• Has partnered with San Francisco-based Swift Navigation
• Swift’s Skylark cloud corrections service provides <10cm positioning accuracy     
• DT claims partnership paves the way for autonomous mobility in Europe

Deutsche Telekom has made what it claims is a major step towards assembling the technical infrastructure for autonomous applications where high accuracy is required, including of course for autonomous cars. 

It’s signed a deal with San Francisco-based Swift Navigation which will see that company’s “Precise Positioning Service” - which provides better than standard Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)  positioning for terrestrial devices like cars - provide positioning for all of DT’s relevant services designed for things like self-driving cars, rail, autonomous robotic machine navigation, autonomous flight for unmanned aerial vehicles, last-mile delivery logistics and construction safety and shared mobile positioning.

The basis of the Swift system is its Skylark Cloud Corrections Service which delivers highly reliable ‘lane-level’ positioning and is currently live in both the US and Germany, but being rolled out across Europe.

Apparently, ‘Cloud corrections’ is not a private prison, but a means of delivering  “cutting-edge positioning algorithms enabling it to stream multi-constellation, multi-frequency GNSS corrections.” It can deliver high-precision positioning with accuracy levels at ten centimeters, it’s claimed.  

That might need a little unpacking.  Swift says the Skylark Cloud Connections uses the cloud to generate the corrections data and can then distribute the individual positioning corrections at scale. This saves on device costs since, otherwise, the corrections would have to be calculated  by embedded intelligence within each device. 

Standard GNSS positioning is accurate to three to five meters which is not suitable for fully autonomous systems. Swift and Telekom’s lane-level accurate Precise Positioning is specifically poised to benefit level 2 and 3 automotive applications including advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), such as lane assist, highway autopilot, cellular vehicle-to-everything (CV2X) communications and lane level directions.

For even higher levels of autonomy the system can deliver accuracy down to a centimeter and that can take applications well beyond self-driving vehicles to use with drones and even crane operation on construction sites.”

Swift and Telekom say they have created a Precise Positioning Evaluation Kit, which includes two workshops (onboarding and result review), testing hardware and software to connect to the Precise Positioning network for a three-month evaluation period. More information is available at https://iot.telekom.com/en/solutions/precise-positioning.