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Augmented Reality Navigation Brings Home First Prize in European Satellite Navigation Competition 2010
For its revolutionary navigation system Wikitude Drive, which uses augmented reality to superimpose driving directions over live street video on smartphones, the Salzburg start-up Mobilizy took home the €20,000 grand prize in the European Satellite Navigation Competition 2010. Wikitude Drive also won the prize for the best application leveraging EGNOS, the European augmentation system that aims to add even more speed, precision, and reliability to GPS.
Munich, 18.10.2010: This evening, the best innovations and applications in satellite navigation were awarded in the Allerheiligenhofkirche of the Munich Residenz in what was already the seventh iteration of the European Satellite Navigation Competition. Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs Martin Zeil was on hand to recognise the overall winner, as well as the winners that were selected for each of the 23 ESNC partner regions from a record-setting 357 total submissions. In addition, high-ranking representatives from the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA), the European Space Agency (ESA), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), ESNC industry partners T-Systems and NAVTEQ, and Forum SatNav MIT BW awarded special prizes in a series of specific topics. For the first time, this year's competition also included accolades for students and the three best applications suitable for testing and realisation at one of the 220 nodes of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL).
The 2010 overall winner, Wikitude Drive, is the world's first lightweight, fully functional, turn-by-turn mobile navigation system to use augmented reality (AR) in combination with global maps to superimpose directions onto a live smartphone video stream of the driver's surroundings. He or she can thus easily recognise and follow the suggested route based on real-world imagery instead of abstract maps.
Although Wikitude Drive works very well with the GPS system available today, the missing absolute accuracy of GPS makes it impossible to fully superimpose driving directions onto real streets. "By integrating EGNOS - the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service - this application will really take off with improved accuracy, faster positioning signals, and more accurate altitude detection," said Mrs. Heike Wieland, Acting Executive Director of the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA), who presented the prize for the best EGNOS application to Mobilizy. "I am curious to see how augmented reality will revolutionise the market for pedestrian and in-car navigation," Mrs. Wieland added, believing in the commercial success of the application scheduled to launch for Android smartphones in the coming weeks.
Second place in the overall running went to Helmut Drewes of the Agrista company (Oberpfaffenhofen), for an online platform that uses remote sensing data to help farmers gain access to investors and increase food production levels. Meanwhile, Patrick Henkel and Patryk Jurkowski of the Technische Universität München won third place for a carrier phase receiver system that features extremely reliable integer ambiguity resolution. Taking home fourth place were Jakob Jakobson and his team from the National Space Institute of the Technical University of Denmark for a system that facilitates fast access to defibrillators in cases of sudden cardiac arrest.
Here you can download an overview of all of the winning innovations. Images of the Awards Ceremony will be downloadable at http://galileo-masters.eu/download/bilder.zip from 19 October, with further visual material on the individual winners and their ideas available by request.
19 October will also bring you the chance to meet all of this year's winners in person at the European Satellite Navigation Conference. Throughout the day, innovators from all over the world will introduce their business ideas in the field of satellite navigation. The versatility of this field is reflected in the six topic blocks covered: security-critical applications, road solutions, public & social services, high-precision applications, location-based services, and earth observation & environment. The complete conference programme is available at http://conference.galileo-masters.eu/pdf/programme.pdf.
Press contact:
Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen
Ulrike Daniels
Friedrichshafenerstr. 1
D-82205 Gilching
Germany
Tel.: +49(0)8105-7727710
Mobile: +49(0)162-2748570
Email: daniels@anwendungszentrum.de
www.galileo-masters.eu
About the European Satellite Navigation Competition
The European Satellite Navigation Competition is an international innovation contest that awards the best ideas for applications in satellite navigation. The competition has been organised by Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO) since 2004 and is oriented toward companies, entrepreneurs, research institutes, universities and private individuals. As part of the competition, AZO has established a network that has since expanded to 23 regions worldwide. The network connects technology hubs and companies that boast some of the most important players in the fields of incubation, prototype and product development, market development, and idea management for applications related to satellite navigation. Meanwhile, aerospace clusters and other regional initiatives involved in the network give entrepreneurs crucial access to potential partners and investors.
Having begun with three partner regions, this year's ESNC will be held in 23 high-tech regions all over the world: Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Nice / Sophia Antipolis, Prague, South Holland, Madrid, Lombardy, Australia, Taiwan, Great Britain, Øresund, Gipuzkoa, Valencia, Switzerland, and Israel, as well as newcomers Lithuania, Aquitaine, the United States, Brazil, and the Arab Middle East & North Africa (MENA).
The ESNC intends to further strengthen international collaboration among these regions, particular with regard to the development of applications and services made possible by Galileo, Europe's satellite navigation system. The competition is held under the patronage of the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology and is supported by the European BIC Network (EBN). The main winners of the ESNC - the GALILEO Master, the special topic prize winners, and the 23 regional winners - will be recognised at a state reception to be held at the Munich Residenz on 18 October 2010.
www.galileo-masters.eu
About the ESNC title sponsor, T-Systems
Drawing on a global infrastructure of data centers and networks, T-Systems operates information and communication technology (ICT) systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions. T-Systems provides integrated solutions for the networked future of business and society. The company's some 45,300 employees combine industry expertise and ICT innovations to add significant value to customers' core business all over the world. T-Systems generated revenue of around EUR 8.8 billion in the 2009 financial year.
www.t-systems.com
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