Freegrow Selected for DIPS Advanced Manufacturing Track, Evolving Its Single UWB Positioning Device Into Integrated Land-and-Sea Hardware

Freegrow (CEO Kim Young-sik), a Busan-based UWB (Ultra-Wideband) component specialist, has been selected for the Advanced Manufacturing track of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ “2026 DIPS Project” (Startups’ Great Leap Forward Project).

What Is the DIPS Advanced Manufacturing Track?

The DIPS Project is a Ministry of SMEs and Startups program that selects deep-tech startups across six strategic industries, including AI, robotics, and advanced manufacturing. It supports up to three years of technology advancement and commercialization.

The program aims to identify promising companies with distinctive, hard-to-replicate deep tech and help them grow into global unicorns.

Six companies nationwide were selected in the Advanced Manufacturing track, with an agreement period running through December 2028 (34 months).

UWB Technology and Freegrow’s Strengths

UWB is a wireless communication technology that uses a wide frequency band to enable ultra-precise positioning, accurate to 10-30cm, even indoors.

It has a distinct advantage in metal-dense industrial environments where Bluetooth and GPS signals cannot reliably reach — the reason UWB (Ultra-Wideband) is drawing attention for industrial positioning.

Freegrow is a deep-tech company that designs and manufactures its UWB components in-house from the component level, rather than assembling imported modules.

In environments dense with metal structures, radio waves reflect in every direction, making it difficult to distinguish a direct signal from its reflections. Freegrow addressed this problem with a proprietary algorithm that separates direct signals from reflected ones, achieving measured accuracy of 10-30cm.

The company also said it has developed its own automatic calibration technology, which lowers deployment costs to roughly one-fifth of comparable imported systems.

Expanding Into Integrated Land-and-Sea Hardware

Under this DIPS project, Freegrow will expand its proprietary hardware — which integrates UWB, GPS-RTK, and IMU into a single device — to cover both land and sea operations.

At sea, on-device AI will autonomously log process events, which are then synchronized once the vessel docks at port, ensuring continuous data across the entire logistics chain.

Here, UWB refers to Ultra-Wideband, GPS-RTK to GPS Real-Time Kinematic positioning, and IMU to Inertial Measurement Unit.

Industrial Applications

Logistics and manufacturing sites need to track assets and personnel seamlessly as they move between indoor and outdoor areas. Until now, operators had to run separate indoor and outdoor positioning equipment.

Freegrow’s single-device integration is designed to merge this previously divided setup into one system, providing uninterrupted location data even at sites like ports and logistics centers where indoor and outdoor areas intermix.