gps in its many regional flavors has become a ubiquitous feature in phones, smart watches, cars and other connected devices, but for all the location based features that it helps enable, it has a lot of flaws.
Today, a UK startup called FocalPoint that is building software to improveGPS operations, accuracy and security is announcing a round of funding to continue building out its tech. There are use cases for the tech for things like more accurate location for smartphone apps for navigation or location tracking, to help companies with their navigation services, and for better gps security.
Based in Cambridge and founded as a spinout from Cambridge University, FocalPoint has raised over 15 million dollars in a Series C round. The other investors include a major U.S. automotive brand.
In September of last year, Scott Pomerantz became the CEO of FocalPoint, a business development that helped put the startup on the radar of potential customers. One of the first companies to bring gps to the mass market was founded by Pomerantz. The startup was acquired by the company.
At a time when Apple is in the news, FocalPoint is focusing on betterGPS. Yesterday, the iPhone giant announced its newest Apple Watch models, featuring much more accurateGPS using a multi band approach. It's a sign of the priority that device makers are putting on improvingGPS, and investments that they would be willing to make to do so, and thus the chance for startups to offer new and more effective approaches to crack the market.
New versions of the hardware used in the devices that use it have been used to improve services by and large, as Faragher explained. The embedded market of legacy chips and the process of rolling out next- generation hardware make it difficult to see how the market will grow. The majority of those numbers are accounted for by phones, but autonomy, road and drones are growing at a faster rate.
At a cost of draining battery life in the process, gps relies on using one or another of two radio bands; typically one produces better positioning than the other but it does so at a cost of draining battery life in the process
Faragher said that the chipsets themselves do not need to be swapped out or upgraded in order to implement the software-based solution.
He said that it is trying to understand the directions of satellite signals in order to improve the accuracy of a location. The band that is less battery intensive was previously thought to have poorer positioning performance. Batter life is impacted by the higher performing signal. The signal can be made better.
Faragher said that other approaches have been too expensive and clunky.
He said that only military antennas have been able to detect movement like this before, with those antennas coming in the form of satellite dishes that are the size of a dinner plate. He said that the military-grade feature is for the cost of a software upgrade. This could help reduce the cost of other parts. Expense off a component.
There are two different frequencies used by satellites, more computationally intensive for the higher performing signal. So we can make the lower quality battery use signal better than then more expensive signal.
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