You’re misplaced. Even worse, there’s no cell sign. The very last thing protecting 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 bought 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 nearly 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 a giant 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 nicely, too: In 2014, his good friend Hari Simran Singh Khalsa died whereas mountaineering mountains in Mexico, having misplaced his method.)
However Singh says an much more vital near-term use — one he says is essential for nationwide safety — is that Skyline’s tech could be a backstop towards an more and more well-liked instrument of recent 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 laptop with a shrunk-down model of Pathfinder that may be put in on nearly 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 concept together with different tech to exactly strike targets, for instance. Singh stated Skyline’s breakthroughs are twofold: the flexibility to navigate with out GPS primarily anyplace by utilizing AI to rapidly acknowledge a scene, and conducting the identical feat on the sting, with out costly GPUs.
Singh ultimately needs Skyline’s tech to be ubiquitous, however he doesn’t see it as a GPS substitute. As a substitute, he thinks it is going to dwell alongside GPS, very like how in the present day our cellphone calls get routinely routed over cell towers, Wi-Fi, and even satellite tv for pc — usually with out us noticing.
“When you or I buy the next car, the next drone, or we sit in the next aircraft, it’ll be GPS-independent thanks to Pathfinder, and the ability for this software to work on simple edge computing that requires no cellular, no Wi-Fi,” Singh stated in an interview with TechCrunch.
It’s a lofty imaginative and prescient. However Singh is comfy taking massive 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 hitch 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 ultimately he was in a position to enlist within the Military. However he was nonetheless requested to surrender his articles of religion to hitch primary coaching. So he sued the Division of Protection — which rapidly caved and granted spiritual exemptions to Singh and others, and he grew to become an Military Captain and Battalion Sign Officer.
“I come from a family of entrepreneurs and military personnel, and you know, there’s some things that are worth fighting for,” he stated. “This was one of those things that, as an American, I was being asked to choose my First Amendment right to practice my faith or serve my country.”
It was due to the numerous army relationships Singh made all through this course of that he bought 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 so as 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 in regards to the dangers of GPS going darkish.) However it’s additionally already proving to be good enterprise.
“We’ve always been profitable, and so we’ve been very fortunate that people, our customers, have given us money to build the product before it was even ready to use,” he stated.
If you wish to study from Skyline Nav AI firsthand, and see dozens of extra pitches, attend useful workshops, and make the connections that drive enterprise outcomes, head right here to study extra about this 12 months’s Disrupt, held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.
