Navigating the Future of Autonomous Cars: Leveraging Aerospace-Based Navigation Technology

Autonomous aerial and ground vehicles are one of the most exciting innovations of our time. However, one of the biggest challenges in bringing them to market is ensuring that they can navigate safely and efficiently.

For decades, aerospace engineers at Honeywell have been perfecting navigation systems for use in airplanes, spacecraft, and defense platforms. These systems are designed to operate in some of the most challenging and complex environments imaginable with a zero-tolerance approach to error, making them ideally suited for use in autonomous cars.

The Honeywell HGuide team has been, for over 6 years, bringing the decades of inertial navigation know-how to industrial applications in size, weight, and price appropriate formats.

Key highlights for the aerospace based navigation technology

One of the biggest advantages of aerospace-based navigation technology is its precision. These systems use a combination of GPS, IMUs and a host of other sensors to calculate the vehicle's position with incredible accuracy, importantly, also telling the system how confident we are in that accuracy at any point in time. This is especially important in autonomous cars, where even a small error in position can be catastrophic.

Another advantage of aerospace-based navigation technology is its ability to adapt to changing conditions. In aerospace, navigation systems need to be able to adjust for changes in altitude, air pressure, and other variables. Similarly, autonomous cars need to be able to navigate through a variety of weather conditions, road surfaces, and traffic patterns. Aerospace navigation technology is well-suited for this task because changing conditions in real-time is a long-established design requirement.

Most importantly, aerospace-based navigation technology is already well-established and widely used in life-critical applications. Aerospace engineers have been developing and refining these systems for decades, meaning that the technology is mature and reliable. By leveraging this existing technology, autonomous car manufacturers can accelerate their development timelines and reduce costs.

Using navigation technology from widely regarded aerospace companies like Honeywell, you can add the precision, adaptability, and reliability needed for the challenging tasks associated with autonomous cars. As autonomous car technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more advanced navigation systems being developed and deployed.