Ubisense is Deloitte Technology Fast 50 winner for the third consecutive year

Cambridge, 25 October, 2010, Ubisense Limited. Ubisense, the world Leader in Precise Real-Time Location Systems has secured 14th place in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 2010.

Ubisense remains focused on expansion, and has achieved growth figures of 1,730 percent over a five year period, securing a top twenty place for the third year running.

Following a strong year in 2009, when the company grew by 50%, 2010 is shaping up to be another fantastic year.  Ubisense has secured additional contracts with existing customers BMW and Airbus, won a number of high profile military contracts, and is currently completing its first installation for a large American passenger rail company.

During 2010, Ubisense has announced a number of new products including the unique Trimode Tag, which combines ultra-wideband (UWB) and GPS tracking, providing precise location indoors and outside.  The company has also secured a number of awards, most recently CEO Richard Green was named as Ernst and Young Science and Technology Entrepreneur of the Year.

“We are delighted to have been included in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 for the third year running,” said CFO Gordon Campbell, “This is further testimony to the dedication of our international team and our determination for continued expansion, despite harsh economic conditions.”

Ubisense CEO, Richard Green, awarded Ernst and Young UK Science and Technology Entrepreneur of the Year

Cambridge, 19 October 2010, Ubisense Limited - Ubisense, the world Leader in Precise Real-Time Location Systems is delighted to confirm that Richard Green was honoured to receive the world-renowned accolade at an award ceremony held in London last night.

The Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award encourages entrepreneurial spirit and recognises the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement.

Previously a founder of Smallworld, which was listed on NASDAQ in 1996 and sold to General Electric for $ 214 million in 2000, Richard was part of a small team who founded Ubisense in 2002.

Richard’s amazing energy and enthusiasm have been a driving force behind the growth of Ubisense, which now has BMW, Aston Martin, Airbus, Fiat and Caterpillar as its customers, and the world’s leading industrial tool manufacturer, Atlas Copco as its partner.   Recognising the opportunity within worldwide manufacturers, who were seeking pioneering new methods of production and new levels of automation, Ubisense has targeted global high value manufacturing markets with significant success.

During 2009 and 2010, Ubisense also opened a number of new offices, gained a number of new customers in the US and Europe tracking buses and trains within depots and transit yards, and won a major contract with the US Military National Training Centre.  Turnover increased by around 50% during 2009, despite the world’s deepest ever recession, and has continued to grow rapidly during 2010.

“I feel very honoured to have been given this award,” said Richard Green, Ubisense CEO, “It is a testimony to the success of Ubisense.  It is great to be recognised by our customers, who continue to work with us, but also to receive wider industry recognition.”

Ubisense Tag combines UWB and GPS for 'best-of-both worlds' tracking named as CSR Location Summit Fast-Pitch finalist

Cambridge, 6th October, 2010.  Ubisense, the world leader in precise real-time location systems announces the Trimode Tag, the latest addition to its line of location tracking equipment for industrial users. The unique Trimode tag combines ultra-accurate ultra-wideband (UWB) location, low-cost presence sensing, and outdoor GPS tracking in a single device.

Inside buildings, the tag operates in the standard Ubisense UWB tracking mode, transmitting UWB signals to a network of base stations for unrivalled centimetre-level 3D location sensing. Within indoor areas, where low infrastructure cost is more important than tracking accuracy, the tag can operate in a 'presence' mode, using its on-board radio to simply indicate that the tag is at hand. When the tag is outdoors, it automatically switches to GPS mode, calculating its position from the satellite signals, and reporting them to the Ubisense system using its on-board radio.

"We're very excited by the possibilities afforded by the Trimode tag," said Andy Ward, Ubisense's Chief Technology Officer. "Our customers can now deploy a single tag to locate assets in real-time across their sites, both indoors and outdoors. We're providing the best of both worlds – precision tracking where it's needed indoors, and cost-effective, low-infrastructure tracking across large outdoor areas."

Powered by a high-capacity lithium battery, and housed in a rugged IP67 enclosure, the device is suitable for a wide range of mixed indoor/outdoor applications in the manufacturing, transit and military sectors.

Learning that the Trimode tag had been named as a finalist at the CSR Location Summit Fast-Pitch awards, in the “Most Innovative Connected Location Device” category, Ubisense CEO Richard Green, said: "Our major manufacturing customers like BMW, Aston Martin and Airbus rely on our precise UWB tracking to keep their production processes running smoothly, and we can now integrate large-area outdoor tracking into the same solution. I'm delighted that this innovative product is already receiving plaudits from industry experts."

Digging For France by Adrian Jennings

I just got back from Cambridge Silicon Radio’s Locations & Beyond Summit in San Francisco. This was an invitation-only event gathering over 200 global location industry experts and executives to discuss “connecting everything, everyone, everyplace in a location aware world.” I was honored to be asked to make a presentation about Ubisense’s Tri-Mode Tag as a finalist in the “most innovative device” contest.

As it happens the Tri-Mode Tag (OK: I succumb – TMT) was designed very much with the goal of connecting everything, everyone, everyplace, so being invited to the conference was either a testament to the vision of Ubisense’s engineers and perceptiveness of the conference organizers, or a stroke of good fortune sufficient to make me nervous about crossing the road for fear of the universe attempting to redress the balance. I prefer to put it down to vision and perception.

The evolution of the TMT was very much an “inside-out” process, first locating objects indoors and then venturing outdoors as user demands expanded. The first mode of the tag uses UWB for very precise location. This mode was and still is predominantly used indoors where the installation of fixed infrastructure is possible, but it’s also increasingly used to cover areas around the outside of buildings too. The second mode added was a 2.4 GHz “proximity” mode, giving approximate location with sparse infrastructure. We see this deployed in large indoor structures, but it also has reach much further from buildings when deployed outdoors. The third mode in the TMT adds a GPS module to set the tag free of any terrestrial infrastructure altogether for location anywhere.

The story I heard at the summit sounded like the same thing played backward: an “outside-in” discussion of the need to expand on GPS ubiquity by taking location services indoors. I think just about every speaker made the following observations in one shape or form: GPS has been so successful that location services have become an expectation rather than a desire; people increasingly want to extend these capabilities indoors (most smart phone use is indoors these days for example); and different applications require different levels of location accuracy. Stated another way, there is a strong need for multi-technology devices that provide various levels of accuracy both outside and in.

It’s all a bit like digging the Channel Tunnel really. Here in the RTLS industry we started out on the UK side, locating devices indoors with ever increasing precision. When users asked us to track those same assets outdoors we started digging for France. In the GNSS industry, GPS started out on the French side, locating devices globally, and when users started to want the same services indoors, the industry started digging for England. The real tunnel met in the middle through a sophisticated laser alignment system; the location services tunnel is being connected by devices like the TMT.

To coin a resuscitated phrase: I love it when a plan comes together!

Ubisense Announces Scheduling Interface with HASTUS™

San Antonio, Texas, 3 October, 2010. Ubisense, the world leader in transit yard location solutions and provider of the Transit Yard Manager™ solution for transit agencies, now integrates with GIRO's HASTUS™ software and supports real-time information exchange with HASTUS, an integrated and modular solution for optimized transit planning, scheduling, and operations installed at more than 250 transit companies in 23 countries.

Transit Yard Manager from Ubisense provides real-time visibility for indoor garages and outdoor transit yards to an accuracy of less than one meter, delivering exact bay, lane, and position information instantaneously. The system utilizes ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to provide up-to-the-minute, precise location tracking performance in tightly enclosed cluttered areas where other RFID and wireless technologies fail.  Ubisense Transit Yard Manager eliminates the costs associated with manually logging the constantly moving vehicles in a yard, and ensures that the vehicle is parked exactly where is shown in the system.  Ubisense Transit Yard Manager is installed in both bus and rail operations at locations around the world including Metro Transit (Minneapolis) and JNGV in Jena, Germany.

By providing schedule system integration through a real-time connection to the HASTUS solution, a dispatcher can select a piece of work in the scheduling system, highlight a bus on the interactive map in Transit Yard Manager, and “click to assign”. The application can then send the vehicle number and location to HASTUS.  With exact vehicle location in a yard, it is also possible to further automate the scheduling process using optimization tools available within HASTUS.

“One of the principal driving forces for transit agencies to deploy an automated vehicle location system within garages and yards is to increase the efficiencies with scheduling.  By connecting to HASTUS in real time, agencies will now be able to automatically indicate to driver operators the location of the vehicle without having to enter this information manually,” said Ubisense CEO Americas, Russ Chandler. “We are excited to be able to work with our partners at GIRO to provide this additional capability to our customers.”

 According to GIRO’s Benoît Lacroix, Director of Product Management - HASTUS, “GIRO recognizes our customers' avid interest in technology such as Transit Yard Manager. We are pleased this partnership will allow HASTUS users to benefit from automated yard tracking capabilities as well as further optimize daily operations with dynamic integration through our HASTUS-Connect tools.”

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Ubisense Transit Yard Manager, keeping trains on track

Denver, USA, October 1st 2010. Expanding on their industry leading yard management solution Ubisense has extended its Transit Yard Manager to meet the requirements of rail yards and added the capability to monitor and control maintenance processes.

As its solutions have been deployed in the transit industry, it has become clear to Ubisense that rail yards and maintenance facilities experience similar problems to bus transit facilities.  This has led Ubisense to develop an extension to their award-winning Transit Yard Manager (“TYM”) solution, supporting precision location of engines and cars.  Rail operators can now have complete indoor and outdoor visibility of their yards reducing search times, and providing data on rail yard processes so they can be streamlined, reducing maintenance costs and inventory levels.

The Ubisense solution reliably tracks both the orientation of the engine or car and its location to a precision of 12 inches.  The TYM web based interface provides a simple means to search for specific rolling stock or groups of assets that share similar characteristics.  This reduces the amount of manual time spent documenting their location and provides reliable data to more effectively manage yard operations.

Additionally, TYM now reports on the dwell times of an engine as it moves through maintenance processes allowing managers to be alerted by email or SMS, if a process is taking too long or the correct steps are not followed.  Historical data can also be gathered and used to determine process improvements.  This data is commonly utilized in six sigma or lean manufacturing methodologies to eliminate cost.

Ubisense is installed in several bus transit organizations around the world and is completing its first installation in a large American passenger rail company.

“We are pleased to be able to expand our transit industry solutions to the rail industry,” commented Jay Cadman, VP Sales and Marketing. “Accurate location is driving process improvements for our customers and we anticipate expanding further into other areas such as MRO and terminal solutions by working closely in conjunction with our customers.”

Ubisense integrated into Boeings new MOUT training solution

Ubisense real-time location tracking solution has been integrated into the new Boeing MOUT solution which was launched at Ft Leonard Wood this week.  See this clip for more information from a local TV channel.  More detailed information will be available from Boeing in the coming weeks.

http://www.kspr.com/news/local/kspr-boeing-ground-forces-training-09-30-10,0,1324652.story