Digital transformations are revolutionizing and dominating each and every industrial sector. Some of the technologies have a notable ability to catalyze the progressions of every industry. Real-time tracking is one of them.
The technology has admirably increased efficiency of production processes, operating and has improved cost control as well. In addition to performance tracking technology, indoor tracking systems are gaining the admiration for all the right reason. Precise indoors location is a central part of Industry 4.0, and one of the most prominent use cases for IoT in the smart factory. Global industries have also witnessed the benefits of such system and employing it at the every level of business.
Thus, Real Time Location Systems are growing at a CAGR of 31% and is expected to reach a total size of 3.7B$ by 2020. Looking at this success rate, hundreds of startups across the world have jumped into the sector but very few have succeeded to endure the headway, BeSpoon is one of them. BeSpoon offers a robust and precise indoors tracking system that acts as an indoor GPS, which tracks small tags within inches, in real-time.
A Key Factor of Productivity
BeSpoon has designed a radio chip that measures distances in inches, across walls. The company is using a technology named Ultra Wide Band. It is both low power and cost-effective. The chip is tailored to fit into consumer electronic goods. It is also designed to address the needs of Real Time Location Systems at a fraction of the cost of existing solutions. The solutions have various benefits in numerous sectors and have been a key factor of productivity for associates.
- In warehouses, it locates forklifts, and makes sure a pallet, even misplaced, is never lost.
- In factories, it track semi-finished goods throughout the manufacturing process, and ensure the latter is run smoothly, saving days of lead time.
- On industrial sites, it never lose track of tools, and pinpoint isolated workers at any time, within inches.
- Retail stores have also saved kilometers of walk to their employees by utilizing the BeSpoon tracking solution.
- It even enables indoor athletes to have the best position analytics to raise their game.
X/Y/Z coordinates of each tag allow monitoring the manufacturing process in real-time and bridge the ultimate gap between the physical factory and its digitized model.
Long Road of Struggles Leading to Dream Destination
Genuine disruption is not incremental. BeSpoon took the long road, built a chip and developed a full ecosystem around it. In the early days, the company struggled to get funded. BeSpoon has realized very early that a new radio paradigm was necessary to offer reliable distance measures.
Legacy radios estimate roughly the distance based on the strength of a radio signal, a highly versatile metric. Instead, BeSpoon measures accurately the time it takes to a radio signal to travel. This is a difficult exercise because radio flies at the speed of light. To perform precise distance measurements, it was then necessary to develop a super-accurate and super-stable chronometer.
On the technology front, countless experts predicted that the BeSpoon circuit would never fly. Only a few prestigious labs (MIT in US, CEA Leti in France) around the world had demonstrated the concept on very short ranges and yet with very mixed results. One day, the radio guru of a famous operator offered a fine demonstration that its chip would never range beyond a few dozen meters.
It was highly stimulating for BeSpoon to take on those challenges. Hence, the BeSpoon team worked hard with French Lab CEA to build a state-of the- art device and industrialize it. Two months later, the same chip broke the world record with a range of 880 meters.
Leading the Innovation Trails with Technological Developments
Jean-Marie André is CEO and Pascal Fabre CTO of BeSpoon. Jean- Marie and Pascal met at Philips in the mid-nineties and co-founded several successful ventures in the Consumer Electronics space. With the privilege of observing the boom of the cellphone industry over twenty years, and the luck to design one of the first smartphone in the world, years ahead of Android or iPhone, they learned a fundamental lesson: true innovation requires intense technological development both in silicon and in software.
A conviction shared with the German group TRUMPF GmbH + Co. KG, and it immediately accepted the proposal. Location technologies had been thoroughly benchmarked by the leader of sheet metal machine tools, and none was able to deliver decent result in the terrible environment of a metal workshop.
A Turn-Key Solution
Precise indoor location is a central part of Industry 4.0, and one of the most prominent use cases for IoT in the smart factory. Visiting prospects, the company quickly realized that they were looking for a turnkey solution, ready to go. Rather than emphasizing on a wonderful chipset or a large software stack BeSpoon deployed several systems in places where competitive solution had badly failed. Today, BeSpoon is the only player in its field to propose a comprehensive offer to its licensees.
Conquering the Emerging Market with Better Partnerships
BeSpoon has been efficiently providing in Indoor Tracking System since the last eight years. Its partnership with TRUMPF GmbH + Co. KG has been a remarkable evolution for the company. It has significantly generated the revenue and built a fantastic momentum in the industry. With technologies evolving at an unbelievable pace, massive market is just emerging, and pioneers like BeSpoon, have a nice card to play.
Source :-The 20 Most Innovative IoT Companies to Watch 2018
