What is SatNav

The UK SatNav Challenge is the entry for the UK into the European Satellite Navigation Competition, which is an industry lead programme aimed at entrepreneurs, academics, researchers and corporations which offers them all an opportunity to submit their ideas / concepts on how they can encompass the capabilities of Satellite Navigaion into the development of new or existing technical applications or services.

All ideas will be reviewed and evaluated by a national Panel of experts with an opportunity to become the UK Winner and to participate for the title of overall "European SatNav Master" for Europe.

Projects at any stage of development are accepted {from single ideas to market ready propositions that show innovative thinking and market potential} and can be entered by submitting them on our ' Submissions' page.

The UK Challenge is a unique package of business support to assist the UK Winner, Finalists and submitted ideas with viable business cases.

ADDITIONALITY & FEATURES OF GALILEO

In the near future Galileo (Europe's new civil SATNAV System) will help Europe gain a technologically superior position amongst the global SATNAV competition and strengthen the European economy by creating hundreds of thousands of jobs due to the creation of a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), which will potentially give us sub-meter location and positioning, along with 'Safety of Life' and 'Guarantee'.

This provides an opportunity for the UK to focus attention on the market of Sat Nav downstream commercial applications and to identify future applications that utilise not only the added strengths of Galileo (Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), comprising of 30 satellite) but also GPS, GLONASS and EGNOS.

The Galileo Masters UK Challenge Drives small and medium sized enterprises, researchers and entrepreneurs to start thinking now, about how they could get the best out of Satellite-navigation through 'Galileo' and its unity with the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) which is due to be operational by the end of the decade.

At the moment, innovative technologies are struggling to reach new boundaries because the American Global Positioning System (GPS) does not give sufficiently accurate or reliable location data in such areas as the urban arena or indoor applications.

Navigate your business to a new Future

A market place estimated to be worth over €10 Billion by 2015
Estimated 5 Billion users by 2015
Over 140,000 jobs created by Sat-Nav technologies
The creation of Safety of Life Services
Breaking new boundaries in Technology
Sub-metre accuracy

To "beef-up" the Global Satellite Navigational Systems, with Galileo operating alongside (GNSS) GPS, EGNOS and GLONASS The European and UK Satellite Navigation Challenge is Europe’s and Industry's gateway to defining new & future applications that utilise locatoin, positioning and timing for Navigation and its emerging markets.

Dr Sally Howes, the chair of the Location and Timing Knowledge Transfer Network and Director General of the Society of British Aerospace Companies, delivered 5 key points to a prestigious audience at the RIN Conference in November 2005, where she captured the needs and strategic importance for industry and Government to recognise Galileo.

A number of these strategic needs are now being recognized and delivered due to the success HBIC has achieved in managing the Galileo Masters UK Challenge.

It is now the challenge for Industry and Government to assist HBIC in the development of the Galileo Masters UK programme, so that the UK will be a major player in this emerging marketplace, which will be developing due to Galileo.

Technical challenge - urging upstream application developers and product designers to recognize not only their own strengths but what they can do to assist in the development of downstream markets.

Effective exploitation of knowledge - the need to ensure it makes its way downstream; looking ahead to what products and services we can anticipate and a need to ensure that government at all levels recognizes the potential of location technologies and their application.

To start generating revenue – we have to build confidence in the ability of GNSS technologies to provide revenue streams; we must start now to provide services which government, consumers and businesses actually want and can use today or the alternative is market failure.

We have to work on the business and consumer acceptance of GNSS technologies, so how do we do this? Part of it is building awareness and understanding of the technology, being clear about how and when it becomes available – and what products, services and benefits will accrue from it.

We need to exploit our expertise and experience to build systems and applications, not gadgets and components and we need to build these systems to enable integration of signals – from GNSS to mobile networks, RFID, blue tooth etc.

For further details regarding Galileo Masters please contact us by email 0r 01438 310047