GPS World, September 2016

MOBILEUPDATE Big Changes from a Tiny Tracker T he container shipping industry uses between 20 25 million containers only a small number of which are tracked A company called Traxens is on the verge of changing that In July the Switzerland based Mediterranean Shipping Company MSC joined worldwide container shipping company CMA CGM to invest in the French start up Under the deal both CMA CGM and MSC will be represented on the board of directors of Traxens CMA CGM and MSC transport about 25 percent of the worlds shipping containers Established in 2012 Traxens has been developing solutions for the cargo logistics sector and has created a new multi modal container monitoring and coordination system to provide real data for logistics By the last quarter of 2016 CMA CGM and MSC will have installed Traxens devices across their fleets We s e e cont ai n e r monitoring as an important innovation in providing our customers with a high quality of service while also being able to monitor our outputs accurately said MSC CEO Diego Aponte We believe that shipping lines should The 18000 container capacity CMA CGM Kuergelen Photo CMA CGM naturally compete on service but should cooperate in the area of technology and innovation This should be the start of deployment on a massive scale said Tim Baker Traxens director of marketing and communications CMA CGM which has been backing Traxens since 2012 said that the investment is a part of its global digital strategy Its 536 vessels call on more than 420 world ports MSC operates an integrated network of road rail and sea on more than 200 trade routes Each Traxens device has GPS on board but other methods can be used to save battery life which affects 48 GPS WORLD WWW GPSWORLD COM SEPTEMBER 2016 the overall cost of ownership of the solution For instance once we have determined that a container is on board a ship we can use the AIS shippositioning data rather than the GPS on the device especially as the device may be under deck with no view of the sky Baker said Also to save power critical decisions on location are made by the devices locally rather than transmitting position up to the cloud and making decisions there It is much less power hungry to evaluate GPS position on the device compare location with expected location and then decide whether the information is worth transmitting than to send each position to the cloud just in case it happens to be interesting Baker explained Traxens cargo tracker Photo Traxens MACHINECONTROLUPDATE TRIMBLE ACQUIRES AXIO NET TO EXTEND EUROPEAN PRESENCE Trimble has acquired Axio Net GmbH from Airbus Defence and Space Based in Hannover Germany Axio Net is a provider of GNSS corrections and professional data services serving Germany the United Kingdom and Benelux Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed Axio Net founded in 2008 delivers both real time and post processed network realtime kinematic RTK solutions to a broad range of users including farmers and other machine control industries surveyors and GIS professionals Axio Net also performs a variety of databased professional services for the geospatial market including coordinate transformation services as well as network set up configuration and operations consulting