At SXSW, Tern AI demonstrated exclusively for TechCrunch that its low-cost alternative to GPS could “derive a position from nothing” — “No triangulation, no satellites, no Wi-Fi, nothing.”
All Tern’s intelligent system uses is a cocktail of cached map information and a vehicle’s existing sensor data.
“Your GPS cannot initialize position without that triangulation process, and so we think it’s a rather important innovation to be able to determine position organically within the vehicle,” Brett Harrison, co-founder and president, told TechCrunch. “[Tern] turns all these vehicles that you see into creators and originators of position information instead of consumers of it.”
Our most critical systems, from aviation to disaster response to precision farming, rely on GPS. Foreign adversaries have already demonstrated that they can spoof GPS signals, which could have catastrophic impacts both on the economy and national security. Which makes finding alternatives all the more important.
Read more about Tern AI’s mission and my demo with the Austin-based startup’s tech!
