NEWSBRIEFS –INDUSTRY

3D-Laser Scanning possible up to 2000m

RIEGL has recently launched 3D laser scanner LMS-Z620, especially optimised for long range topography and mining applications. It is providing a maximum measurement range of 2000m on natural targets and a reduced beam divergence of just 0.15 mrad, performance data which are unrivalled in the market of high-speed laser scanners. It has RiSCAN PRO´s backsighting and Multi Station Adjustment functionality as well. www.riegl.com

Geokosmos plans office in India

GEOKOSMOS International, is planning to set up a liaison office in Delhi to primarily engage in general business development within the aerial photography and mapping industry. “India is a potential market and we too are looking forward to building relations with business partners and clients there,” said Geokosmos VP, International Business Development, Peter Goellner. The Economic Times, New Delhi

Aftek mining solutions

Aftek’s MLS provides a cutting edge technological solution for Open Pit mines. Using wireless communication and GPS it provides automated dispatching of vehicles. It also provide online tracking of equipments, reduced idling time of equipments, instant breakdown information, increased productivity and quicker ROI. www.aftek.com/mining

ASUS PDA phones enabled with SatGuide ONE INDIA integrated map!

ASUS PDA phones has a tied up with SatNav Technologies. Consumers who buy, P750 and P527 phones, which have in-built GPS receivers will come pre-loaded with ONE INDIA integrated map from SatGuide.

GNSS Mapping and GIS Solution by Trimble

Trimble has introduced the GPS Pathfinder® ProXRT receiver. It combines GPS receiver with Trimble® H-Star™ technology, OmniSTAR correction capability, and optional GLONASS capability to provide submeter to decimeter accuracy. The receiver is ideal for high-accuracy mapping, data collection, and asset management applications in industries such as water/wastewater, utilities, telecommunications, transportation etc.

Trimble has also completed the implementation of GIS-based UtilityCenter® uaFM™ information technology module for TECO Peoples Gas, which is Florida’s leading natural gas provider. www.trimble.com

Mio C230 car navigation system wins prestigious iF design award

Mio Technology’s C230 car navigation system has been awarded the prestigious 2008 iF Design Award in the Audio/Video category. It is a PND designed for entry-level users.

GeomaticaX and GeoCapacity by PCI Geomatics India Pvt. Ltd.

PCI Geomatics’ is offering GeomaticaX (production oriented automated workflows) and GeoCapacity (systems designed to manage and provide data/ maps/information ‘on-demand’). It can provide a scalable enterprise solution for effective management, processing and distribution of information derived from Earth Observation data.

Safe software adds new dimensions to Spatial ETL

Safe Software has released FME 2008. It includes FME Server, a scalable solution for data transformation and distribution, as well as a new version of FME Desktop, the recognized standard in spatial ETL (extract, transform and load). www.safe.com.

LEICA Geosystems offerings – Choke Ring Antenna, SpiderWeb and GeoMoS 4.0

Leica AR25 is the new choke ring antenna from Leica Geosystems covering all present and currently planned GNSS constellations and signals, including L-Band (SBAS, CDGPS and OmniStar). Leica has also released a new version of Leica SpiderWeb which is an advanced solution for presentation and distribution of GNSS data sets from any network to individual users via the internet. It has also released Leica GeoMoS v4.0 which is the latest update to GeoMoS, an open, scalable and customizable software suitable for a wide range of monitoring applications. New version unites the geodetic and the geotechnical world. It also supports Campbell® Scientific dataloggers. www.leica-geosystems.com

Intergraph evolves its solutions

Intergraph’s new design and asset management software now supports Oracle Locator. The software integrates geospatial data with corporate systems such as work management, outage management and network analysis to fully support planning, design, construction, operations, maintenance and emergency response functions.

MapQuest teams up with INRIX for Traffic-Enabled Navigation Solutions

MapQuest and INRIX has announced a collaboration that will allow consumers and businesses to access the full breadth of INRIX traffic information across multiple MapQuest business units – MapQuest.com, MapQuest Wireless, and MapQuest Platform Services. www.gpsbusinessnews.com

Garmin claims number one position on the PND market

Garmin has claimed that it is the global leader in PND sales, having sold more than any other manufacturer in 2007 as per the research provided by Canalys, market analyst firm. www.gpsbusinessnews.com

ESRI Joins NAVTEQ developers platform

NAVTEQ has announced the addition of the ESRI Zone within the NAVTEQ Network for Developers (NN4D) development program. ESRI, a GIS software leader will provide NN4D developers with access to a comprehensive environment for rapid application development, tools, documentation and support. www.gpsbusinessnews.com

Mio releases Moov auto GPS systems

Mio has released 3 automobile navigation systems Moov 200, Moov 330 and Moov 370. Main upgrades common to all include MioMore software that allows moving points of interest back and forth between a computer and the unit as well as SIRF’s InstantFixII GPS receiver for quicker finding of satellites. www.electronista.com

Magellan brings wide screens, traffic to RoadMate

Magellan has unveiled three new additions to its RoadMate series of PNDs. The base model of the series, the RoadMate 1400, comes preloaded with Navteq road maps. It also comes pre-loaded with a database of European safety cameras, which provides locations of known cameras for each region. www.magellangps.com

Toyota creates new integrated Portable Nav System for yaris

Having just introduced a new OEM headunit that features integration with a TomTom handheld GPS system, Toyota’s European division may just have started a new revolution with its new Yaris. When the handheld TomTom is docked in the dashboard, the system charges and operates as an integrated navigation system. http://car-reviews.automobile.com

u-blox GPS powers LandAirSea GSM-based tracker

LandAirSea Systems, announced the launch of a battery-powered, GSM-based real-time vehicle tracking unit featuring u-blox 5 GPS technology. www.sunherald.com

Infotech Enterprises, India inks multi-year pact with Tele Atlas

Infotech Enterprises has signed a new multi-year contract with Tele Atlas to provide extensive map database and software development services. Through the agreement, Infotech’s database teams shall assist in the production of Tele Atlas’ digital map database. www.stockwatch.in

German radar satellite generates precise traffic information

TerraSAR-X The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has begun several months of tests to obtai traffic information via its new radar satellite. It is going to monitor selected sections of motorway in Europe and in the USA. It aims to develop a procedure for large-scale traffic data capture, independent of ground systems,that permits data relay to various traffic information providers. www.gpsbusinessnews.com/

Contex’s new large format imaging solutions

Contex has recently released professional wide format scanners. With its technological and stylistic enhancements, the product suite boasts even greater image quality and flexibility. Easily integrated with most wide format printers, the scanners enable users to create visually unified, multi-function copying and printing solutions. Contex has upgraded the optical resolution from 508 dpi to 600 dpi. “600 dpi is the highest true optical resolution specification in the large format scanning industry today,” says Niels Appel, Executive VP, Sales and Marketing for Contex operations. “Optical resolution is a key indicator of image quality – and we are very pleased to offer our customers this industry-leading capability.”

TerraPOS Precise Point Positioning

TerraPOS is the GNSS post-processing software capable of accurate positioning without the use of reference stations or DGPS services. Reference stations are made obsolete by employing precise satellite orbits and satellite clock corrections coupled with state-of-the-art error modeling.

It is specially developed for kinematic applications, such as airborne photogrammetry or LIDAR operations, seabed mapping, or seismic surveying.

TopoSys virtually eliminates calibration flights for aerial LIDAR surveys

TopoSys has virtually eliminated the need for calibration flights or “Boresighting” for aerial LIDAR surveys with their line of LiDAR sensors which are highly stable, completely integrated, turnkey systems of IMU, GPS, LIDAR sensor and digital imaging systems.

“Calibration” and “boresighting” are two terms for the process to determine the offsets between the IMU coordinate axes and the Lidar coordinate axes.

Blue Marble to offer tracking service for public pay phones

Blue Marble Geographics has announced a new service, GPS tracking for pay phones. With this new technology enterprise,users are able to receive up-to-the-month updates of the coordinate position, spatial whereabouts, barometric change, and amount of loose change in the change return slot. The Premium Service level will supply change detection in the graffiti located on the pay phone windows.

Chaos systems AB releases Mapsuite+ 6.0!

Mapsuite+ 6.0, the CAD software for surveying, mapping and design has now reached its 6’th version, with a lot of new enhancements for the surveying and mapping people. It includes new CAD functions like Create polygon, Generate legend on drawing sheet, Copy point attribute to object attribute, Make entity properties current and Edit road line in a drawing. For DTM; the user is now able to Drape image over 3D model, and also use height scale in 3D model.

Applanix launches POSPac Marine 5.0

Applanix recently introduced a new version GNSS-Aided Inertial postprocessing software for marine mapping and surveying applications—the POSPac™ Marine 5.0 software. It combines GPS network and inertial post-processing methods that work together to eliminate or reduce the restrictions currently associated with high accuracy GNSS positioning in a Marine environment. It also released LANDMark Marine™ mobile mapping solution, which is videogrammetry and LIDAR imaging system for surface mapping suitable for operation on a marine vessel.

New TruePosition hybrid location solution

TruePosition has announced the Hybrid Location Solution, which combines network-based and handset-based location technologies and leverages the benefits of each to gain higher accuracy and reliability. The solution can incorporate a combination of location technologies such as Cell ID, Enhanced Cell ID, Angle of Arrival, Uplink Time Difference of Arrival, and Assisted GPS.

Pitney Bowes and Microsoft SQL alliance

Pitney Bowes MapInfo has announced that its flagship MapInfo Professional application for business mapping and analysis will utilize the spatial enhancements in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to provide customers with enhanced geographic and business data management.

GeoEye and Mitsubishi agreement

GeoEye has signed a multi-year agreement with Mitsubishi Corporation to allow its Regional Affiliate, Japan Space Imaging Corporation to collect and sell Earth imagery and related products from the GeoEye-1 satellite. The contract was signed March 28, 2008 in Tokyo. The receiving antenna will be located in Okinawa and the processing facility will be located in Tokyo.

INTERGEO East successful once again

At the fifth INTERGEO event, almost 80% of exhibitors said that the fair was their top marketing activity for the year. It recorded some 3,000 trade visitors, 160 congress participants and 85 satisfied exhibitors from 19 countries. The three-day event staged by HINTE GmbH and CongrExpo d.o.o, which came to a close on February 20, once again underpinned its position as a key industry event for South- East Europe and an international forum for making new contacts. Over 80% of exhibitors achieved the goals they set themselves for the trade fair, and 75% of participating companies and institutions said that they would like to take part in the sixth show, which is scheduled for spring 2009.