphone or wearable devices. The result is a precise trace of the user’s motion, better than the detail and accuracy provided by dead-reckoning and Wi-Fi fingerprinting techniques. D-Tail is designed to improve the performance and accuracy of activity tracking apps and LBS analytics.
The company is starting to engage with chipset manufacturers to deploy the technologies in smartphones, according to founder and CEO Ramsey Faragher.
Isn’t this just Synthetic Aperture Processing? That’s a known technique. More silicon Snake Oil.