Affordable, high-precision tracking made possible: Sensolus partners with Quuppa

For over a decade, and with more than 250.000 connected assets in the field, Sensolus has made the Internet of Things (IoT) technology accessible to the industrial manufacturing, transport & logistics, and waste management industries. By relieving customers of the burden of complexity, this scalable tracking solution automatically translates location data into insights.

With the clear need for high-precision tracking solutions in the market, many of our customers have been looking to complement the current Sensolus portfolio with third-party high-precision technology. After validating the different protocols and partners in the field, Sensolus has chosen the Quuppa BLE-based solution for indoor high precision.

Sensolus trackers operate without any additional infrastructure, making the solution ideal for industrial companies looking for a full visibility solution for their logistical flows.

In essence, by attaching a tracker to a load carrier, its location and condition is indicated on the cloud platform, which records the asset’s data as it moves between different zones of interest, for example, factories, subcontractors, warehouses, and customer sites.

All this data is then translated into meaningful insights to manage inventory scheduling, analyze logistic flows, detect retention of load carriers, arrange reverse logistics, analyze anomalies and to be alerted if payload conditions have changed (such as temperature), or if the load carriers are in the wrong logistical flow.

Sensolus has delivered these actionable insights for more than 200 industrial customers in aerospace, automotive, construction, equipment leasing, waste, and many more.

While outdoor positioning is possible using the trackers alone, for further insights into the behaviour of their assets inside their own premises, customers look to Bluetooth beacons and Wi-Fi sniffing, which provides 10 to 25 meters position accuracy. These are affordable indoor solutions, but due to their intensive production processes, some companies need to achieve location accuracy of about 1 meter.

Quuppa’s Intelligent Location System^TM is an established solution for such high precision location tracking. Many companies have already successfully deployed this solution in key areas of interest and can track assets accurately thanks to specific Quuppa-compatible Bluetooth tags.

Sensolus has implemented the Quuppa technology on its flagship NB-IoT (Narrowband Internet of Things) trackers. Because of this, customers can achieve full visibility everywhere (with zone precision) with the additional benefit of achieving very high precision localization in Quuppa-enabled areas.

The asset locations remain known even when being transported to other sites, to suppliers or customers, whether indoors or outdoors.

Before, such a combination was only possible by equipping assets with more than one tracker and required cumbersome integrations to combine both location data sources. With the combined Sensolus and Quuppa solution, a seamless integration is available and accessible through a single online software platform.

As part of the partnership, the Quuppa-compatible Sensolus trackers are tested by Quuppa, confirming that they meet the Quuppa standards allowing high precision detectability.

Sensolus has validated a variety of high-precision positioning technologies, for example, ultra-wideband (UWB) which provides an accuracy of up to 1 cm. However, this would be like using a “sledgehammer to hit a nut” when we consider the typical needs of our customers.

When considering cost, relying on a standard BLE protocol for indoor positioning, both for low accuracy with battery-powered BLE geo-beacons (i.e., 10 to 25 meters) and Quuppa for higher accuracy (i.e., sub 1 meter), Sensolus creates the opportunity to combine different technologies, each with its benefits and related costs, in a single solution.

Sensolus offers a full spectrum of tracking technologies – which can be combined according to the practical requirements of each use case.

This flexibility directly translates into the most effective and affordable solution for each customer.

This technology partnership empowers our customers, especially with high precision needs to improve the accuracy up to the sub-meter level. As the Quuppa solution natively integrates with the existing Sensolus solution, it is a complementary extension which can be added at any time. This flexibility ensures our customers have access to high-precision indoor positioning, further enriching their operational capabilities.

If you want to see our technologies live in action join us at the Transport & Logistics trade show on October 17-18-19, 2023, at Antwerp Expo.