HGuide Navigation Solutions for Industrial Users

April 2022 marks the fifth anniversary of Honeywell’s HGuide Industrial Navigation group, whose mission is to transform industries by offering position technology derived from Honeywell’s aerospace and defense business lines. HGuide products can steer self-driving cars, position industrial robots, point high-definition cameras, control the movement of construction and mining equipment – and much more.

“We formed the HGuide team five years ago to bring the extraordinary benefits of Honeywell inertial-based navigation technology to the industrial world. With the new products launched today, we continue to offer our customers the right features and capabilities at the right price points,” said Paul Farah, General Manager of Honeywell’s HGuide Industrial Navigation business unit.

“The team proved we can deliver the quality, reliability and ruggedness that made Honeywell the pre-eminent navigation provider in aerospace and defense, scaling to meet the size, weight and cost requirements of industrial customers while adding the features they required,” he added.

The core technology of the HGuide product family are sophisticated inertial measurement units (IMUs), and Honeywell builds tens of thousands of high performance units annually, according to Andrew Bundermann, Principal Account Manager for the HGuide group.

“An IMU uses gyroscopes, accelerometers and electronics – all packaged on single, small micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) chips – to provide linear and rotational motion data as an output. The unique patented calibration process and software developed by Honeywell squeezes maximum performance out of the sensors in our HGuide i300 and HG4930 IMUs in a wide range of conditions.” he said.

“With close to four decades of experience developing and manufacturing inertial systems for the aerospace and defense world, only the Honeywell HGuide team offers industrial navigation solutions built in an aerospace plant,” he added. “Product specifications have been scaled to meet industrial requirements and provide maximum value to our customers. But all our units are built to the same high ruggedness standards using the same disciplined manufacturing and quality practices.”

That’s one of the reasons Honeywell is finding a natural market for its expertise in industries as diverse as agriculture, construction, manufacturing, mining and ground transportation. In all these sectors – and dozens more – being able to sense position and compensate for motion and vibration are essential to a platform’s successful operation.

For proof, flash back almost five years to one of the first industrial applications for a Honeywell HG4930 IMU. The HGuide unit was attached to camera equipment on a remotely piloted unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used to inspect hundreds of miles of remote power lines for potential problems. Data from the IMU helped the utility pinpoint the exact location of each image, providing an accurate assessment of the power line’s condition, reducing cost, time and risk of using a helicopter to make the inspection.

Since then, Honeywell has integrated its IMUs with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) services, which enables new levels of navigation performance in transportation applications like autonomous cars, 3D LiDAR mapping solutions, UAVs, and autonomous industrial vehicles as well as marine surface and subsea platforms. In these use cases, the HGuide products are easily integrated with complementary sensors like laser-based LiDAR systems, cameras or various velocity sensors. 

Honeywell is now taking the HGuide product line to new heights, said Darren Fisher, HGuide Principal Sales Manager for APAC and EMEA. “With the three significant product launches this month to celebrate our fifth anniversary, we expand the HGuide product family even further, solving problems for our customers and partners by continuing to innovate how we apply our legacy technology and expertise to industrial focused offerings.” he said. 

“The new business-card sized OEM HGuide o360 INS/GNSS offers outstanding position and attitude performance in an incredibly small form factor. In pre-release discussions, our customers are excited by the prospect of the Honeywell proprietary technology being focused on a solution that has such a wide range of applications on airborne, land and marine platforms alike,” he continued. “The other two product launches being announced this week are no less exciting.”

The HGuide g080 is the first real-time kinematic (RTK) capable industrial grade GNSS receiver to be offered by Honeywell in a popular form factor. With dual RF inputs for accurate heading the g080 has advanced interference, multipath and spoofing mitigation capability.

The HGuide n500 is an answer to customers who needed the higher performance of the successful HGuide n580 INS/GNSS navigator in an even smaller form factor. By adding data from the HGuide g080 GNSS receiver or their own compatible GNSS receiver, customers can build a flexible, low size, weight, and power solution with performance normally reserved for fiber-optic gyro (FOG) powered navigators.

“In the past 5 years, we have built a rapidly growing global business, helping our customers in multiple industries,” Fisher said. “With these three new products launched today and an exciting roadmap for the future we set the scene for HGuide products to make Honeywell the first choice in the industrial market, just like it is in the aerospace world.”