Commercial Low Cost Vehicle Location Tracking Solutions: Breaking the $100 Cost Barrier

Ben Smith, Ted Grant, Michele Engelhart

Abstract:	Until recently, development of low cost vehicle location and tracking solutions has not been possible due to system constraints, lack of an installed and suitable commmications infmstructure and the cost of individual vehicle tracking tmits (including vehicle installation). Galaxy Scientific Corporation has developed a new vehicle location and tracking system and product line with low cost equipment and scaleable navigation, communications and monitoring capabilities. The product line includes: Vehicle Location and Tracking System (VLATS) for fleet management, Airport Tracking for monitoring and management of airport vehicles, Driver’s Enhanced Vision System: DEVS for management of emergency vehicles in zero visibility conditions. This paper reviews system design and infmstructure considerations and explores the cost reduction model used to develop a low cost vehicle transceiver unit that can be used in fleet management theft prevention, emergency management, and consumer applications. Price objective for the autonomous Vehicle Tracking Unit (VTU) is $100. Galaxy’s marketing intuition is that market demand is inversely proportionate to vehicle unit cost.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 1998 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 21 - 23, 1998 Westin Long Beach Hotel Long Beach, CA
Pages:	511 - 519
Cite this article:	Smith, Ben, Grant, Ted, Engelhart, Michele, "Commercial Low Cost Vehicle Location Tracking Solutions: Breaking the $100 Cost Barrier," Proceedings of the 1998 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Long Beach, CA, January 1998, pp. 511-519.
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