California Researchers: We Can Now Pinpoint GPS Accuracy to Within A Centimeter

Jennifer van der Kleut

Exciting research coming out of the University of California at Riverside (UCR) this week could have a huge impact on not only the progress toward driverless technology, but also airline travel and several other industries as well.

Thanks to smartphone apps and even the somewhat-ancient dashboard device, GPS navigation has become an essential part of modern transportation. However, in most cases it can do no better than pinpoint the street or even the block you are on.

That is, until UCR’s new DGPS system.

Explains head of research Jay Farrell to ScienceAlert.com, new technology known as DGPS, or Differential Global Positioning System, can more accurately pinpoint one’s whereabouts thanks to additional data from ground-based reference stations, instead of traditional GPS’ satellite-based systems, which are usually no more accurate than about 10 meters.

Farrell says DGPS can get it down to within one centimeter, or less than half an inch.

“Farrell and his team developed a new technique that supplements existing GPS data with on-board inertial measurements from a sensor. The merging of those measurements in itself isn’t new, but in the past it’s required super-expensive computers to combine the two data sources, which meant it was never going to work in your car or smartphone, regardless of how accurate it was,” explain the folks at ScienceAlert.

“But the researchers have now created a new set of algorithms, which reduce the computations and processing power needed to integrate the two systems by several orders of magnitude, making the technology a whole lot more affordable.”

In other words, being more affordable, it’s quite possible we could see the technology in personal and mobile devices in the future.

This could have major implications not only for driverless technology, but also airline navigation, smartphones and other wearable technology, and even agriculture.

“Achieving this level of accuracy with computational loads that are suitable for real-time applications on low-power processors will not only advance the capabilities of highly specialized navigation systems, like those used in driverless cars and precision agriculture, but it will also improve location services accessed through mobile phones and other personal devices, without increasing their cost,” Farrell said to Phys.org.