Trimble AP15 GNSS-Inertial board
On Tuesday (August 13, 2013), Trimble used the forum of the AUVSI 2013 conference in Washington, D.C., to introduce new OEM GNSS products aimed at third-party manufacturers and system integrators.
The Trimble AP15 is the newest member of the company’s AP series of OEM GNSS-inertial board sets, and the Ashtech MB-One module delivers GNSS-based heading plus pitch or roll.
On Tuesday (August 13, 2013), Trimble used the forum of the AUVSI 2013 conference in Washington, D.C., to introduce new OEM GNSS products aimed at third-party manufacturers and system integrators.
The Trimble AP15 is the newest member of the company’s AP series of OEM GNSS-inertial board sets, and the Ashtech MB-One module delivers GNSS-based heading plus pitch or roll.
The AP15 incorporates a custom microelectromechanical system (MEMS) inertial measurement unit (IMU) and is the first product to take advantage of a proprietary calibration process —SmartCal — from Applanix, a Trimble company. The new software compensation technology is designed for IMUs manufactured specifically for mobile mapping applications.
Trimble’s AP15 combines GNSS positioning with Applanix IN-Fusion GNSS-inertial integration technology, running on a dedicated inertial engine (IE) board. Combined with a wheel-mounted distance measurement instrument (DMI), the AP15 provides a 6-degrees-of-freedom navigation solution for land vehicles even in GNSS signal–challenged environments by using IN-Fusion technology to combine IMU data with raw GNSS observables and DMI velocity, according to Trimble.
GNSS functionality is provided by a Trimble GNSS module, a dual-antenna, 440 channel, multi-frequency survey-grade GNSS receiver that supports GPS L1/L2/L2C/L5 and GLONASS L1/L2 signals as well as public and commercial satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) corrections.
The MB-One features a dual-core GNSS engine with 240 channels capable of tracking GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou signals. It can also use over-the-air satellite corrections by means of L-band hardware to achieve decimeter-level accuracy, according to the company, and can also be used for precise point positioning (PPP) that removes the need for a local base station.
The Trimble AP15 is expected to be available in October of 2013 through Applanix’ sales channel. Evaluation units of the Ashtech MB-One module will be available in the fourth quarter of 2013; production units are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2014 through the Trimble GNSS OEM international network of representatives and authorized dealers.
