Not a week goes by without someone asking us if we are the “Blue Force Tracker” people. We are not. We named the company as Blueforce Development Corporation because all of the folks on our team share a common purpose in building rapidly adaptable technology for all blue force (the good guys) in all national security and public safety sectors. Yet, we do understand the importance and the high value of location based services which the US military spearheaded when they initiated the Blue Force Tracker program in the mid 1990’s.
When we first shipped our Android product in 2011, we made extensive use of GPS data provided by the underlying device which was running our software. Our secret sauce and patents are based on fusing location with one or more attached or proximate sensors using our decentralized fusion engine for true intelligent edge IoT. As mobile technology became more ubiquitous over the ensuing years, we started to hear requests for “dead reckoning” and support for “GPS denied” environments. During the summer of 2015 we supported the US Special Operations Command at SOCOM TE, where we began to expand our mobile edge and cloud offerings to include support for pluggable location services whether geospatial, signal, or other.
Blueforce is now announcing full platform support for our new Location Services API. Blueforce users may now pick their authoritative location device and use it for reported and shared Blueforce location services. Blueforce Location Service API support is implemented in two ways:
- BlueforceTACTICAL for Android (BTAC): BTAC now supports a new software plugin type of “NAV” which allows customers and developers to build out BTAC Plugins to talk to third party location sensors and services. The BTAC user may also select the appropriate NAV plugin to use for reported location thereby ignoring native Android hardware GPS.
- BlueforceEDGE for Windows and Microsoft Azure: Blueforce has delivered native LocationServices REST API which allows standalone tags, trackers, locators, and autonomous aircraft/UAS/robots/amphibious platforms to push location meta data to the service using REST/JSON. Once received, the location data can be leveraged by an EDGE endpoint to use as it’s own location and share with Blueforce mobile and Command and Control users, but can also be used by designated EDGE plugins for other functions such as IoT, machine learning, and AI.
Blueforce is proud to announce general availability of the new TRX NEON plugin for BlueforceTACTICAL which leverages our new Location Services API. TRX got its start in the public safety market, responding to a requirement to safeguard public safety personnel when operating indoors where GPS doesn’t work. Working with public safety to solve this extremely important and challenging problem has enabled TRX to develop solutions based upon patented technology that seamlessly locate personnel anywhere GPS doesn’t work. Blueforce has successfully leveraged the TRX NEON tracker for multiple use cases to include interior location for structural collapse, transit system location, and homeland security and counter-terrorism subterranean operations.
For more information on this new capability, send us a note at info@blueforcedev.com or call us at 866-960-0204.