Indoor Navigation Smartphone App wins 2012 Galileo Masters Prize

Presentation of the 2012 €20,000 Galileo Master prize: (L to R)) Thorsten Rudolph, head of AZO, the contest organizers; Carlo des Dorides, head of the European GNSS Agency; winner Dirk Elias, Fraunhofer Portigal and Ulrike Daniels, AZO business development. (photo: Simone Hörmann/AZO). (Click image to enlarge.)

October 29, 2012

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Finding your way will be even easier with a new smartphone app from two Portuguese research institutes that augments GNSS with ultra-low magnetic field communication (ULF-MC) for reliable navigation in office buildings, airports, underground parking garages and other indoor locations.

The Fraunhofer Portugal and the University of Porto's Faculty of Engineering received the €20,000 Galileo Master's prize for their innovation on October 25 at Der Residenz in Munich in this year's European Satellite Navigation Competition awards ceremony.

The app has been tested and is under development, with patents pending in Europe and the United States.

Jonathan Durant from France won another major award in this year's competition, the European Space Agency Innovation Prize, for "Project Citizen First Aid." The smartphone app enables people in distress to call for assistance to others in nearby locations.

This is the ninth year for the competition, which has grown from a Europe-only affair to an international competition with more than 400 submissions for GNSS applications ideas. The application fields drawing the most responses this year were mobile location-based services (35 percent of all submissions) and “smart moving” (29 percent).

The Galileo Master was selected by a panel of expert judges from among the 24 winners in ESNC competitions held by regional partners. In addition to to the top award, five special prizes sponsored by public and private organizations, and two "protoyping" prizes were awarded this year. A complete list of this year's winners can be found here.

The ESNC is organized by Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO), a Bavarian economic development and business incubation center.