San Francisco-based Swift Navigation this week announced an integrated solution for precise automotive positioning applications and its interoperability with automotive-grade GNSS chipsets from STMicroelectronics.
Swift unveiled its Starling™ Positioning Engine—a modular and portable high-precision GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) positioning software engine that leverages Swift’s Skylark™ Cloud Corrections Service for autonomous vehicle applications. According to the company, Starling revolutionizes the architecture and cost structure of precise positioning applications. Platform independent, Starling utilizes the measurements from commercially available GNSS receivers to provide true precision and integrity capabilities. While demonstrating their first-choice integration of the ST Teseo platform for automotive customers, Swift’s Starling software is GNSS-receiver agnostic and works with a variety of automotive grade GNSS chipsets and inertial sensors, offering automotive companies choices in selecting the best components for their autonomous sensor suite, Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) applications and Automated Driving Systems.
Starling features multi-band, multi-constellation support to provide centimeter-level accuracy. It supports the calculation of integrity outputs to provide absolute position, velocity and time (PVT). When combined with inertial sensor measurements, wheel odometry and vision sensors, the Starling Positioning Engine can assist with vehicle localization, decision and control. Starling is being engineered from the ground up to comply with the automotive industry functional-safety standard – ISO 26262 for Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL)-B safety standards.
STMicroelectronics’ TeseoAPP (ASIL Precise Positioning) and TeseoV are multi-frequency automotive-grade GNSS chipsets. The TeseoV is designed for non-safety-critical localization applications (Robotics/UAV/Industrial/IoT), while the TeseoAPP chipset has more robust integrity functionality for safety-critical automotive positioning. TeseoAPP also features secure system boot and data-output authentication to safeguard sensitive data from attack through a dedicated Hardware Security Module (HSM). Both Teseo chips track GNSS signals in L1/L5 or L1/L2 frequency bands and track all major satellite constellations including GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo. By tracking up to three constellations over multiple frequency bands, the Teseo chipsets allow accurate estimation of ionospheric, tropospheric and other errors by the Starling Positioning Engine, allowing for rapid convergence to a highly accurate position and short reacquisition times, worldwide.
In a test drive in California, Swift showcased the integration of Starling onto ST’s Telemaco3P MPU based Modular Telematics Platform (MTP) with on-board TeseoAPP. The successful integration of Starling with TeseoAPP’s measurement engine confirms the accuracy of the combined solution as a compelling offering for safety-critical autonomous-vehicle positioning when ST makes production TeseoAPP chipsets available in 2019. Swift’s Starling Positioning Engine combines the GNSS raw observations from the TeseoAPP chipset with corrections from Swift’s Skylark Cloud Corrections Service to deliver centimeter-level, real-time lane-level positioning.
“Swift’s integration of the TeseoAPP with its Starling Positioning Engine and Skylark Cloud Corrections Service will provide automotive OEMs with a robust and high-integrity localization solution,” said Antonio Radaelli, Director, Infotainment Business Unit, STMicroelectronics. “Connected cars and autonomous vehicles will need a new ecosystem to perform at autonomy levels 3 and above and this effort with Swift Navigation demonstrates an effective solution.”
“Higher levels of automated driving and safety-critical systems will require high-accuracy positioning,” said Joel Gibson, EVP of Automotive at Swift Navigation. “With more automated control applications in the vehicle, much greater integrity is needed to ensure passenger safety. ST’s new multi-frequency automotive-grade chipsets have the performance that Swift’s automotive customers need and combined with Swift’s Starling and Skylark solutions, demonstrate a new level of vehicle positioning for advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving.”
