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18 May, 2012 |
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‘Safe speed’ database launched by Quartix
A national database giving an indication of safe speeds for any given section of road has been assembled by telematics and tracking specialist Quartix. The company says there is no official database of road speed limits in the UK, and in any case statutory road speeds don’t give a very precise indication of appropriate speeds for all the roads they cover. Its new database attempts to fill part of this gap. Quartix has combined a range of external data sources with its own large database of vehicle movement data, gathered from telematics boxes installed in 30,000 vehicles. According to managing director Andy Walters: "That allows us to identify excessively high speeds, derive distributions of driving speeds, and provide comparisons with the driving norm." 
Major features in latest issue: see links at column head, PLUS: TranSend ePOD and Mobile Delivery Management The right speed for the road: Quartix pitches in Telematics-based insurance from TomTom
TomTom is the latest high-profile telematics company to launch an insurance-related product. The company has announced a system called Fair Pay Insurance, which aims to reward good drivers with lower insurance premiums. TomTom has developed the product in association with Motaquote, a leading insurance broker based in South Wales, and says it expects shortly to announce details of a second customer in the insurance sector. The scheme aims to give drivers control over their own policy by using driving ability and behaviour to allocate premiums, rather than what it describes as "so-called risk factors" such as postcode, gender, and age or vehicle type. In the words of Nigel Lombard, managing director of the system: "We’ve dispensed with generalisations and said to our customers, if you believe you’re a good driver, we’ll believe you and we’ll even give you the benefit up front." He adds: "This is unlike some other telematics-based schemes where you may have to prove your ability over a number of months. If you think of your insurance as your car’s MPG, the better you drive, the longer your fuel will last. It’s the same with Fair Pay Insurance. Good drivers get more for their money and in that sense they will ultimately pay less."
Home delivery giant Yodel is to take on 15,000 handheld terminals for its delivery business, and has signed a deal with mobility specialist Ryzex to supply and manage them. It says this approach to provisioning will save the company £500,000 a year. In addition to supplying the terminals, Ryzex will provide asset and mobile device management to Yodel, enabling the company to manage the equipment from a centralised platform. Features of the service provided by Ryzex include remote management of the terminals, access to second-line helpdesk support and a portal for asset tracking. According to Greg Smith, chief information officer at Yodel: "Extending our agreement will allow Ryzex to broaden the scope of its support to us and will allow us to enhance the doorstep experience." It is not clear at this stage exactly what hardware supplier and specifications will be involved, but we will bring you more information when we have it.
Psion has launched the new generation of its Omiii rugged mobile industrial computer range, promising that it represents a landmark for rugged mobile devices. Not only is the Omnii XT15 faster and better-equipped than its predecessors; Psion has also announced a free "re-purposing" programme. After the first year of ownership, the company will convert existing devices to cope with different requirements. As an example, it could switch a 2D barcode scanner module for an RFID reader module. The XT15 also benefits from having a wide range of configurations; for instance, there are eight interchangeable keyboards. Among key features is the rugged, upgradable display (a 3.7in transflective 640 by 480 pixel colour touch screen), which is said to withstand 1.25 Joule impact with zero degradation to touch. The prospect of lorry road user charging – over which many battles were fought during the last decade – has been raised again by the current UK Government.
This time the objective is purely to tax foreign vehicles operating in Britain, providing a counterbalance to the often high road tolls already imposed on UK-based vehicles operating abroad. Under the proposed scheme, foreign-based operators would pay either online or at the point of entry to the UK. The charge would applied at a daily rate, and is currently likely to work out at around £10 for vehicles of 12 tonnes gross or above. Smaller vehicles would be charged much lower rates. Where the whole concept becomes somewhat complex is that under EU rules, the UK Government would have to apply the same charge to UK-registered vehicles as well – negating the benefit. In order to counteract the impact of this, UK operators would be charged at an annualised rate, and would pay the fee as part of their vehicle excise duty. Then a more or less equivalent amount would be subtracted from the VED component. In other words, the amount would be added but taken away again, producing little or no net increase.
Aviva Risk Management Solutions is piloting a mobile solution for its 120 risk advisors based on BlackBerry Playbook tablet computers, which have already been selected as its portable device of choice. The advisors make technical risk assessments of commercial premises across the UK, and the new system will enable them to process the information on site, improving their productivity. The PlayBooks are being pre-loaded with a bespoke risk assessment application, which has been developed by Formicary Collaboration Group, a provider of real-time team collaboration solutions, and Float, which describes itself as a digital ideas company. Aviva stipulated that the system should be able to work offline in commercial properties where online connectivity was not always available. It also had to accommodate the entire assessment, and had to allow images to be embedded in reports to underwriters, and to be attractive to risk assessors accustomed to using paper-based reporting methods. Forms consisting of text entry, selectable options and sliders are used to enter the core data. There are additional options to make freeform notes and take photos.
The Skeye.dart rugged handheld computer range from German manufacturer Hoeft & Wessel is one of the first to be offered with the Android operating system as an alternative to the established Windows options (CE 6.0 or Embedded Handheld 6.5). The company offers various reasons for including Android as an option. Android has developed into a leading smartphone operating system, the company argues, with a correspondingly high level of acceptance and familiarity among developers. It also likes the intuitive touch-screen operation. The company adds that using an open-source operating system reduces dependency on market players and gives software developers new programming options. It admits that the future of Android in the business market is unknown, adding: "Hoeft & Wessel assumes that the significance of the Android operating system |
