On 14 March 2019, GeoNumerics had the opportunity to present its views on the future of drones and GNSS to a Japanese and an EU delegation at the 4th EU-Japan Public and Private GNSS Roundtable Meeting in Tokyo, Japan.

Castelldefels, 18 March 2019. The Cabinet Office (CO) of Japan, and the European Commission (EC) of the European Union (EU) recently organised the 4th EU-Japan Satellite Positioning Public-Private Roundtable on 14 March 2019 in Tokyo, Japan. In the previous two days, the EU mission visited Japanese companies in the field of automotive, agriculture, drone and other GNSS technologies.

The practical organisation of the event was in the hands of CO’s National Space Policy Secretariat (NSPS), that hosted the EU delegation, and of EC’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), in cooperation with the European GNSS Agency (GSA). The Cabinet Office also organised the roundtable and, in the previous two days, arranged the site visits and meetings with Japanese companies. The EU mission was composed by EU industry, SMEs and start-ups. Both EU and Japanese companies explored potential business cooperation in the application of GNSS technologies.

On 27 and 28 November, GeoNumerics had the opportunity to present its technology and business model to Ferrovial at the Impact Hub Gobernador in Madrid, Spain.

The European Innovation Council (EIC) pilot and Ferrovial partnered for a business acceleration event directed at companies working on sustainable approaches to urban mobility, user experience (airports and toll roads), energy efficiency and new technologies for the construction sector. After a selection process, 21 companies funded by the EIC pilot were selected to present their projects to an audience of Ferrovial representatives and key partners and engage in one-to-one meetings with relevant corporate stakeholders.

Ferrovial’s innovation strategy works on an open innovation model, based on cooperation with external partners who are capable of complementing company needs and capacities, with the aim of accelerating the deployment of new solutions and processes to the market. This is also one of the main objectives behind the Corporate Days promoted by the EIC pilot Business Acceleration Services.

The Rodovia Raposo Tavares (SP-270, SP, Brazil) has cradled a new mapKITE mapping mission, carried out by ENGEMAP and jointly computed with GeoNumerics: results confirm mapKITE as a cm-level accurate 3D corridor mapping method.

Castelldefels (Spain) and Assis (SP, Brazil), 8 January 2019. ENGEMAP and GeoNumerics have finalized the accuracy evaluation of a mapKITE mission conducted on the SP-270 motorway (Rodovia Raposo Tavares, SP, Brazil) on 25 May 2018. The goal of the evaluation was to confirm the advantages of the mapKITE method and its Kinematic Ground Control Point (KGCP) concept over the “conventional” corridor mapping method in a typical operational mapping scenario. As expected, mapKITE and the conventional method delivered comparable accuracy results the difference being that the latter requires a dense set of surveyed Ground Control Points (GCPs) while mapKITE does the job with almost no GCPs.

GeoNumerics was invited to present the mapKITE project and technology at the Horizon 2020 International Space Information Day, held at the European GNSS Agency (GSA), in Prague, on 12 October 2018.

Castelldefels, 14 October 2018. GeoNumerics is proud to inform that its past Horizon 2020 project mapKITE was presented by Ismael Colomina, company’s CEO, on occasion of the Horizon 2020 International Space Information Day, organized and hosted by the European GNSS Agency (GSA), in Prague, on 12 October 2018. The GSA selected mapKITE together with two other projects, FOSTER ITS and GOEASY, to showcase past and ongoing R&D dealing with innovative applications of the satellite navigation systems Galileo and EGNOS.

MapKITE, an invention of GeoNumerics, is a new method for simultaneous aerial and terrestrial geodata acquisition for 3D mapping of corridors (highways, railways and waterways) and urban areas. In a mapKITE mission, geodata is acquired from the air –from a drone– and from the ground –from a van, with a mobile mapping system– where the drone follows the van at an approximate constant height above ground. The method goes beyond traditional mapping using drones; it is a new mapping concept as it introduces a new surveying paradigm, new mathematical models, new ways of fusing sensors and a new “map” product. MapKITE is protected by the Spanish patent 201231200 and U.S. patent no. 14/417,435, and with pending patents in Brazil and Europe.