Essensium brings an innovative approach to RTLS, leveraging the accuracy benefits of UWB together with the range of narrow-band WiFi implementations, resulting in an industry-leading accuracy-range combination. With 15cm accuracy over long range, both indoors and outdoors, Essensium enables exciting new applications for Real Time Location Systems.

Earth Times: HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - (Business Wire) Time Domain Corporation, the leader in ultra wideband (UWB) real-time location systems (RTLS), today announced the deployment of its Precision Location Ultra Wideband System (PLUS®) in Europe. Time Domain and its partner PinPoint Data Systems, an RTLS integrator and provider of marketing data and reports to retailers and consumer package goods manufacturers, have shipped PLUS to multiple retail locations in the United Kingdom. The system provides the most precise and real-time data available indoors on the global market today allowing European retail, manufacturing and healthcare customers to improve operational efficiency and increase sales.

“The success of pilot programs deployed in Europe earlier this year led to full shipments of PLUS just months later,” said Greg Clawson, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Time Domain. “Time Domain’s global footprint continues to expand throughout the world with major installations in Europe, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and Brazil that are building upon our success in the United States. Companies that have busy work environments ranging from retail stores to factories are deploying our PLUS technology to provide the most precise location data available, improving overall efficiency.”

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Open PR: (openPR) - Out Board have been appointed principal global re-seller for the entertainment and presentation technology sectors by Ubisense, the Cambridge UK based leaders in precision real-time location systems (RTLS).

The move follows on from Out Board's substantial successes with their own audio showcontrol application of the Ubisense technology, TiMax Tracker, which tracks actors and performers around stage to automatically localize their amplified audio signature via real-time control of the TiMax2 SoundHub audio matrix processor.

Out Board have also supplied this highly versatile precision tracking technology to control other third-party audio showcontrollers such as the Meyer LCS system, and provided support to developments in other disciplines such as control of lighting, cameras, multimedia servers and advanced showcontrol environments such as the CAST BlackBox system.

Ubisense CEO Richard Green comments: "Out Board understand the language and dynamics of the entertainment technology industry, and they have the in-depth technical and commercial experience to fully develop and support these exciting new initiatives. Their well-established distribution network also gives them a truly global reach to help apply these skills, we're confident they're well placed to maximise the potential of Ubisense in this sector."

The Ubisense core RTLS platform employs a unique combination of angle-of-arrival (AOA) and time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) analysis to deliver highly reliable and accurate location information to a resolution of 15cm (6") in three dimensions. Out Board add their own software application layers to provide real-time visualisations and application-specific showcontrol GUI's. A network of compact Ubisense sensors receives 6-8GHz UWB radar-frequency pulses from miniature tags worn by the performers, and the resulting real-time localization data is used to deliver either stepped or continuous positional control of external media peripherals via MIDI or ethernet.

Just as demand has rocketed for effective RTLS resources in Ubisense's core enterprise markets such as personnel or asset tracking and process control, so the entertainment industry has also seen a growing interest in this area. Out Board's Robin Whittaker remarks "People in our industry seem very tweaked by RTLS allowing them to now do things that were just not possible a few years ago. We know a lot of those people, and we're delighted to be in a position deliver them viable solutions to help open up these new possibilities."

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Steel Guru (via RFIDJournal.com): Through the introduction of a real time location system, South Korean steel manufacturer POSCO is reducing accidents, improving employee and visitor safety and lowering energy consumption.

To ensure the safety of employees and visitors at the plant, POSCO has introduced its u safety management system, which utilizes ultra wideband radio frequency identification tags and interrogators to monitor all areas of the facility. Each person working in or visiting the plant is provided with a helmet fitted with a battery powered RFID tag, allowing managers to quickly locate that individual in the event of a serious accident, such as a fire or gas leak.

Mr Hanku Park, a senior master POSCO certified professional, said that his company previously had no means of tracking employees' locations throughout the factory. He added that "Ensuring worker safety at the plant is vital and we wanted a system that could track workers, visitors and even vehicles to monitor or limit their access to hazardous areas of the plant. We consulted with IBM Korea to find a solution that would best meet our needs. We conducted technical tests on the RTLS system and software that allowed us to determine the distance required between the tag and reader, given the iron and steel present as part of the production process, as well as determines tag and reader accuracy."

POSCO uses Ubisense's RTLS solution, with Series 7000 RFID tags affixed to personnel and equipment. The tags operate on a frequency of 6 to 8 GHz, beaconing once per second. The Series 7000 readers receive the beacons from the tags to determine position, and that information is then transmitted to the LAS middleware over a local area network.

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Reuters: HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--(Business Wire)-- Time Domain Corporation, the leader in ultra wideband (UWB) real-time location systems (RTLS), and Klever Marketing, Inc. (KLMK.OB), today announced the introduction and first installation of Klever`s Giving Cart System with Time Domain`s Precision Location Ultra Wideband System (PLUS). This enables retailers to dynamically communicate promotions and advertisements to customers as they shop, optimizing the shopping experience and driving sales.

Time Domain and Klever Marketing launched The Giving CartSystem in The Market, a privately owned Park City, Utah, supermarket this month. The system, which includes interactive, wireless display units that attach to shopping cart handles, enables The Market to target promotions to shoppers at the point-of-selection and build consumer loyalty. The units are tracked in real-time and automatically alert customers to promotions as they travel throughout the store. The Market will also use the technology to analyze consumer purchasing preferences to offer better targeted promotions and inform more strategic location of merchandise. "There has been a significant reduction in the installation cost of our updated Giving Cart," said Paul G. Begum, CEO, Klever Marketing. "The solution benefits consumers, retailers and package good manufacturers."

The Giving CartSystem is powered by Time Domain`s Precision Location Ultra Wideband System (PLUS) as each display unit contains a PLUS OEM tag. PLUS has the capability to provide 24 x 7 real-time (every second), highly precise (down to 12 inches) data on every asset in a retail store, including inventory, display units, fixtures, people and more. Attempts to field interactive shopping systems in the past have failed due to poor location accuracy, expense and lack of long lasting battery powered systems. Grocery stores have been particularly difficult retail settings to locate accurately. PLUS reaches beyond the limits of other systems, such as GPS, Zigbee and Wi-Fi, with accuracy and long battery life that is unmatched in the industry.

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Amazon (Murtuza Attarwala): Would recommend this book to anyone who is actively working with Location Based Services, or is planning on working with Location Based Services. The initial sections of the book gives comprehensive use cases, where location based services are/can be used. The author then goes into the details of different technologies that are out there in the market that can be used to implement these services. For each technology, the author first describes the technology and then discusses the pros/cons of using that technology to implement the solution. These gives a very good idea, of what technology should be used from the cost/technical perspective for a particular solution. For e.g. what is the expected responsiveness of RTLS for your particular solution, what is the accuracy that you desire, is it room-level or is zone-level good enough, how big a tag is acceptable for your solution, what is the expected battery life of the tag. This book is a must read for anyone interested in Location based services.

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Ubisense is the world leader in Precise Real Time Location Systems, tracking unlimited numbers of people and objects in any space of any size. With unmatched 15cm 3D tracking accuracy and high reliability, its acclaimed open standards technology platform gives enterprises the power to bring visibility and control to previously intractable business processes. Together Ubisense consulting and its partners, such as IBM, Atlas Copco, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon deliver geospatial and RTLS systems, pioneering innovation whilst reducing costs, gaining competitive advantage and improving safety for companies across all vertical markets. With over 400 customers worldwide including BMW, Caterpillar, DHL, Duke Energy, Deutsche Telekom, US Army; Ubisense is revolutionising industries today

MARKETWIRE via COMTEX: CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM, Aug 28, 2009 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- "The introduction of the IBM/Ubisense system has resulted in accident prevention and overall employee safety improvement as well as adding to POSCO's reputation for innovation by leveraging UWB technology in a first-of-its-kind solution", comments Han Ku Park, project manager at POSCO in Pohang. "All the project objectives have been met on time and within the planned budget. The project team of IBM, POSCO and Ubisense have created the first of its kind in Korea and probably in Asia.
"The Korean version of Ubisense will allow us to satisfy the enormous demand we have witnessed since first introducing the product to research institutes in 2006", says HB Choi, General Manager, Ubisense Korea. "We already have deployments in 25 organisations and with immediate availability of a fully compliant product we will be able to satisfy the enormous pent-up demand we have seen from the Industrial and Manufacturing Market".
Korean Manufacturers include some of the highest volume automotive plants in the world, so the timing of the availability of Ubisense, already with a worldwide reputation at reducing costs and improving productivity for leading companies such as BMW, Honda and Caterpillar is pertinent, says, Simon Holloway of Manufacturing Consultancy, Bloor Associates.

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RFID Journal: Aug. 25, 2009—Ultra-wideband (UWB) RFID technology could advance video game development and special effects in the motion picture industry, by allowing companies to capture real-time motion information from several actors at once. This is being made possible thanks to Xsens Technologies, a Netherlands-based firm that designs three-dimensional tracking applications.
Xsens has incorporated UWB real-time location technology from Time Domain to advance its full-body cameraless motion-capture system. The new tracking application, dubbed MVN, aims to make it easier for companies such as Electronic Arts, Industrial Light and Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks, THQ and other video game and entertainment industry firms to digitally reproduce realistic movements of actors.

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Irish Press Releases:
DecaWave (www.decawave.com), a leading Dublin based fabless semiconductor company, has shipped the first 5 evaluation kits of its groundbreaking product ScenSor chip to technology firms in the US, Germany, France, Israel and Korea. The kits enable trusted partners and customers of DecaWave to analyse the potential of ScenSor and see how their technology can benefit from the dramatically increased location precision and reduced power consumption ScenSor technology delivers.
ScenSor which was launched September 2008 has a wide range of applications for both Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) and Ultra Low Power Wireless Transceivers in areas as diverse as manufacturing, healthcare, lighting, security, transport, inventory and supply chain management. ScenSor’s extremely low power (200 times less transmit power and 20 times less receive power than competing technologies) over a 70m range allows it to be deployed in industrial/process environments and remain unattended for many years. For RTLS applications, the technology delivers location precision that is orders of magnitude more precise than existing technologies (+/- 10cm vs. +/- 5m).
“Today’s shipping announcement is a significant company milestone for DecaWave” says Ciaran Connell, CEO DecaWave. “We are delighted with industry interest in ScenSor - since it was announced last September we have attracted expressions of interest from 245 technology companies worldwide, and we are on course to deliver a further 5 evaluation kits in the coming weeks, fulfilling our business plan commitments,” he says.
DecaWave is privately funded, and is supported by Enterprise Ireland.

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