Forget geolocation measured in meters. Goeoflex offers real-time 4 cm positioning anywhere in the world, on land, at sea and in the air at altitudes up to 25,000 km. This Île-de-France startup doesn’t have a constellation of satellites. This only increases by a factor of 100 the accuracy provided by current location services.
Recall that GNSS, global navigation satellite systems such as American GPS and its European (Galileo), Russian (Glonass) and Chinese (BeiDou/Compass) counterparts provide an accuracy of the order of one to ten meters, with Galileo being the most effective in this area.
Satellite error fix
To achieve this centimetric feat, Geoflex relies on technology developed over the past ten years by the National Center for Space Research (Cnes) called PPP for precise positioning. This technology, protected by seven patents, corrects errors in geolocation provided by GNSS, whether it be satellite orbit errors, errors in their atomic clocks, or electronic offsets.
Geoflex sells this “correction tape” in a subscription form. Whether to integrate it into your GNSS receivers or use the all-in-one box (photo) offered by the startup depends on the manufacturer. This hypergeolocation meets a large number of use cases in the field of road, rail, sea or air transport, construction, smart cities or precision agriculture.
The new round of funding just completed by Geoflex is a testament to the interest shown by manufacturers in this topic. The company raised 6 million euros by inviting Bouygues, Stellantis and Thales into its capital. Each of these three major groups has specific needs for very precise positioning.
Autonomous vehicles and precision farming
In the automotive world, we are of course thinking about in-flight navigation, as well as new connected car services—vehicle-to-pedestrian-to-infrastructure (V2X) information sharing—in anticipation of autonomous driving.
Hypergeolocation allows rail players to provide better information to passengers, optimize driver assistance, and increase traffic by reducing the distance between trains. In the air, first of all, we are talking about the control of drones and future flying taxis.
Construction industry players will be interested in covering their sites and remotely controlling machines such as connected cranes. So-called precision farming covers the distribution of phytosanitary products or automated weed handling.
From a security or compliance point of view, hypergeolocation associated with accurate timestamping allows for the authentication of the location of people and related objects, and the tracking and certification of field operations. Geoflix indicates that the technology used is resistant to jamming and spoofing techniques.
The fundraiser should allow Geoflex to strengthen its R&D and sales force to become “the world leader in satellite hypergeolocation.”
