Safe, reliable, and precise positioning is becoming essential for a growing range of smart applications. TruePoint Technology and Unicore recently conducted a pan-European field trial of their Chip-Cloud Integration solution to validate the performance of TruePoint’s high-precision positioning service paired with Unicore’s high-precision modules.
The trial deployed 16 high-precision modules along a 20,000-kilometer route across Europe, for a total test distance of 320,000 kilometers. The route crossed 12 countries: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany, covering more than 40 cities and regions. Testing included particularly challenging environments such as urban canyons, highways, mountain tunnels, and tree-lined roads. Numerous TTFF (Time to First Fix) tests were also conducted under dynamic, static, and severely degraded GNSS signal conditions.
This extensive field trial thoroughly validated the outstanding performance of the Chip-Cloud Integration solution. By combining chip-level hardware with cloud-based correction services, TruePoint’s high-precision positioning service consistently delivered stable, continuous, and reliable centimeter-level accuracy across the entire route and in a wide range of use cases.
TruePoint’s centimeter-level high-precision data service now covers most of Europe
This extensive joint trial, conducted across 12 European countries and over more than 10,000 kilometers, provided rigorous real-world validation. The test route was specifically designed to include a range of complex and demanding environments:
- Residential yards: Long-duration static tests and low-speed dynamic tests in typical European residential yards, where GNSS signals were severely obstructed, particularly near walls and beneath dense foliage.
- Dense Nordic forests: Evaluation of positioning availability and accuracy in heavily wooded areas, where dense vegetation significantly attenuates satellite signals.
- High-speed highways and adverse weather: Evaluation of positioning stability at speeds of 110 to 150 km/h (68 to 93 mph) and signal resilience during heavy rain.
- Urban canyons: Evaluation of positioning robustness in dense urban areas with tall buildings and significant multipath interference, which can cause signal drift or loss.
The Chip-Cloud Integration solution, which combines TruePoint services with Unicore UM960-series modules, delivered robust, reliable, and consistently high performance throughout this trial, which covered a broad geographic area and numerous challenging environments.
- Consistent centimeter-level accuracy in every scenario: The solution provided stable centimeter-level high-precision positioning in all tested scenarios, including urban canyons, tunnels, forested areas, highways, and obstructed static environments. It typically achieved 3 cm horizontal accuracy and 5 cm vertical accuracy, with no significant performance degradation across environments.
- Excellent overall availability: Positioning service continuity and reliability were outstanding in complex environments. Even in the most challenging urban canyons and long tunnels, the solution significantly reduced positioning interruptions and enabled rapid signal recovery after an outage, delivering overall availability well above industry benchmarks.
- Excellent fix rate and cost efficiency: In typical robotic lawn mower scenarios, the solution maintained a fix rate above 95%, while fixed positions delivered significantly better accuracy than competing solutions. Its low-data-consumption mode substantially reduces data transmission costs for end users without compromising performance.
- Broad coverage across Europe: TruePoint provides continuous, reliable, and accurate high-precision positioning across major European countries and urban areas. The service performs consistently in Nordic villa gardens, Alpine foothills, forested mountain roads, and the historic centers of Paris and Milan, enabling smooth operation in the continent’s most diverse environments.
Robotic lawn mower use case: extreme challenges and very low data consumption
To address the particularly complex environments typical of robotic lawn mower applications, the test setup used 5 different GNSS modules, including Unicore’s UM960 and UM960E, along with 4 high-precision positioning services, including TruePoint.
The methodology combined static TTFF tests, low-dynamic tests, and dynamic road trials. Results were evaluated using several criteria: fix rate, anomaly rate, horizontal accuracy, and vertical accuracy.
Across all scenarios, the TruePoint + Unicore Chip-Cloud Integration solution delivered the best overall performance among all tested configurations. Through joint optimization of the underlying algorithms and the integration of real-time differential corrections, Chip-Cloud Integration significantly improves terminal positioning performance, reliability, and availability in the most challenging environments.
