New Technologies in Navigation Systems

GPS Just Became Optional for Military Navigation. Quantum Sensors Are Why. SandboxAQ flies magnetic navigation on C-17s. Centimeter accuracy without satellites. Q-CTRL's sensors beat classical systems by 111x in flight tests. Not in labs. Actual aircraft. When China jams GPS tomorrow, these systems keep working. The physics is simple. Earth's magnetic field becomes your navigation chart. Quantum magnetometers detect submarine signatures at ranges that change naval warfare. Gravity variations expose underground bunkers. Three companies own this space. • SandboxAQ: Spun from Alphabet, MagNav for GPS-denied ops • Q-CTRL: $24.4M DARPA contracts, ruggedized for subs • Infleqtion: Cold atoms, femtometer precision gravimeters Traditional INS drifts meters per hour. Quantum INS doesn't drift. Period. Boeing integrated quantum-classical hybrid nav in 2025 tests. Sub-atomic precision achieved. Australian Navy trials validated submarine detection. UK Dstl hunts subs with quantum magnetometers. Quantum computing debates 2035 timelines. Quantum sensing deploys in 2-5 years. Miniaturization remains the challenge. SWaP reduction for drone integration needs solutions. But DARPA's RoQS program funds it. Army Research Lab develops Rydberg RF sensors. Money flows to near-term capability. Applications today. • Navigate polar regions where GPS fails • Detect underground facilities via gravity • Hunt submarines at extended ranges • Operate beyond satellite coverage Russia spoofs GPS over Ukraine daily. China jams signals in contested waters. Traditional navigation fails. Quantum navigation doesn't care. While everyone waits for quantum computers, quantum sensors deliver battlefield advantage now.

We built our lives on GPS and take that blue dot for granted. But practitioners know: much of life is terribly GPS-denied.   When devices don’t have access to GPS: 1 / Miners lose positioning underground 2 / UAVs drift, unable to return to base 3 / Soldiers lose navigation and targeting   These are obviously high-stakes, remote scenarios. But if you live in a city, you’ve been a victim too:   Your Uber Eats driver stuck on the wrong side of your building — because GPS bounced off the buildings. That’s GPS-denied failure, too.    For decades, the only real solution for high positional accuracy was fiber optic gyroscopes (FOGs) — Big, expensive, power-hungry systems built for ICBMs, submarines, and fighter jets.   On the other end there have been MEMS gyros — Small and cheap, made for smartphones... but they drift and lack precision.   And there was nothing in the middle — Until now! ANELLO Photonics (Per Aspera Founding Sponsor 🙏💥) fills the gap.   Their breakthrough, the SiPhOG™ (Silicon Photonics Optical Gyroscope), collapses the physics of a legacy FOG onto a silicon chip.   But we all know it’s not just about science — it’s about turning research into a repeatable, affordable, production-grade product. The SiPhOG™ is:   1 / Fabricated with standard semiconductor processes (no custom fab, yay!) 2 / Coin-sized, solid-state, and ruggedized (small enough to scale!) 3 / Immune to vibration, thermal drift, and EMI (built for the real world)   It’s GPS-free inertial navigation that’s accurate, small and scalable into bigger systems!   Sooo many sectors have been locked out of precision navigation. Lightweight drones, autonomous ground robots, precision farming systems. We talk low-cost defense platforms, but precision vs. bulk/cost have always been trade-offs.   ANELLO Photonics is changing all of that — serving sectors that have been overlooked for decades.   You just can’t be in our business and not love this type of earnest innovation!   The ANELLO Photonics and Per Aspera team have collaborated to bring you a special Teardown below. Read it!   👇 Serious people. 📩 Contact: info@anellophotonics.com 🌐 Website: anellophotonics.com

If you're still out here thinking GPS is "good enough," Swift Navigation just pulled a $50M Series E to remind you that "good enough" doesn't cut it when you're barreling down a highway in an autonomous vehicle, or threading a #deliverydrone through a city skyline. This isn't about getting close. It's about being exact. Because in this game, centimeters matter. Tim Harris, Colin Beighley, and Fergus Noble didn't just build a better GPS, they built a precision machine. Swift Navigation was born out of necessity: the trio needed sub-10cm accuracy for airborne wind turbines and couldn't find it on the market. So they built it themselves. Fast forward to 2025, and what started as a hacked-together RTK receiver has evolved into Skylark, the first #ISO26262 ASIL-C certified, real-time, #cloudnative GNSS correction service, and Starling, a software #positioningengine that doesn't care whose hardware you're running. You want accuracy? Skylark is feeding over 10 million #vehicles and #robots globally, live. You want partnerships? Over 20 automotive OEMs and Tier 1s are signed to multi-year deals. You want scale? Coverage spans the contiguous U.S., Canada, EU, UK, Japan, Korea, and Australia, and they're already laying down reference stations in Brazil, India, and the Gulf. Crosslink Capital led the Series E, with Michael Stark joining the board. New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Eclipse, EPIQ Capital Group, First Round Capital, TELUS Global Ventures (TGV), and Potentum Partners returned for more. New believers like Venture Lab Niterra Group, AlTi Tiedemann Global, GRIDS Capital, Essentia Ventures, Shea Ventures, and EnerTech Capital joined the squad. That's not just capital. That's alignment, from smart money that sees what's next. This isn't a vanity round. It's fuel. Swift is scaling Skylark globally, hiring functional #safetyengineers like they're printing money, and gunning for ASIL-D, because nothing says "trust us with autonomy" like proving your tech won't blink when it matters most. They're also pushing Starling v4 into sensor-fusion territory, GNSS/INS/SLAM, all tight-coupled and prepped for V2X. So yeah, Swift Navigation isn't "improving GPS." That headline's 10 years late. They've already changed the game. This raise just turned up the volume. If you're building anything that moves: #cars, #bots, #fleets, #drones, Swift doesn't just help you navigate. They help you land exactly where you're supposed to. #Startups #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #SeriesE #GPS #Location #LocationTech #AutonomousVehicle #Logistics #Robotics #RobotTech #Cloud #CloudComputing #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Hiring #TechHiring If engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

"The future of battlefield advantage is software-defined." I'll remember this day forever - the day when the team at Q-CTRL announced true commercial and strategic #quantumadvantage in navigation enabled by our unique efforts in #AI-for-#quantum. The day when #quantumtech transitioned from research to system-level capability with real strategic impact. And it just so happens to be #WorldQuantumDay 2025! As a #quantum #tech company we've had long interests in #quantumsensing, alongside our efforts reducing errors in #quantumcomputing. Our #AI-powered infrastructure software can help sensors "filter out" the interference that otherwise degrades their performance in the real world. But building sensors alone wasn't enough - we wanted to solve real problems with the new sensing technology we developed. So we set out to take on one of the biggest - #GPS denial and jamming. We've come to totally rely on GPS but it's become increasingly fragile. Over 1000 flights per day are now subject to jamming attacks, and GPS spoofing (sending out fake signals) has been used to disrupt commercial trade and defense operations. GPS has become a theatre of war in modern economic and strategic conflict. So we built a robust, unjammable, unspoofable backup, and we validated that it works where it counts - in the field. We undertook real flight and ground based trials and demonstrated not only that our new #quantum-assured navigation system, Ironstone Opal, could outperform the best direct competitor by 50X, but it could deliver positioning so accurate it became one of the best performing GPS alternatives ever tested. This is the day when #quantumtechnology truly found its feet. There's no more question about its relevance or timelines to discovery. No more promise and hype vs delivery...it's here and solving problems that will shape the future. Thanks to our partners and to Nasdaq and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for the recognition of our work. Read below for more and link to the technical manuscript https://lnkd.in/gg6Cgs2a

🚁 Will Planes and Ships Eventually Be Fully Autonomous? Both aviation and maritime have used autopilot for decades. The real question: can they achieve complete autonomy without human intervention? 🚨 The Security Challenge Navigation vulnerability is the biggest barrier: 💻 Cyber attacks increasingly target maritime shipping 📡 Hackers easily jam/spoof GPS signals 🏴☠️ International waters make interference easier This isn't theoretical. In May 2025, the MSC Antonia (304m container ship) ran aground near Jeddah Port after GPS spoofing. The 7,000 TEU vessel remains stuck. ⚓ GPS jamming incidents surged in 2025—vessels now experience position "jumps" averaging 6,300 km, up from 600 km in Q4 2024. 📈 🤖 LIDAR Still Essential Sensor fusion (LIDAR, radar, cameras) handles obstacle detection well, achieving 74.1% accuracy in maritime tests. 🎯 But the limitation: these sensors can't answer "where am I" when GPS fails. You still need them for unexpected obstacles—floating debris, wildlife, weather formations. 🌪️ Unlike roads with traffic and pedestrians, ocean/air navigation has fewer obstacles. The real challenge is positioning over vast distances when satellites are compromised. 🛰️ 🛬 Final Approach Already Solved ✈️ Aircraft use Instrument Landing Systems for precision landings 🚢 Ships use harbor pilots and precision docking systems The gap: autonomous navigation across thousands of miles between ports/airports ⚛️ Enter Quantum Navigation Q-CTRL tested the first maritime quantum gravity sensor on a Royal Australian Navy vessel: 💫 ⏰ 144 hours without GPS access 🔬 Measures Earth's gravity using laser-illuminated atoms ♾️ Maintains accuracy indefinitely (unlike traditional inertial navigation) 🎯 The Bottom Line Saildrone's SD 1020 circumnavigated Antarctica (13,670 miles, 196 days) and Prism Courage completed autonomous transatlantic crossings with 7% better fuel efficiency. 🚢 The technology exists—but until we solve unjammable navigation with quantum sensors, both industries remain limited. 🔒 💭 Will quantum navigation finally unlock full autonomy for planes and ships? #AutonomousShipping #QuantumSensors #Aviation #NavigationSecurity 🚀

My latest in today's print edition of The Wall Street Journal looks at why Airbus's innovation lab, Acubed, is on the hunt for potential alternative to GPS for aerospace navigation. GPS has been the primary method of aerospace navigation for decades, but with jamming and spoofing on the rise, the industry is pushing for an update, and fast. Enter: quantum sensing. It's a technology that's been developing for decades and is now inching closer to commercialization. Acubed recently took a quantum sensing device from SandboxAQ on 150 hours worth of test flights, and found that it could reliably locate a plane's location en route within 2 nautical miles 100% of the time. “The hard part was proving that the technology could work,” said SandboxAQ Chief Executive Jack Hidary. “It’s the first novel absolute navigation system to our knowledge in the last 50 years." What are your thoughts? Could quantum sensing be a reliable backup or alternative to GPS? Let me know in the comments. Read the full story online here: https://lnkd.in/e2tCpDFF