You’re misplaced. Even worse, there’s no cell sign. The very last thing maintaining you from absolutely freaking out is that little blue dot — the common signal that, someplace up above, a GPS satellite tv for pc has eyes on you.
However what in case you don’t even have that?
Kanwar Singh thinks he’s received an answer. For the previous few years he’s been constructing a vision-based navigation system together with his startup Skyline Nav AI. The so-called Pathfinder software program can take a look at virtually something — buildings, tree-lined roads, even aerial views — and rapidly match it to a database and generate real-time navigation.
That might be helpful in case you’re in an enormous metropolis with tall buildings, or on a canyon street surrounded by mountains, the place line-of-sight to a GPS satellite tv for pc is blocked. (Singh is aware of this all too properly, too: in 2014, his pal Hari Simran Singh Khalsa died whereas mountaineering mountains in Mexico, having misplaced his manner.)
However Singh says an much more vital near-term use — one he says is essential for nationwide safety — is that Skyline’s tech generally is a backstop towards an more and more common software of contemporary warfare: GPS jamming.
It’s that use case particularly that has Skyline Nav AI already working with the Division of Protection, NASA, and 100-year-old protection contractor Kearfott, regardless of being a bootstrapped startup with simply eight full time staff.
Now, at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Singh will make his pitch for the tech on the Startup Battlefield stage; Skyline Nav AI is a High 20 finalist within the startup competitors. And he’s introduced alongside a brand new product to indicate off: Pathfinder Edge. It’s a small edge pc with a shrunk-down model of Pathfinder that may be put in on virtually something to allow using Skyline’s “GPS-independent” navigation.
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Visible navigation will not be new, Singh is fast to level out. Tomahawk missiles have lengthy used a extra rudimentary type of the thought together with different tech to exactly strike targets, for instance. Singh mentioned Skyline’s breakthroughs are twofold: the power to navigate with out GPS basically wherever through the use of AI to rapidly acknowledge a scene, and carrying out the identical feat on the sting, with out costly GPUs.
Singh finally needs Skyline’s tech to be ubiquitous, however he doesn’t see it as a GPS alternative. As a substitute, he thinks it should dwell alongside GPS, very similar to how right this moment our telephone calls get mechanically routed over cell towers, Wi-Fi, and even satellite tv for pc — usually with out us noticing.
“While you or I purchase the following automotive, the following drone, or we sit within the subsequent plane, it’ll be GPS-independent due to Pathfinder, and the power for this software program to work on easy edge computing that requires no mobile, no Wi-Fi,” Singh mentioned in an interview with TechCrunch.
It’s a lofty imaginative and prescient. However Singh is snug taking huge swings.
A Sikh who immigrated to the U.S. practically 20 years in the past, Singh was getting his grasp’s at Harvard when he determined to affix the U.S. Air Power after listening to a chat from Sen. John McCain. However he was rejected, time and again, due to his hair, beard, and turban — seen articles of religion that prevented him from serving.
As a substitute of giving up, Singh lobbied Congress and the White Home, and finally he was in a position to enlist within the Military. However he was nonetheless requested to surrender his articles of religion to affix primary coaching. So he sued the Division of Protection — which rapidly caved and granted non secular exemptions to Singh and others, and he turned an Military Captain and Battalion Sign Officer.
“I come from a household of entrepreneurs and army personnel, and you recognize, there’s some issues which can be value combating for,” he mentioned. “This was a type of issues that, as an American, I used to be being requested to decide on my First Modification proper to apply my religion or serve my nation.”
It was due to the various army relationships Singh made all through this course of that he received engaged on the concepts on the basis of Skyline Nav AI. He labored with the DOD’s Military Analysis Laboratory (ARL) to develop GPS-independent navigation with the intention to fight the rise of GPS jamming. And he began Skyline, which licensed that tech from ARL.
Singh says the work he’s doing at Skyline is a “calling.” (He’s even written a whole e-book concerning the dangers of GPS going darkish.) Nevertheless it’s additionally already proving to be good enterprise.
“We’ve at all times been worthwhile, and so we’ve been very lucky that folks, our clients, have given us cash to construct the product earlier than it was even prepared to make use of,” he mentioned.
If you wish to be taught from Skyline Nav AI firsthand, and see dozens of further pitches, attend helpful workshops, and make the connections that drive enterprise outcomes, head right here to be taught extra about this 12 months’s Disrupt, held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.
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