Founded by Sam de Smet (CEO) & Niels van Damme (CTO) in 2020, Belgium-based OTIV are on a mission to “increase safety & efficiency of railway operations, by teaching rail vehicles to drive autonomously” (e.g. across cities, shunting yards & industrial sites). OTIV are currently live with 2 products: a) OTIV.ONE – specifically designed for "pushed shunting" movements; by placing a sensor suite capturing a 200° view on the upfront wagon, a reliable live feed is transmitted to the driver or another agent onsite –, b) OTIV.TWO – a similar sensor suite that can be retrofitted to most rail vehicles, enabling advanced drivers assistance (drivers remain in control of their vehicles, but the system provides...
Netherlands-based, Qualinx has developed a new radio chip that can receive geo-positioning info from the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) (which includes GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo & most other constellations). Qualinx patented core innovation is based on advancements in RF CMOS tech; in essence, “Qualinx managed to digitalize most analog building blocks in a GNSS receiver”. Otherwise said, “Qualinx's GNSS engine uses a novel digital baseband, enabling parallel digital processing instead of current sequential processing”. To achieve this, “a digital phase-locked loop (PLL) has been used to reduce power consumption, whilst reducing the total area of the system & enhancing total radio performance”. In fact, the chip (which will be controlled by an ARM Cortex...