26 October 2022

ASTRI Lab Visit

The IPNL team visited the Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) in Hong Kong for a technology exchange and collaboration discussion. ASTRI is Hong Kong’s flagship applied research and development center, established by the Hong Kong SAR Government’s Innovation and Technology Commission. It conducts research across a range of technology domains including communications, artificial intelligence, IoT, and smart city infrastructure, with a mission to bridge the gap between academic research and industry application.

During the visit, researchers from IPNL and ASTRI exchanged ideas on positioning and navigation technologies relevant to smart city development in Hong Kong. Discussion topics included the challenges of delivering reliable location services in dense urban environments, the potential for integrating GNSS with other sensing modalities for improved accuracy, and the role of positioning technology in applications such as intelligent transportation and location-based services. ASTRI’s applied research perspective complemented IPNL’s strengths in fundamental GNSS research and multi-sensor fusion.

The visit highlighted the importance of industry-academic collaboration in translating laboratory research into deployable solutions. Hong Kong’s unique urban landscape, characterized by tall buildings and narrow streets that cause severe GNSS signal degradation, presents both a challenge and an ideal testbed for developing next-generation positioning systems. Partnerships between university laboratories such as IPNL and applied research organizations like ASTRI are essential for moving innovative navigation technologies from the research stage to practical implementation.