Innovation is becoming even more a priority in the race to build up industrial capacity and to generate new productivity in the digitalization path of the transport sector. Across the Rail, Automotive and Maritime roadmaps targeting a more efficient and safer driving capabilities, there are common challenges justifying the development of interoperable infrastructures in contrast to silos-like developments to meet the need of each sector. Trustable networking environments in untrusted multi-party ecosystems are triggered by the economical sustainability and compliance to safety requirements using different technologies.
Vehicle’s positioning with high accuracy and integrity with continuity any time anywhere is a common requirement and the most demanding challenge for realising safer autonomous mobility ecosystems more resilient and non-dependent from a single technology.
Radiolabs, a public-private consortium for research and innovations and a recognised precursor in Europe to leveraging technological synergies across rail, road and maritime sectors has showcased three innovations at the European Navigation Conference (ENC) 2026 held in Vienna. This is the most important annual event in Europe bringing together the full positioning, navigation and timing community.
Valeria Ioannucci of Radiolabs presenting the paper Resilient & Autonomous Positioning for safer, eco-sustainable and cross-domain synergies for Rail and Maritime applications underlined how the know-how of Radiolabs for safe train positioning based on GNSS and IMU is key for the realization of high integrity-accuracy multi-sensor positioning solutions employing LiDAR, Video and PPP-RTK GNSS, for the autonomous ship berthing. And, she added, being the multi-sensor technology necessary also for autonomous train operations, the rail-maritime synergic approach is beneficial for both sectors sharing the know-how, tools and best practices.
In the second paper, Exploiting Smart Road RSU Infrastructure in Multibaseline PPP-RTK Positioning, Valeria explained the advantages of synergies between two important infrastructures being realised in Italy: RAN, the GNSS Augmentation Network promoted by ASI for rail and automotive applications and the Smart Road network promoted by ANAS for supporting CCAM services on the roads. Also in this case, there are reciprocal advantages from the synergies since the multi-tier architecture of the RAN can utilize the raw data of a multitude of GNSS receivers installed on the Road Side Units (RDUs) deployed along the Italian Smart Roads, for system-wide timing reference. According to a study performed by Radiolabs, a proper processing of these data allows to implement a Multibaseline PPP-RTK Positioning layer compatible with the RAN architecture, with the result to enhance the accuracy, integrity and resiliency of the vehicle’s positioning service provided by the RAN to the Smart Road users.
The third paper, presented by Alessia Vennarini of Radiolabs dealt with A novel platform based on Augmented Reality & On-Field Testing for Validating Train Positioning Systems. This topic, explained by Alessia, is part of the VICE4RAIL (Hybrid Virtualized Testing for Certification of EGNSS in Railway Train Positioning) project, funded by EUSPA, that is developing a Hybrid Virtualized Validation environment for assessing the performance of the Advanced Safe Train Positioning (ASTP) specified by Europe’s Rail R2DATO project. In this framework, the innovation introduced by Radiolabs is capable to reduce the complexity and cost to validate the new ASTP, blending real railway data with high‑fidelity laboratory simulations through its HyVICE platform. The result is a cost‑effective and scalable test environment, to overcome the actual limitations to assess typical GNSS faults affecting the ASTP operating in challenging scenarios such as those that having a low frequency of occurrence cannot be evaluated with traditional tests on field. In this case a synergic approach with the automotive sector is also important because GNSS-based positioning solutions have similar requirements but, differently from the rail sector, the automotive industry can leverage on a bigger production volume to reduce the costs including those for the validation and certification.
