The partnership is expected to benefit energy and utility companies, among others
MONTREAL, CAN. — Eos Positioning Systems®, Inc. (Eos) — the leading global manufacturer of affordable high-accuracy GNSS receivers for the BYOD market — announced today its partnership with enterprise mobile solutions provider CartoPac International®. Eos and CartoPac will enable consumer smartphones and tablets to become professional-grade GNSS data collection and management devices for staking, inspections, and more.
Eos pioneered submeter and centimeter Bluetooth® GNSS receivers, and today the company manufactures the world’s leading high-accuracy Arrow Series® receivers for any smartphone or tablet.
CartoPac develops enterprise utility software, including a mobile solution for asset management and data collection (e.g., as-builting and asset inspections).
Smartphones and tablets, such as iPhone®s and iPad®s, historically have not provided the high accuracy GNSS (e.g., GPS) positions and enterprise mobile solutions required by energy and utility companies. As more utility and energy companies have begun to adapt smartphones as their primary data collection devices, they have struggled to find integrated solutions that can tie the high-accuracy GNSS locations to their new and legacy assets.
In the past, their options were usually limited to onerous workflows of all-in-one handheld GPS devices and/or the costly hiring of specialized surveyors.
“We saw our users struggling to get a good high-accuracy GPS solution within the iOS® environment.”
— Glenn Vlass, Co-Founder and Senior Sales Executive, CartoPac
Eos and CartoPac partnered to integrate the Arrow Series® with CartoPac’s mobile software. This allows CartoPac users to bring submeter and centimeter location into their asset-management solution on either iOS, Windows, or Windows Mobile devices.
“Field crews with high-accuracy Arrow Series® receivers and CartoPac can update their legacy asset data with much higher-accuracy.”
— Jean-Yves Lauture, Founder and CTO, Eos Positioning Systems
“And if we look at the cost of the Arrow, iPad, and software, this is a much more cost effective solution,” Vlass added. “We are able to get a field user equipped to collect submeter accuracy at almost half the cost of what has been historically available.”
A real-world example includes the installation of an underground pipeline. A field user with CartoPac software and a high-accuracy Arrow Series® receiver paired with an iPad, can quickly capture submeter asset data, scan the asset’s barcode, take photographs, and populate the utility’s enterprise geodatabase, all in real time.
With the right mobile solution, field crews can also be dispatched in no time, to the exact same asset location, to respond to emergencies or perform routine work orders and inspections.
“When you can say where an asset is spatially with such a degree of high confidence, that lowers your risk and improves your safety,” Vlass said. “Lower risk and improved safety are things every utility worker takes seriously.”
The solution has been well received by utilities so far.
“This solution was very well received by our customers. It’s always encouraging when we can combine technologies and partner with our clients to solve real problems.”
— Glenn Vlass, Co-Founder and Senior Sales Executive, CartoPac
Eos and CartoPac plan to expand their deployment of high-accuracy mobile asset management to more utilities facing similar needs.
About CartoPac International
CartoPac helps businesses to manage the risks and regulatory compliance associated with installing, operating and maintaining field assets, with proven software and technical expertise. This is accomplished by implementing a complete enterprise system to accurately record the location, description and condition of field assets, manage and track the inspection and maintenance of these assets and to document the interventions with assets for operational efficiency, safety and reporting. Learn more about CartoPac here.
About Eos Positioning Systems, Inc.
Eos Positioning Systems®, Inc. (Eos) designs and manufactures the world’s premier, high-accuracy GPS / GNSS receivers for the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) market. The Arrow Series® receivers feed submeter, subfoot and centimeter RTK GPS / GNSS location data to any iOS, Android, Windows, and Windows Mobile device. Free Eos software utilities, such as Eos Tools Pro, were designed to provide users with the smoothest experience of integrating high-accuracy location data and metadata into their mobile workflows.