Le Canap interview about indoor geolocation technologies

Francois Kruta's path to indoor geolocation with Ubudu RTLS

Starting as an engineer in the Silicon Valley, Francois Kruta participated in the creation of a tech company that was bought for 128 million USD in 2000. Then, he led the IT practice of McKinsey & Company in Banking for around 10 years before coming back to his original passions : Entrepreneurship and Technology.

Explaining the differences between the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and the UWB (Ultra Wideband) radio technologies for indoor geolocation and proximity awareness, Francois mentioned that there is not one technology that fits all use cases and this is why having a hybrid and flexible solution is key.

Ubudu RTLS solution is creating new opportunities for organisations to optimise their operational process by reducing time wasted in unnecessary motion to focus on things that really matter and increase productivity as well as service quality.

Streamlining operations with Ubudu RTLS: Real-Time visibility and Mobile Wayfinding

For example, Ubudu RTLS has been implemented in Saint Joseph Hospital group in Paris to have real-time visibility on the medical equipment location and availability. This helps staff save time looking for them and therefore spend more time on value-added services to patients instead. A Mobile Wayfinding experience is also provided to visitors and patients to guide them wherever they want in the hospital (room, medical appointment, etc..)

Another company specialised in autobus manufacturing adopted Ubudu’s solution in order to locate each autobus during the production process first to know the production status and secondly to save time finding the bus. The ROI for such project is less than 6 months.

Overall, Ubudu has already been deployed in more than 4 500 sites worldwide, saving more than 120 000 hours of search time every day.

Ubudu SDA: A smart solution for social distancing in the workplace

Ubudu SDA solution was developed at the beginning of the sanitary crisis when companies needed short-term and practical solutions to ensure a safe workplace during the pandemic. In this context, Ubudu leveraged its deep expertise and knowledge in BLE and UWB to develop Ubudu Social Distancing Assistant, a system that helps individuals keep safe distances to protect themselves from contaminating each other in the workplace.

A key aspect of the Ubudu SDA is ensuring data privacy through GDPR compliance to make adoption of this new technology easier. Different options are available so that companies can choose to only have real-time alerts for preventing close contacts without any data stored or to store data of contacts that happened within the workforce in order to identify quickly who is at risk of being contaminated when an employee is tested positive.

Moreover, François insisted that Ubudu SDA is not a one-off investment like face-masks or hydroalcoholic gel that are thrown away after being used. Indeed, SDA Tags can be reused later after reflashing their firmware for asset tracking use cases.

Ubudu's agility and expertise in responding to global challenges in 2020

In 2020, Ubudu succeeded to quickly adapt its offering during the crisis to answer critical needs from companies across the globe. This is a clear demonstration of how Ubudu’s agility and expertise are driven by solving practical challenges faced by companies. The future looks bright with more and more enterprises ready to make use of indoor geolocation to make their operations more efficient and safe.

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