Swift Navigation Lands Major Investment For Tech That Improves GPS
Global positioning systems, or GPS, are great for helping to guide motorists to a location, or at least let them know where they are. However, GPS basically only gets you close, rather than to a precise spot.
That may be fine for casual navigation, but it's not okay for advance driver assistance systems, or ADAS, which include automatic lane-centering, or for semi-autonomous driving systems that allow motorists to take their hands off the wheel for long stretches or make hands-off lane changes, or completely self-driving vehicles.
As the auto industry moves towards vehicles with even higher levels of autonomy, the need for precise location technology becomes even more acute.
A company that has developed such technology has captured the eyes, and financial backing of investors.
San Francisco-based Swift Navigation completed its $50 million Series E financing round, the company announced Wednesday, bringing its total capitalization to more than $250 million.
The round was led by led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from existing investors NEA, Eclipse, EPIQ Capital Group, First Round Capital, Telus, and Potentum alongside new investors Niterra Ventures, Alti Tiedemann Global, Grids Capital, Essentia Ventures, Shea Ventures, and Enertech Capital.
'We're expanding the reach of our global network, and then we're launching millions upon millions of cars live in our service,' said Swift co-founder and CEO Timothy Harris, in an interview. 'We already have several million on the road, but we have many different customer programs with different OEMs, and we're excited for some launches next year with some new OEMs that are launching next year as well.'
'Swift Navigation has built a game-changing solution for high-precision positioning, enabling autonomy and automation at scale," said Michael Stark, managing director and founder of Crosslink Capital, in a statement.
GPS is actually a subset of Global Navigation Satellite System, or GNSS, which includes all navigation systems.
While GPS is accurate to anywhere from three to ten meters, adding Swift's cloud-based application Skylark Precise Positioning Service vastly improves on that to a matter of centimeters by making corrections as the satellite signal travels through Earth's atmosphere, according to Harris.
What can go wrong?
Anything from inherent errors in satellites that are not in perfect orbits, to disruptions to GPS signals on their way to Earth-bound receivers.
'We actually model the atmosphere in real time. That's the core of our product now. Skylark itself just looks like a data service to get you centimeter accurate positioning behind that. We're modeling the atmosphere in real time. We're modeling the satellites, but it's really a software over-layer to the GPS,' Harris explained.
While virtually all automakers use GNSS, about 70% of auto brands are currently using precise GNSS. Swift is working with around 20 automakers, according to Harris.
Accuracy comparison between standard GPS and precise GPS provided by Swift Navigation.
The urgency to improve a vehicle's location awareness comes as customers desiring, and willing to pay for, so-called L2+ autonomy systems such as General Motors Co.'s Super Cruise or Ford Motor Co.'s Blue Cruise, demand greater capabilities.
'So as we expand automated driving to new environments, what happens? We see more trees. We see more buildings,' said GM technical fellow Curtis Hay, during an April panel discussion on the subject at the American Center for Mobility, in which Swift also participated . 'We've got to solve those, as they become more important problems to tackle the automated drive down highways.'
Indeed, Swift's Harris points out that precise positioning not only improves safety but its more exact location detection improves occupant comfort through greater reliability and with less jarring moves from automatic lane-keeping technology.
There's a cost, however to all this, in an era where the average transaction prices of a new vehicles hovered at $48,907 in June, according to Kelly Blue Book.
'I cannot put this technology into a vehicle to force another $2,000, $3,000 on top of that, the price of that vehicle,' said Mark Barrott, a partner at management consultants Plante Moran, during the April panel discussion. 'It has to be affordable. It has to be useful, and my consumer has to understand how to use it, what benefit they're going to get.'
Swift's Skylark addresses the cost issue by being able to provide precise location on lower-cost standard definition maps, rather than more expensive high-definition version, Harris pointed out.
'It's a data service that goes into the vehicle based on the distributed network. So there is an ongoing software cost element, but relative to the cost of putting in other big sensors, like LiDAR, it is a tiny fraction of cost,' said Harris. 'What that means is it hits the kind of the more mass market price point for ADAS systems. You're not talking about adding a huge amount of cost of the vehicle.'As Swift enjoys new investor support Harris says the company is expanding applications of its precise positioning technology to improving location accuracy for outdoor robotics, micromobility vehicles such as scooters, and fleet tracking and package delivery.
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