GeoNumerics invited to the 4th EU-Japan Public and Private GNSS Roundtable Meeting

On 14 March 2019, GeoNumerics had the opportunity to present its views on the future of drones and GNSS to a Japanese and an EU delegation at the 4th EU-Japan Public and Private GNSS Roundtable Meeting in Tokyo, Japan.

Castelldefels, 18 March 2019. The Cabinet Office (CO) of Japan, and the European Commission (EC) of the European Union (EU) recently organised the 4th EU-Japan Satellite Positioning Public-Private Roundtable on 14 March 2019 in Tokyo, Japan. In the previous two days, the EU mission visited Japanese companies in the field of automotive, agriculture, drone and other GNSS technologies.

The practical organisation of the event was in the hands of CO’s National Space Policy Secretariat (NSPS), that hosted the EU delegation, and of EC’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), in cooperation with the European GNSS Agency (GSA). The Cabinet Office also organised the roundtable and, in the previous two days, arranged the site visits and meetings with Japanese companies. The EU mission was composed by EU industry, SMEs and start-ups. Both EU and Japanese companies explored potential business cooperation in the application of GNSS technologies.

The visited companies were Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., Isuzu Motors Ltd., Advanced Smart Mobility Co., Iseki & Co. Ltd., Hino Motors Ltd. and the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. The roundtable gathered more than 150 participants, included eighteen technical presentations and counted with the participation of Mr. Pierre Delsaux, Deputy Director-General of DG GROW and of Mr. Shuzo Takada, Director-General of NSPS.

GeoNumerics, as a member of the EU mission, participated in the visits and, in the roundtable, delivered the lecture “Drone navigation and GNSS: failure is not an option.” In the GeoNumerics talk, the requirements of GNSS in the context of drone multi-sensor navigation system requirements for safe navigation were discussed and examples were provided. The added value contribution of present Galileo features and future services –navigation message authentication, high accuracy service and commercial signal authentication– were also discussed.

“This has been a unique opportunity to learn firsthand the applications of GNSS in the Japanese drone and automotive sectors” says Ismael Colomina, GeoNumerics’ Chief Executive Officer. “We thank DG GROW and the GSA for the invitation.”

GeoNumerics is a research and development (R&D) intensive small-and-medium-enterprise (SME) company specialised in geomatics and accurate navigation.

The European Global navigation Satellite system Agency (GSA) is a European Union (EU) agency that promotes the use, adoption, application and market development of European GNSS services and that these services and operations are thoroughly secure, safe and accessible.

The Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) is the EC service responsible for, among other services, delivering the EU's space policy via the two large-scale programmes Copernicus (European Earth observation satellite system) and Galileo (European global navigation satellite system).

Japan’s Cabinet Office (CO) is in charge of planning, designing and coordinating policies concerning space exploitation, implementing policies regarding development, maintenance and operation of the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), Japan’s satellite-based augmentation system of GPS.