Apple Appears to Have Acquired GPS Firm Coherent Navigation [Confirmed]

MacRumors · May 17, 2015

In one of its latest efforts to bolster its mapping capabilities, Apple appears to have acquired Coherent Navigation, a Bay Area GPS-related firm founded in 2008 by engineers from Stanford and Cornell.

One of Coherent Navigation's areas of focus was High Integrity GPS ("iGPS"), a system that combines signals from the traditional mid-earth orbit GPS satellites with those from the low-earth satellites of voice and data provider Iridium to offer greater accuracy and precision, higher signal integrity, and greater jam resistance. Iridium touts iGPS as having the potential to provide location information accurate to within centimeters.

A number of Coherent's key employees recently began working for Apple, including tech veteran and CEO Paul Lego in January and co-founders William Bencze and Brent Ledvina as of last month. Coherent's website has also been taken offline, but on April 30 the name servers for the domain were updated to point to Apple's servers.

It is unclear exactly what the Coherent Navigation team is working on at Apple and whether there was a specific technology Apple was interested in or if it simply wanted to apply the expertise of Coherent's employees to its own projects. Lego simply notes that he is now a member of Apple's Maps team, while Ledvina and Bencze are working in similar location engineering roles.

Coherent Navigation would be just the latest in a long string of mapping-related acquisitions Apple has made over the last several years, including the developers behind Pin Drop, Locationary, WifiSLAM, Hopstop, Embark, and Broadmap. Apple has continued to improve its mapping services since a rough transition away from Google Maps with the release of iOS 6 in 2012, with the company working to add features like transit information and perhaps Street View-like imagery to its services.

Update: Apple has given its standard confirmation statement to The New York Times.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," the company said.

No other details on the deal have been released.

Article Link: Apple Appears to Have Acquired GPS Firm Coherent Navigation [Confirmed]

EthanLMT · May 17, 2015

Seems to me that they are trying to add GPS to the Apple Watch..

Richardgm · May 17, 2015

I wonder if Apple knows that it is the data within the maps that is woefully inadequate?

Apple maps is unusable in the Caribbean and the Middle East.

clibinarius · May 17, 2015

Richardgm said:
I wonder if Apple knows that it is the data within the maps that is woefully inadequate?

Apple maps is unusable in the Caribbean and the Middle East.

Yes, but the GPS chip itself is unstable in NYC. It would CONSTANTLY lose reception and freeze up at times to the point of worthlessness (No, I don't like cycling around the Manhattan bridge because the stupid GPS has no clue where I am and I'm listening to it).

Richardgm · May 17, 2015

clibinarius said:
Yes, but the GPS chip itself is unstable in NYC. It would CONSTANTLY lose reception and freeze up at times to the point of worthlessness (No, I don't like cycling around the Manhattan bridge because the stupid GPS has no clue where I am and I'm listening to it).

Oh! Never knew there were any issues with location. I use Google Maps for navigation and never had any issues.

T'hain Esh Kelch · May 17, 2015

I have always been satisfied with the GPS in my iPhone 4S, so I would much rather like to see a better Maps than higher resolution GPS.

But of course, this is Apple we're talking about.

jsamuels · May 17, 2015

For Apple Car?

Diode · May 17, 2015

jsamuels said:
For Apple Car?

That's what I was thinking. A self driving car needs a very detailed map / navigation system.

lincolntran · May 17, 2015

jsamuels said:
For Apple Car?

You might be on to something. A self-driving car would need super accurate gps to navigate safely. This company claims that their gps is accurate to the nearest centimeters?!?

On the other hand, with all of these map related acquisitions, Map will be so cool in the future. People are complaining about Apple Map now (I always find it very good for my navigations) and don't look to the future and just simply discard map. I call that short sighted.

gigapocket1 · May 17, 2015

I've seen some big advances in the Maps on my phone.. I still keep Google Maps as a backup.. But its definitely getting better..
My only disappointment is the search.. Some things aren't their.. or lets say I search for iHop.. Well if an iHop is 2 minutes away.. it only shows that iHop. It doesn't allow me to zoom out and see all iHop locations so that I can choose which one I want to go to.. And thats what sucks

jmh600cbr · May 17, 2015

unfortunately this isn't where apple maps is lacking. hope for iOS 9 maps update :apple:

joe-h2o · May 17, 2015

T'hain Esh Kelch said:
I have always been satisfied with the GPS in my iPhone 4S, so I would much rather like to see a better Maps than higher resolution GPS.

But of course, this is Apple we're talking about.

Because they couldn't possibly work on both things?

They're very aware that the data needs to be updated, as well as the location accuracy for a large number of people.

Anyone living in a big city will attest to that - while the data is good, the location accuracy can be poor since the antenna has a tough time getting a fix, whereas out in the country the accuracy is great, but the data might be lacking.

Jimmy James · May 17, 2015

Richardgm said:
I wonder if Apple knows that it is the data within the maps that is woefully inadequate?

Apple maps is unusable in the Caribbean and the Middle East.

Heaven forbid they continue to develop hardware while the software continues to play catch up, which was always going to take years to improve.

I primarily use GPS in the backcountry where there is no cell service and online maps cannot be used. Any improvement in signal retention is helpful.

avanpelt · May 17, 2015

Jimmy James said:
I primarily use GPS in the backcountry where there is no cell service and online maps cannot be used. Any improvement in signal retention is helpful.

Google Maps's offline maps feature would likely be helpful for you. Just select the area of the map you want to save locally on your phone while you have Wi-Fi or cell service. I used that feature while on a cruise last year and still had the little blue dot showing my location in the middle of the Caribbean Sea with my iPhone in Airplane Mode and not connected to Wi-Fi.

DavidTheExpert · May 17, 2015

Apple Maps is still disappointingly hit-or-miss so hopefully any maps related acquisition will bring an improvement!

AppleSauce007 · May 17, 2015

I predict Apple Maps will totally blow away Google Maps after after the June 10th WWDC announcements. They have been working on this release for about 3 years and have purchased the following companies:

PlaceBase
Poly9
C3 Technologies
WiFiSlam
Locationary
HopStop
Embark
BroadMap

Read about these companies expertise and you will better understand Apple Maps. The Apple Maps platform already beats Google Map in several categories not to mention user interface and architecture.

If Apple bought Coherent, it is for their expertise in working with Iridium's network which allows communication globally when out of cellular range. You can buy an Iridium Go on Amazon for about $800 which will allow you to communicate globally with your cell phone.

Check it out here: https://youtu.be/hcrBE5hkuRU

Check out this Stanford presentation...
http://scpnt.stanford.edu/pnt/PNT09/presentation_slides/12_Bencze_iGPS.pdf

Gasu E. · May 17, 2015

avanpelt said:
Google Maps's offline maps feature would likely be helpful for you. Just select the area of the map you want to save locally on your phone while you have Wi-Fi or cell service. I used that feature while on a cruise last year and still had the little blue dot showing my location in the middle of the Caribbean Sea with my iPhone in Airplane Mode and not connected to Wi-Fi.

Thank goodness! If you had used the notoriously inaccurate Apple Maps, you undoubtedly would have walked right off the side of your ship and fallen into the ocean.

centauratlas · May 17, 2015

I think the simple answer is one word: automobile.

Extreme precision is helpful for cars. It is nice for things like a watch or phone, but for any type of autonomous vehicle, precision is key. "Am I in the correct lane?" "How close am I to the light?" "Where exactly is the cross-walk?" "Where is the curb?" "Where are the train tracks?" "Where is the bridge?" etc.

Not to mention, extreme precision for the maps that would be used is critical. Where exactly is the intersection? So you know accurately on the maps, and you know accurately on the device (car or whatever).

In those cases, being off by a few feet, let alone 10-15 feet could be a disaster. Knowing you are within a few centimeters of where you are is terribly important. If you have pretty exact data, it decreases the processing needed in the vehicle.

Having reliable, accurate current location information, priceless.

gkarris · May 17, 2015

Wonder if this has anything to do with 3rd party external GPS units no longer working with iOS - Apple wants you to only buy their own...

ArtOfWarfare · May 17, 2015

Edit: I am incorrect, as two other people pointed out. The intentional GPS scrambling practice that I previously described in this post was ended in March of 2000.

Benjamin Frost · May 17, 2015

Richardgm said:
I wonder if Apple knows that it is the data within the maps that is woefully inadequate?

Apple maps is unusable in the Caribbean and the Middle East.

It's fine in first world countries. The backwaters of the world are less important.

ptb42 · May 17, 2015

ArtOfWarfare said:
But GPS satellites already have precision down to cms - the problem is that for civilian applications, the data is intentionally scrambled so it's only good to a few meters. I'm surprised the military didn't shut this down for bypassing the limitations that were intentionally put in place. If the military didn't care anymore, it seems they would just update the GPS satellite firmware to no longer scramble the info it sends to civilian devices.

No, selective availability has been turned off since 2000, at least in the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_Positioning_System#Selective_availability

Differential GPS services (like WAAS) can be used to improve the accuracy of the position, but only if available at your location.

In the absence of DGPS, you can still get accuracy down to centimeters, but not in real time. Surveyors, fault line monitors, etc. get more precise measurements by collecting data over a long period of time -- allowing convergence to a smaller positional error.

Marx55 · May 17, 2015

"greater accuracy and precision". How much?

corky5678 · May 17, 2015

Click "List Results"

gigapocket1 said:
I've seen some big advances in the Maps on my phone.. I still keep Google Maps as a backup.. But its definitely getting better..
My only disappointment is the search.. Some things aren't their.. or lets say I search for iHop.. Well if an iHop is 2 minutes away.. it only shows that iHop. It doesn't allow me to zoom out and see all iHop locations so that I can choose which one I want to go to.. And thats what sucks

Click "List Results" At the bottom.

jayducharme · May 17, 2015

I find it interesting how often Apple draws on the knowledge base at Stanford. Obviously, its location is ideal. But Apple seems to implicitly trust the work they do.

Apple Appears to Have Acquired GPS Firm Coherent Navigation [Confirmed]

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