A Study in Resilience: Trimble Market Acceptance Team (MAT) Pushes Product Limits
Standing behind every Trimble survey product is a global team dedicated to making life easier for surveyors—the Trimble Market Acceptance Team (MAT).
MAT group members Scott Moffett and Richard Brush
This group of geospatial professionals works every day to ensure Trimble hardware and software operate the way they are supposed to, and at the highest level of quality and accuracy possible. The MAT group is the “voice of the customer” internally within Trimble and evaluates each system solution holistically, from the customer’s point of view.
“We perform comprehensive evaluations on all Trimble geospatial solutions from data collection to final deliverables and everything in between,” says Richard Brush, Trimble Test Engineering Manager. “We verify seamless integration throughout the workflows and test operability in all kinds of conditions—we go much more in-depth than a simple GNSS receiver drop or moisture test on a data collector.”
MAT’s approach to testing is unique in the surveying industry. The team simulates how Trimble customers use the equipment during normal daily activities, going through the workflow in the field to the office and back to the field or to the boardroom. Hardware and software are thoroughly tested to ensure the solutions are robust and reliable to support maximum productivity for users.
The MAT group tests the resilience and usability of Trimble equipment by operating in the harsh environments faced by real surveyors, such as heat, rain, snow and sleet, and in diverse locations ranging from rural to urban and mountains to deserts. The team ensures that no matter where a surveyor works in the world or what conditions they face on a daily basis, the system solutions will meet or exceed their need, enabling them to provide the deliverable required to complete their job or task.
MAT runs a wide variety of field tests, including detecting the presence of RF interference within our solutions. For example, in urban locations, MAT tests radio multipath around buildings and Bluetooth Wi-Fi connections in areas where hundreds of local Wi-Fi hot spots could interfere with GNSS signals. In the mountains, GNSS equipment is tested in a variety of dense forest canopies throughout the year, to compare field-collected data to known control points for accuracy.
To assess the strength of a Bluetooth signal, the team may set a receiver in the middle of a soccer field and determine the maximum distance the data collector can be from the receiver. Total stations and 3D scanners are tested in similar ways to ensure robust wireless performance in extreme conditions with all of Trimble solutions.
Members of the MAT team are based in North America, Europe and New Zealand. With over 45 years of field experience they possess a wide range of geospatial expertise including surveying, GIS, 3D scanning, lidar, mobile mapping, etc. This broad knowledge allows them to test the end-to-end workflow for any kind of geospatial professional.