The FINANCIAL — Motorola Solutions, through its strategic investment arm, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, today announced its investment in TRX Systems Inc. This investment will be used to fund integration of the TRX NEON Indoor Location System with Motorola Solutions radios, to expand the industrial and commercial location applications for which the TRX sensor fusion and mapping technology is applied and to scale sales and marketing.
Motorola Solutions’ investment is part of a nearly $2 million Series A investment round that includes New Dominion Angels, the Maryland Department of Economic Development and insider investors.
TRX Systems is the developer of NEON, an award-winning personnel tracking system that delivers location-based data on people who are indoors and in urban areas where GPS is unavailable or unreliable such as inside buildings and in tunnels or metros. As Motorola Solutions announced, NEON uses TRX sensor fusion and mapping to correlate information from a broad array of sensors, including magnetic, ranging, inertial, light, pressure, RF and GPS, and combines it with known and discovered map information.
“TRX sensor fusion and mapping technology uniquely delivers 3D indoor location in environments where it is not possible to rely on pre-existing and networked infrastructure,” said Carol Politi, president and CEO of TRX Systems. “The market for indoor location is growing rapidly, and this funding, complemented by our sales revenues, will allow us to increase investments in indoor location development and accelerate entry in new markets.”
“The ability to locate personnel operating indoors and often in hazardous situations improves command effectiveness, increases personnel safety and ultimately saves lives,” said Mel Gaceta, investment manager, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. “The TRX NEON Indoor Location System clearly complements Motorola Solutions’ capabilities to improve safety for mission-critical users.”
“Most indoor location technologies being deployed today count on precision mapping of RF signals (e.g., Wi-Fi) and require reliable floor plans,” said Carole Teolis, TRX co-founder and chief technology officer. “TRX NEON indoor location technology uses sensor-fusion and map discovery technologies to deliver robust location estimates even without permanent infrastructure or comprehensive floor plans. This allows indoor location to be delivered when you do not control the building and when building infrastructure and maps are simply not reliable.”
Discussion about this post