Australia’s Q-CTRL has announced the first real-world demonstration of its commercially viable quantum navigation system. The system works without Global Positioning Systems (GPS), cannot be jammed, and is already proving to be drastically more accurate than anything else.
This is a big deal as many vehicles worldwide (including planes and cars) rely heavily on GPS for navigation. However, GPS can be jammed, spoofed, or even denied, especially during military conflicts or cyberattacks.
This is a growing concern for national security and autonomous vehicles, which need constant, accurate location data. In fact, according to a press release by Q-CTRL, GPS jamming has been shown to disrupt around 1,000 flights every day.
An outage on this scale is estimated to cost the global economy around $1 billion daily. Therefore, finding a reliable backup to GPS is critical, especially for defense and autonomous systems.
To this end, Q-CTRL developed a new system called “Ironstone Opal,” which uses quantum sensors to navigate without GPS. It’s passive (meaning it doesn’t emit signals that could be detected or jammed) and highly accurate.
Instead of relying on satellites, Q-CTRL’s system can read the Earth’s magnetic field, which varies slightly depending on location (like a magnetic fingerprint or map). The system can determine where you are by measuring these variations using magnetometers.
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