Startup Chooses Swift Navigation for Centimeter-Accurate GPS in Self-Driving Cars
Overview
Voyage is working to create safer, more comfortable and more affordable transportation options — powered by autonomous driving technology — for communities all across North America. Voyage enables its community members to summon on-demand self-driving taxis and move effortlessly from one destination to the next.
Photo Credit: Voyage
Challenge
The challenge facing the founding team at Voyage is to quickly deploy self-driving technology in a real-world environment that delivers a low-cost, reliable and safe transportation solution, while involving their customers who stand to benefit most
from the technology in the process.
While competitors within the autonomous driving space often develop their technologies within the confines of labs and are constrained by the complexities of local legislation, Voyage has expedited the roll-out of a true production application of self-driving cars within private communities — in tandem with customers using their product — to constantly improve and iterate its technologies to provide a better user experience.
The Villages
The Voyage fleet stays within the bounds of a given community, where all roads have been precisely mapped, speed limits are lower, and traffic patterns are more clearly defined than in metropolitan cities — where other autonomous vehicle testing is only starting to take place. Voyage’s approach makes it possible for them to deliver a self-driving taxi service to a community in a matter of months. With its vision in sight, the first community that Voyage has deployed its self-driving fleet within is The Villages in San Jose, California. Residents in The Villages — a community of 4,000 — are able to summon a Voyage self-driving taxi using a smartphone app and have a ride waiting at their front door. This service is especially valuable to customers with mobility limitations that might prevent them from walking to an event or reaching a bus stop down the street. Voyage takes residents of The Villages to and from the gym, to visit with friends, to the golf course and to community center events, to name a few.
Solution
Voyage is able to deliver this self-driving technology to communities thanks in part to Swift Navigation. Using Swift Navigation’s
Skylark™ GNSS Cloud Corrections Service and outfitting its fleet with Piksi® Multi RTK GNSS receivers, Voyage has utilized Swift’s centimeter-accurate GPS technology in its navigation sensor suite. The manpower and overhead that would have been required by the Voyage team to develop precision navigation technology in-house was offset by Swift Navigation’s end-to-end autonomous driving solution. Voyage would have had to buy expensive GNSS receivers, set them up, monitor them and hire engineers to write algorithms to achieve what Swift delivers with it’s Skylark Cloud Corrections Service and GNSS receivers. The precise centimeter-level localization delivered by the Swift product suite is critical to the needs of the communities that Voyage serves, as its customer base — especially those with mobility issues — require a smooth start and stop to their rides. Swift makes this possible.
“Swift has been a key partner on our journey to create safer, more
comfortable and more affordable autonomous driving experience for our customers.”
– Oliver Cameron, Co-Founder & CEO of Voyage
Results
Voyage has been using Swift Navigation products for the entire deployment at The Villages in San Jose and is actively providing rides every day, improving quality of life for its residents. Voyage will next utilize the Swift product suite in its upcoming deployment launching to 125,000 retirees at The Villages complex in Florida. Voyage is expanding community-by-community across the country and with each deployment is targeting communities with more residents, more roads and its own set of unique challenges.
This case study was originally posted by Swift Navigation. Click here to see the full case study.
About Swift Navigation
Swift Navigation provides precise positioning solutions for automotive, autonomous vehicle, mobile and mass market applications.
Since its founding in 2012, Swift has evolved from creating the industry’s first low-cost, high-accuracy, real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS receiver to delivering an ecosystem of GNSS positioning solutions for autonomous applications.
About Canal Geomatics
Canal Geomatics Inc. is the industry-leading distributor of high-precision positioning solutions in North America, specializing in automotive, airborne, rail, marine, UAS and robotics. Our mission is to find the best solution for each unique application and extend premium support to ensure the long-term success of our customers. Canal Geomatics is a proud supplier of precise positioning products from Swift Navigation.
Skylark Cloud-Based GNSS Corrections Service
Skylark delivers lane-level positioning to autonomous vehicles throughout the United States via a cloud-based corrections service. Skylark’s cutting-edge positioning algorithms provide a continuous stream of multi-constellation, multi-frequency GNSS corrections for a highly available service that combines lane-level accuracy and world-class integrity at a continental scale. Skylark is hardware-independent, giving customers choice in today’s rapidly improving and affordable GNSS sensor ecosystem. OEMs are able to benefit from the lane-level positioning Skylark delivers using a host of third-party receivers and microprocessors in addition to Swift’s Piksi Multi and Duro GNSS receivers.
Piksi Multi RTK GNSS Receiver
Duro is a ruggedized multi-band, multi-constellation centimeter-accurate GNSS receiver. It is an enclosed version of the Piksi Multi RTK GNSS receiver. Duro is ideal for agricultural, robotics, maritime, rail and outdoor industrial applications. The easy-to-deploy Duro is protected against weather, moisture, vibration, dust, water immersion and the unexpected that can occur in outdoor long-term deployments.