HERE announces HERE Tracking

Amsterdam, the Netherlands - In a typical year, shipping companies lose more than 1,000 containers at sea; the airline industry mishandles more than 20 million pieces of luggage; and enterprises lose billions of dollars when road freight is stolen, misplaced or routed inefficiently.

Better visibility into the progress of shipped goods in both inbound component logistics and outbound product logistics can provide significant efficiency improvements. That visibility helps enterprises and logistics managers reduce misplacements and delays as well as minimize production capacity losses and shipping costs. At the same time, they can re-plan capacity in near real-time.

HERE Technologies is helping industry maximize logistics efficiencies with the launch of HERE Tracking, a powerful cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) for low-energy, high accuracy and real-time tracking of goods, devices and people both indoors and outdoors. HERE Tracking helps users maintain an accurate and trusted real-time and historical record of items through space and time.

The service, built on the HERE Open Location Platform, combines several HERE capabilities and technologies to provide system integrators, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) providers, E2E Tracking system providers and developers an easy-to-integrate solution to solve their customer problem with minimum customization effort. These include:

• industry-grade maps for indoor venues and outdoor environments with geo-coding capabilities
• highly accurate, energy-efficient indoor-outdoor positioning technology with offline capabilities that enables conventional tracking devices to work longer due to superior battery management
• tracking and geo-fencing APIs
• analytics API and visualization tools

Leon van de Pas, SVP Internet of Things at HERE Technologies, said: "HERE Tracking answers fundamental questions like where exactly is my shipment? When is it arriving? How did it get there? And, did it take the route it was supposed to? We can help dramatically improve visibility and traceability, and thereby help business and cities save money and cut waste."

Erminio Di Paola, Head of Tracking at HERE Technologies, added: "Tracking is essentially about asset management and there are many organizations which have struggled to do this properly because it has been too expensive. In particular, the cost and size of batteries needed to power tracking hardware for weeks or months at a time has made it prohibitive for most. Our unique technology means we can dramatically cut down battery consumption. That means smaller batteries and lower costs, and that makes tracking a viable option today for a wide variety of uses and scenarios."

In addition to goods tracking and multi-modal logistics, HERE Tracking can aid smart office and smart factory (Industry 4.0) applications, equipment tracking for construction companies, on-demand services such as food delivery, the management and coordination of first responders, as well as consumer applications to help people to know the whereabouts of their children, pets or elderly relatives.

Airoha and Concox as first partners

HERE today also announced that is working with Airoha, the IoT unit of MediaTek, one of the world's largest fabless semiconductor companies, and Concox Information & Technology Co., Ltd, a leading designer and manufacturer of professional telematics and wireless communications products, to enable HERE Tracking for future Concox tracking products powered by select Airoha/Mediatek chipsets. HERE has preliminary agreements with both Concox and Airoha that will help HERE customers take advantage of pre-integrated HERE advanced tracking technology. HERE Tracking technology uses HERE Positioning technology to embed very power efficient location sensing algorithms directly on the tracker chipset.

HERE will be showcasing HERE Tracking at CES 2018 in Las Vegas on January 9-12, 2018. The HERE booth will be located at Central Plaza CP-2 of the Las Vegas Convention Center.