OxTS people are always willing to ‘go the extra mile’ to help our customers find a solution to their need or challenge. This level of care is consistent in every facet of our business offering, in every project and initiative that our team is involved with. This includes the high level of support offered to our customers at every stage, from their first enquiry through to getting the best from their OxTS inertial navigation systems post-purchase. Here, Sun Wen, OxTS Support Engineer based in China, tells us about a ‘day in his life’:
1. How long have you been an OxTS Support Engineer, and have you seen many changes during your time here?
I joined OxTS in March 2020, so I haven’t been with the company all that long. Thanks to continuous development, there is always something new. We began to introduce RT3000 v3 to customers in China, with built-in RT-Range functionality, integrated WiFi, internal NTRIP and other useful features, so that customers can complete their testing more easily. Now, Quad-GNSS is a standard for v3 units which gives you more confidence in your tests. Our latest achievements have been focused on autonomous driving, indoor positioning, and new software.
2. What’s the best thing about your role as an OxTS Support Engineer?
I used to work for an OEM myself, as a data collection engineer, researching driver behaviour to model for an autonomous vehicle developer – so I fully understand the environment and needs of the engineers who depend on me now. As a support engineer, it is exciting to support different customers with different needs. Meanwhile, I can learn more from customers, then work with colleagues to improve our products. This is what I like best about my role.
3. What do you do at OxTS and in what circumstances would people come to you for something?
Technical support is my main job. Mostly people come to me with problems encountered in using the equipment – it can be a call, WeChat message or a support ticket. What I need to do is to find a way to solve the problem quickly. This might be correcting some of the customer’s usage mistakes, remote control for troubleshooting or collecting some dataset. In addition, based on my support experiences, I will post some articles about how to use our products using our OxTS WeChat official account, and host support webinars. I also do pre-sales demos and pro-sales training, increasing user’s satisfaction.
Please use this link to watch webinars our team have presented in Chinese.
4. Which of the projects you’ve been involved with so far has been the most interesting and why?
I have experience in data collection, perception sensor testing, and ADAS and autonomous system testing. I am proud that I am able to quickly connect customer needs to OxTS product features. For example, an ADAS solutions provider in China wants to test the lane detection performance for their visual sensor. There have been no similar cases to learn from, and it is difficult to meet all of their needs based on OxTS existing features. But OxTS provides ground truth all the time, so they just need to do a simple data conversion. They are very happy with the solution I’ve been able to offer them.
5. What’s the most challenging thing about being an OxTS Support Engineer, and how do you overcome this?
The most challenging thing about my job is to face the unknown. I have been trying to become an advanced user by doing different tests using the RT, thus I can identify potential problems before a customer experiences the same issue. For problems I have not encountered before, I will reduce the cause scope first, then check historical support tickets to see if a similar, or related, issue might have arisen before, collect data and work with Support team. We draw on our collective experiences, and between our support teams based in China, the US and in the UK we have a lot of knowledge to share.
6 – What are you most looking forward to in the next 12 months at OxTS?
I look forward to our achievements in indoor positioning technology. AVP is popular in China, usually this function needs to cover different scenarios even without GNSS, for example when driving in a built-up environment such as a shopping mall, or underground garage with no – or very poor – GNSS, we need additional technology to maintain a high level of accuracy in our measurements.
Many customers want us to continue our success with the RT-Range. So, I am looking forward to rolling out our latest developments and continuing to innovate.
Further resources:
- Read more about OxTS and learn how we’ve become global leaders in inertial and GNSS.
- Visit the automotive applications hub to discover INS solutions ideal for ADAS and more.
- Explore OxTS survey and mapping applications.
- Contact us to discuss your own project requirements.
- To register to participate in forthcoming OxTS support and training webinars, or to view recordings of sessions we’ve already presented, please follow this link for webinars in English, or alternatively, please follow this link for webinars in Chinese.
