EXO TECHNOLOGIES COULD HOLD THE KEYS TO GNSS IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLESwww.abiresearch.com

Published January 30, 2017

EXO TECHNOLOGIES COULD HOLD THE KEYS TO GNSS IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLESAuthor: Patrick Connolly, Principal Analyst

The use of precision GNSS technologies for autonomous vehicles has re-emerged as a major talking point in 2017. ABI Research is very

much of the opinion that precision GNSS technologies are a key component in any future autonomous system, consisting of a variety of

different technologies working both in tandem and as robust redundancy. There is not one technology that can work for all eventualities

and the pursuit of such a strategy by car OEMs is incredibly risky at this early stage. A combination of sensors, operating in unison at the

highest level, will pave the way to a driverless vehicle capable of reliably operating under all conditions.

PRECISION GNSS STILL HAS THREE BIG QUESTIONS TO ANSWER High-accuracy GNSS systems’ value, as a component in autonomous driving, is obvious. But up until recently, many of those developing

autonomous systems were skeptical about relying on GNSS.

Of course, there are very good reasons why car OEMS chose to concentrate instead on areas such as machine vision, radar, LIDAR, and

digital map referencing, namely:

• Precision GNSS receivers typically start at US$1,000 to US$2,000 and can rise steadily depending on the application. Car OEMS

will need this to break US$50 in the next 4 years and continue to drop significantly as adoption ramps up.

• One of the biggest problems in using precision GNSS in autonomous vehicles is the fact that the receiver doesn’t know when its

positioning is wrong. This is fine for turn-by-turn navigation or tracking your run, but even small inaccuracies are life-threatening

in this scenario, and GNSS receivers have typically not been able to successfully determine when the positioning is wrong.

• For global car OEMs, who will require an approach that works everywhere all of the time, the need for a dedicated physical

reference network to support techniques like RTK, PPP, or a hybridization is a tough pill to swallow.

ABI Research believes that the first two problems will be solved relatively soon. The precision GNSS competitive environment has become

much more active, and there is a general belief within the industry that they can get prices down to the required level, given the scale

of the autonomous vehicle opportunity. Similarly, precision GNSS OEMs have been solving the problem of inaccurate GNSS outputs in

the aviation space for a number of years. While the automotive space will present newer problems, OEMs are confident they can deliver

a system with precision GNSS at its core that will overcome this problem. The real make-or-break issue will be building out a worldwide

reference network and, more specifically, the hundreds of millions of dollars that may need to be spent.

WHAT IF THERE WAS ANOTHER WAY? There are a number of different ways to solve this problem, including tying together public and private networks worldwide to lower

the overall cost, extending on existing networks, and applying new correction techniques such as PPP/RTK hybrids to reduce the

infrastructure requirement, but there is no escaping the high costs involved.

2EXO TECHNOLOGIES COULD HOLD THE KEYS TO GNSS IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLESwww.abiresearch.com

EXO Technologies, an Israeli startup now based in Palo Alto, has come at this problem from a very new and potentially disruptive

perspective, developing a platform that provides globally available corrections. This would require no additional infrastructure, such as

base stations, and would enable existing GNSS receivers rather than requiring specialized hardware.

Instead of using GNSS infrastructure to solve for errors, EXO’s system ingests a wide variety of data that is filtered through its proprietary

error models. The product corrects the local errors caused by the ionosphere, troposphere, and weather conditions by leveraging this

data without the need of new infrastructure. In addition, the platform handles GNSS wide-range errors such as satellite position and

satellite clock errors with extremely high precision in real time, producing a full position correction to any user. Suddenly, questions about

cost, scalability, ownership, and ultimately the viability of precision GNSS in autonomous vehicles disappear.

CAN EXO TECHNOLOGIES WALK THE WALK? The question everybody asks me is “Can these guys

actually deliver?” Well, ABI Research is happy to

provide a little sample of some of the results from a

recent trial of the solution, and the signs are very good.

EXO Technologies completed an experiment over a

2.5-mile route combining optimal open-sky conditions

and sub-optimal conditions such as tree cover and hills.

While driving, GPS outputs from an RTK (baseline) and 2

single frequency GPS + inertial navigation system (INS)

were recorded. For the purpose of comparing

performance under various conditions, 20 samples

were collected over the course of two weeks (December

2016) during different hours of the day. Each sample

includes one data set of GPS performance with EXO

corrections and one data set of standalone GPS.

The initial results are impressive. On overall accuracy,

the EXO solution achieved an average accuracy of

17.7 cm. To determine consistency, EXO set several

accuracy benchmarks, based on the requirements of

autonomous driving, and calculated the percentage of the measurements that were below those benchmarks. The same data was used

to determine reliability, or how much can a vehicle trust an individual measurement. Nearly 40% of all corrected data is within 10 cm of

RTK as compared to uncorrected with just 17%. The 20 cm threshold captures about 65% as compared to uncorrected with just 23%.

The trend continues up the thresholds with corrected outperforming the uncorrected by a wide margin. Chart 2 illustrates clearly how

EXO data significantly improved performance specifically at the 10 through 40 cm thresholds.

Chart 1: 2.5-mile Route in Palo Alto, CA

3EXO TECHNOLOGIES COULD HOLD THE KEYS TO GNSS IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLESwww.abiresearch.com

CONCLUSIONS EXO Technologies is at an early stage in its development, but the lack of available talent and deep understating of GNSS technology is

driving investment in this area. To find a company that is applying these techniques specifically to this problem is very rare, and I expect

to see a lot of interest from anyone active in the autonomous vehicle space. While this is just the first step in a long path, I believe these

results place EXO Technologies firmly as the most exciting startup in precision GNSS right now and the one to watch in 2017. The results

illustrate the promise of EXO Technologies’s correction techniques in combination with single-frequency GPS and INS. EXO Technologies

plans to continue improving accuracy, consistency, and reliability towards building a globally available positioning solution.

© 2017 ABI Research. Used by permission. ABI Research is an independent producer of market analysis and insight and this ABI Research product is the result of

objective research by ABI Research staff at the time of data collection. The opinions of ABI Research or its analysts on any subject are continually revised based on the most

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with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Chart 2: Initial Results from EXO Technologies Trial