How we helped Topcon Positioning Systems, Inc. develop a world-class, end-to-end platform for delivering GNSS corrections, now used by major enterprises in agriculture and infrastructure
Topcon Positioning Systems is a subsidiary of Topcon Corp (TYO: 7732), a leading manufacturer of optical and surveying equipment.
Headquartered in Tokyo, the company offers positioning solutions for surveyors, civil engineers, construction firms, and equipment operators.
Thanks to its rapid expansion into new industries, the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) market surpassed a worldwide value of €200 billion in 2022, and is on course to near the €500 billion mark within the next ten years. 72% of that comes from GNSS added value services.
The GNSS industry is currently experiencing a surge of innovation, driven by the ever-growing demand for high-precision positioning data in various industries. From precision agriculture to geomatics to construction, the need for timely, accurate, and reliable data is greater than ever. Advancements in the sector are not only transforming operations across multiple industries; they are also paving the way for entirely new possibilities. At this point, the industry's greatest challenge is to empower innovation by augmenting and modernising existing GNSS infrastructure with data-driven software solutions.
Enter Topcon Positioning Systems, a global leader in the manufacture of GNSS radios, receivers, antennas, and boards. Providing cutting-edge hardware and software systems that offer millimetre-level accuracy for geodetic and topographic surveying, Topcon's products and services are used in infrastructure, construction, agriculture, and more. At the helm of these operations are Senior GNSS Product Manager Tom Morris and Global Network Operations Manager Brandy Greer, both of whom bring more than two decades of experience to the industry.
Since 2011, Topcon and Navmatix have fostered a long-standing relationship, with the latter serving as an invaluable extension to their software engineering and infrastructure teams. The collaboration has proven instrumental in creating and expanding their service offerings and advancing into new markets.
To build a GLOBAL scalable, end-to-end platform for the timely delivery of GNSS corrections for use in application fields including construction, agriculture, surveying, and OEM systems integration.
Many new and emerging GNSS use cases, such as precision agriculture and machine control, require highly accurate positioning information to function properly. By contrast, standard GPS receivers, such as the consumer-grade ones found in most smartphones, are only accurate to 3 to 10 metres under normal conditions. Precision applications need correction data from multiple base stations to ensure high availability and redundancy, widespread geographic coverage, and centimetre-level accuracy. Moreover, due to the rapid proliferation of IoT devices and automated systems like drones, the data collection and processing footprint only continues to grow.
However, engineering the back-end services needed to deliver GNSS corrections was only the first step. Topcon also sought a homogenous server environment that would be capable of accommodating demand now and in the foreseeable future. It needed to be available at one endpoint, scalable, centrally managed, and supported by continuous development and innovation. That meant not only engineering the solution, but also working with a partner that could support their infrastructure and provide reliable hosting services. Full maintenance and support, backed up by robust service level agreements (SLAs) were not just nice to have – they were a business imperative.
In their quest to build a homogenous end-to-end solution, the Topcon team also needed engineering and support for their front-end operations. To actually deliver their services, they needed a comprehensive web-management platform, complete with functions for managing end users and their subscriptions and the correction data streams themselves. In addition, Topcon wanted to offer further value to their customers, which meant building a solution that was fully integrated with their broader product suite. Other goals included building in backup and disaster recovery functionality and developing a mobile app for basic information access.
"Although we have a large engineering team that's responsible for the development of software and firmware for our GNSS receivers, we were looking to expand some services, as well as create new ones. We ended up spending a lot of time allocating and reallocating resources, which wasn't the most efficient approach."
The pressure to evolve and innovate rapidly to tap into the new market opportunity was enormous, and thus it required working with a team that was highly responsive and willing to collaborate on everything from ideation to verification and validation testing.
Navmatix built a high-available NTRIP caster, a comprehensive web management solution, a mobile application, RTCM data monitoring, and an offline data post-processing service, all backed up by fully managed hosting and support services.
While there is certainly no shortage of talented software engineering companies, finding one that specialises in developing value-added solutions for the GNSS industry is quite another matter. That's why, in 2011, Topcon approached Navmatix CEO Miroslav Doleček. With Navmatix' help, Tom and Brandy developed a flexible roadmap that aligned their business goals and outcomes with the capabilities of their product team.
Navmatix emerged as a reliable partner in the development of numerous projects that helped Topcon achieve their vision to expand their service-based software offerings and help their clients get more out of their existing GNSS solutions. Chief among the projects was the development of a high-availability NTRIP caster supporting data stream analysis and automated data routing based on position. The caster can choose from around 70 appropriate virtual reference engines to provide GNSS corrections for a range of localities, thus allowing Topcon to expand its service into many more geographic regions.
"Since we're working with geodetic networks, we not only needed someone who was qualified to code; we also needed someone with an understanding and an appreciation of GNSS and geodetic use cases. Navmatix team certainly fit that bill, which is why we're still working together 12 years on."
The collaboration extended to the development of back-end services, including database backup jobs, daily computation of new reference station coordinates in Bernese GNSS software, automated subscription expiration warnings, RTCM data health check monitoring and online and offline alarms for reference stations. Other solutions included a custom-built RINEX store for facilitating the interchange of raw GNSS data, daily and hourly file retrieval, and custom requests per reference station, time range, sampling, and format.
Navmatix also leveraged their web application development and user experience design expertise to build a modern web management platform. This included a dashboard for managing users and their subscriptions, including both flat subscriptions, prepaid, and shared plans. Also included were a mailing module, a management interface for logged rovers, geofencing management, and integration with several of Topcon's proprietary APIs. As a truly end-to-end solution, it also integrates seamlessly with Salesforce and other third-party apps and services.
Finally, Navmatix took on the responsibility of hosting and managing the infrastructure and software they had developed. Today, thanks to Navmatix' partner network of nearly 50 data centres around the world, Topcon can expand its reach and support customers in many more countries and regions. Furthermore, Navmatix provides full maintenance and support, backed up by exhaustive SLAs, for production solutions in Europe, the US, Japan.
Navmatix and Topcon continue to leverage their 12-year relationship to drive continuous innovation in the rapidly evolving market of GNSS.
Over the course of their 12-year partnership, Navmatix and Topcon have worked together on a multitude of projects, each one contributing to the continuous evolution and innovation of Topcon's world-class GNSS products and services. Tom and Brandy continue to have weekly meetings with the team at Navmatix to discuss project progress and validate and test new concepts. The solutions provided by Navmatix have not only addressed Topcon's more immediate challenges, but have also helped position them for future growth in a rapidly evolving industry.
"We've developed many processes that work well between our two companies and that help enhance our growth. It's been a great working relationship, very professional, and I can always count on getting quick answers from the Navmatix support team, which often isn't the case with many larger companies. That makes our life a lot easier!"
