High-precision navigation for autonomous systems
Two teams of the ETH Pioneer Fellowship program joined forces to found the new company Fixposition. Read how they combine two ideas into one innovative product.
During the course of their ETH Pioneer Fellowship program* the four co-founders met in the weekly entrepreneurial trainings and shared an open space office at the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Lab (ieLab). The base was set for a powerful merger of two pioneer fellowship teams into one company – Fixposition.
Two Pioneer Fellowship projects – one common goal
The GPS experts Zhenzhong and Tonio were developing a high precision satellite-based navigation system. At the same time the drone experts Lorenz and Lukas were working on a collision avoidance and industrial inspection system for drones using computer vision. There was a mutual interest from the beginning, since the GPS team wanted to enter the drone market and the drone team needed GPS for industrial inspection.
Reasoning for the merger
The impulse to start the merging process came when the GPS team got accepted for the ESA BIC program**. To start this program, a disruptive product and a strategy to be competitive is crucial. With both projects being situated in a highly competitive market it soon became clear that using the synergies of the two projects could be the key advantage to succeed.
Goal of Fixposition
The combination of cutting edge computer vision techniques and leading satellite navigation know-how allows Fixposition to develop products which provide high-precision and ultra-reliable navigation. The positioning is on centimeter accurate-level and stays operational in challenging environments, such as so-called urban-canyons, forests or generally places with limited satellite signal reception. This facilitates a wide variety of tasks such as autonomous industrial drone inspection, high-precision control of autonomous machines and guidance of self-driving cars.
Applications
- Drone navigation
- Self-driving cars
- Agricultural machinery
- Surveying
* Pioneer Fellowships are granted by ETH Zurich to ETH graduates who want to turn their inventions into a market-ready products and services.
** external pageESA BIC is a business incubation program of the European Space Agency.external page
Contact/Links:
external pagewww.fixposition.ch
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