BEAVERTON, OR – February 20, 2020 – The FiRa Consortium, a catalyst for bringing leading innovators together to drive UWB expansion forward, today announced growth of its member network to include Allegion, a leading global provider of security products and solutions, and Decawave, the pioneer in UWB technology, chipsets, modules and solutions. As Sponsor members, both organizations have joined the FiRa Consortium Board of Directors.
"Allegion and Decawave bring strong individual leaders with solid perspectives to the FiRa Consortium Board of Directors," said Charlie Zhang, Chair of the FiRa Consortium and VP Engineering, Samsung Research America. "Their technological, use case and market expertise and willingness to actively spearhead new initiatives within their organizations will add depth to the FiRa Consortium, helping us to make continued forward progress in meeting our goals."
Others joining the FiRa Consortium are Contributor member, TSINGOAL, Associate members Humatics and OPPO, Test Lab members CAICT and SGS and Educational and Academic member, Yale University. Charles Dachs, Vice-Chair of the FiRa Consortium and Vice President and General Manager for Secure Embedded Transactions, NXP Semiconductors welcomes these new members and notes that "the continued growth of membership reinforces the FiRa Consortium's belief that UWB will become a widely used technology through the development of an open and interoperable ecosystem".
In joining the FiRa Consortium as a Sponsor member, Mark Lynn, Vice President of Engineering in Allegion's Americas region says "Allegion's vision of seamless access and a safer world is supported by innovation both inside and outside of our four walls. As we continuously explore opportunities to embrace technology that could positively impact our customers, we believe that ultra-wideband has great potential. That's why we're very excited to be joining FiRa, which offers us a way to collaborate with other industry leaders who are considering how we responsibly use this technology to create quality products and solutions that provide top-notch customer experiences."
Decawave notes that they, too, are delighted to join the FiRa Consortium as a Sponsor member. "We at Decawave, as the pioneer in UWB location technology and IC, have gathered a broad and deep expertise in many end-products and equipment across the 40+ vertical markets we have been serving for about 8 years now, and so fully comprehend the need for interoperability and standardization", said Luc Darmon, GM of Secure Transactions at Decawave. "We are happy to bring this expertise and know- how to help FiRa build a strong and broad standard that will ease the adoption, the use and the large deployment of UWB-based solutions across markets, regions and industries."
In forming the FiRa Consortium, one of the initial use cases identified for UWB was location-based services. The vision of using UWB for this use case is coming to life with the addition of two members focused on this use case.
TSINGOAL, a leading UWB ranging/locating solution provider in China, has over 1200 installations in factories, warehouses, power plants and nursing homes. In joining the FiRa Consortium as a Contributor member, Rayson, CEO of TSINGOAL, says that "TSINGOAL identifies strongly with FiRa's vision and wants to participate in activities to make the vision real".
New Associate member, Humatics, is also uniquely positioned to bring expertise to the use of UWB for this application. "Humatics is thrilled to join the FiRa Consortium," said David Mindell, CEO and Founder of Humatics. "FiRa shares our vision and commitment to driving closer collaboration between people and machines through the use of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology. We look forward to working closely together to develop UWB use cases around navigation and industrial IoT and co-create interoperability standards to drive the adoption of this incredibly powerful technology worldwide."
Supporting Decawave's point regarding interoperability and standardization, the FiRa Consortium is developing a comprehensive certification program to ensure seamless interoperability and compatibility among chipsets, devices and solutions. New Test Lab members, CAICT, and SGS, along with current Test Lab members NPP Itelma and TTA, will collaborate on the important task of preparing the certification program to ensure that UWB-enabled products and solutions meet the standards set by the FiRa Consortium. When these standards are met, other member classes will have the opportunity to use the FiRa Consortium "certified" logo.