GPS for Indoor Navigation: Pinpoint enables location-based services and highly ac-curate navigation for people via UWB 

TGFS

24 April 2023

TGFS Technologiegründerfonds Sachsen announces its investment in Pinpoint GmbH. Pinpoint, a spin-off of TU Chemnitz, is a specialist in ultra-wideband and high-precision position-ing technologies for indoor applications. The positioning platform developed by Pinpoint repre-sents a scalable, private and reliable solution for infrastructures with a high-traffic and/or security requirement. The team headed by founders Daniel Froß, Dr. Thomas Graichen and Dr. Marko Rößler recently presented its expertise at embedded world in Nuremberg and CES in Las Vegas, among other events. With the newly acquired capital, Pinpoint is now pushing ahead its further business development and market entry.

The functional principle of Pinpoint’s technology is comparable to that of global navigation satel-lite systems (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS). Unlike these, however, Pinpoint’s UWB-based system is designed for indoor use. For the first time, it allows users to determine their own position on their smartphone — with an accuracy in the range of decimeters. Within buildings and complex infra-structures, the user can navigate or interact with third-party services. The personal and position-related data remains on the user’s device, i.e., his position is not being tracked by a third party. „Our Positioning Platform follows the Privacy by Design approach,“ explains Dr. Thomas Graichen. „The user decides for themselves whether, when and to whom they want to release their position. This allows them to benefit from so-called „untracked navigation“ on the one hand, but also from services such as location-based access control or delivery to phone by actively sharing their loca-tion.“

Pinpoint’s approach already differs at its core from the technologies currently available on the market. „Until now, tracking has been realized either by special hardware or by additional cloud and gateway solutions,“ explains Dr. Marko Rößler, adding, „Pinpoint makes this possible with its technology on standard hardware, software-only, and decentralized in a wireless mesh network. Last but not least, this reduces overall costs by up to 70% compared to currently available track-ing technologies.“ As a member of the FiRa Consortium (global UWB standardization committee), Pinpoint is already working with well-known industry players to bring the technology into applica-tion now.

„The smartphone has become the core device to interact with various infrastructures over the last decade. Inside buildings, however, it is still largely blind and thus limited in its ability to perform activities based on its own secured and accurate position,“ comments Sören Schuster, Managing Director of TGFS. „Pinpoint now offers a ready-to-go solution for achieving this with its Position-ing Platform. The team has impressive expertise in the field of indoor navigation. We are very much looking forward to further collaboration and development.“

Your contact
Sören Schuster | Managing Director
+49 341 256963 30
soeren.schuster@cfh.de

Deal team TGFS
Birthe Roß and Fabian Schaile