The POSITION of satellite navigation
One of the greatest ways of developing new technologies and making them useful for the society is taking advantage of satellite navigation. Satnav is a kind of radio navigation that uses radio waves from the artificial satellites in order to define the location of points and moving receivers along with the parameters of their movement in any place in the world.
Satellite navigation can be used in a military field as well as can be found in many different economic areas:
– life saving – enables to locate lost vehicles and people
– transportation (sea, road, air and rail) – controlling the routes and informing about upcoming dangers
– public administration, e.g. in finances or banking. Providing authenticity and safety while sending important data.
– personal – ranging from the help in an unknown field or city and monitoring of employees working in risky situations, to sport and recreation
The most popular system of navigation is GPS (Global Positioning System). It was created by the United States Department of Defense and covers the whole Earth. GPS consists of 3 sectors: space, terrestial and user’s.
Nowadays, the creation of a new, global, civil navigation system, named Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is in an implementation phase. The idea is to eliminate the flaws and inadequacy of GPS by multiplying the source of positional information as well as providing continued, uninterrupted data correction.
POlish Support to Innovation and Technology IncubatiON (POSITION) is a project launched by Black Pearls VC, which concentrates on supporting the development of Polish GNSS applications. Although the abbreviation GNSS can be incomprehensible for most people, its full name: Global Navigation Satellite System should make it clearer. The project essays to follow and support the recent trend of GNSS sector development in Europe. POSITION is the first project in the space industry as part of Horizon 2020. Its main aim is to focus on the field of commercial applications, which take advantage of satellite navigation to solve problems.
Despite being considered to be the largest European hi-tech market that hasn’t been explored yet, Poland is still a country where very few GNSS applications has been created. POSITION aims at changing this state by focusing on the support of the development of Polish GNSS applications. In order to achieve it, the project is going to build a network for the Polish GNSS sector, develop the local GNSS market and give support to the most promising start-ups. Its additional task is becoming a bridge between the industry and government, which hopefully will raise the European Union’s structural funds for the GNSS projects. The current priority of Project POSITION is to develop two applications. The first is targeted at life-saving service and the second one is focused on the improvement of the traffic.
Project POSITION is led by Black Pearls VC. Our company has ample experience in managing equity funds, aimed at investing in innovative companies at early development stages, and providing business mentoring services. Moreover, it has an excellent network of contacts in Poland, including investor groups, technical bodies and GNSS-related academia.
Click and learn more: POSITION
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Photo credit: CC via flickr by NASA for The Commons