The low cost GPS alternative from Stern AI actually works
We have all experienced this moment of frustration when the GPS sin and you miss an outing on the highway. The team at Tear you haveWho builds a low -cost GPS alternative, says that it is because current technology is limited by its dependence on satellite positioning.
Stern said he understood how to locate the position of a vehicle using only card information and existing sensor data from a vehicle. The company’s argument: It is a cheap system that does not require any additional costly sensor.
In SxswThe Startup based in Austin has demonstrated exclusively for Techcrunch that it could “derive a position of nothing”.
“No triangulation, no satellites, no wifi, nothing. We just think we are driving, “said Brett Harrison, co-founder and president, in Techcrunch while Cyrus Behroozi, a developer of senior software in Tern, loaded the demo on his iPhone. “It is really a change of game because when we move away from triangulation, which limits technology, we now have the ability to be fully of this grid.”
Harrison says that this breakthrough is important for several reasons. From a commercial point of view, companies that rely on GPS – including co -hail applications to delivery companies – lose time, money and gas whenever their drivers must double due to the positioning of defective GPS.
Most importantly, our most critical systems such as aviation to the response to disaster in precision agriculture are based on GPS. Foreign opponents have already shown that they can GPS signals of trainingThis could have catastrophic effects both on economics and national security.
The United States has noted that it wanted to prioritize alternatives to general practitioners. During his first term, President Donald Trump signed a executive decree To reduce dependence on a single source of PNT services (positioning, navigation and synchronization), such as GPS. There is also Several other initiatives What direct agencies and bodies such as the Ministry of Defense and the National Security Council to ensure a resilient PNT by testing and integrating non -GPS technologies.
“”Deepseek came out And said it cost $ 6 million to do what needed [OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies] Billions to do, ”said Harrison. “To get this point through a real -time card in a vehicle, it took billions of dollars in the government and a few decades. We did it with less than $ 2 million. »»
Sterne came out of stealth in February 2024 and announced his $ 4.4 million in seeds A few months later. It is a quick turnaround to carry out the type of positioning that I experienced this week in SXSW.
Test the Tern system in Austin
To start the demonstration, Behroozi connected its 2019 Honda Civic to its phone via Bluetooth, allowing the STERNE application to remove data from existing vehicle sensors. He noted that TERN technology can be integrated directly into vehicle models, from 2009 and more.
Usually, Tern defines the position manually to accelerate things, but for our demo, the team wanted a “cold start”. Fehroozi has extinguished the location services of his phone, so that the Stern’s intelligent system had only a cache card from a 500 square mile border around Austin and vehicle sensors with which work.
As the car was driving, the system picked up the road data to work on “convergence”. It took about 10 minutes for the system to reach the complete convergence of a cold start, but Harrison assured me that he usually took about one to two minutes when he has a starting point. In addition, we were stuck in a little traffic, which has slowed things down, added Fehroozi.
Harrison noted that the Tern system can also locate vehicles in parking garages, tunnels and mountains, which GPS has trouble doing. Harrison would not explain exactly how, saying that the information is “owners”.
We drove for a few more minutes after the system reached complete convergence, and I regularly looked at our precise movements in a way that seemed as good as, and in some cases better than GPS. This has become more obvious when we drove in the city center of Austin, where my Google cards regularly organized me throughout the week while I was sailing on the urban streets dotted with imposing buildings.
Harrison said that Tern system is also safer from the point of view of confidentiality because with the GPS, “if someone knows your identifier, he can find you at any time.”
“Our system is a total closed loop,” he said. “Right now, we are not emitting anything. He independently draws his own position [via on edge computing]There are therefore no external contact points. »»
Scale
“We have implemented the company and the solution from the start to be evolving. If you look at this Waymo car and all the equipment that is integrated, we do not see that it takes place on a Nissan feels soon. It’s just too expensive. “Said Harrison, pointing to us towards a Waymo-Uber Robotaxi.
“At the manufacturer’s level, if [Tern] is implemented in the infotainment system, it is just software Download, therefore extraordinarily scalable. All new vehicles have the sensor data we need. Card data already exists with all suppliers today. So it’s quite simple.
The future potential customers of Tern could be anyone, from car manufacturers to mobile phone manufacturers, from Google to Uber. Harrison said that the startup was open to business growth, but also to an acquisition.
“The main thing is to put this in the hands of the economy, with growing threats and the emergence of technology that does not make its full potential because of the limits of triangulation,” said Harrison.
He noted that Stern explores the possibilities with the government. The startup recently received a contract scholarship from the United States Ministry of Transport after a week of demonstration of its technology as well as nine other companies around the world.
“We hope we have done a good job to show government what is possible now with American innovation,” said Harrison.
