Navigation Anywhere and Everywhere

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Put yourself in the shoes of a taxi driver. While you’re on the job, you receive an order from your preferred taxi service provider. Gladly, you accept. When getting closer to your destination you notice that no one is waiting at the location that was pinged on your device.

When calling the customer, it appears that their actual waiting location is on the complete opposite side, and now you’ve added an unnecessary journey to your drive, and your customer is probably quite annoyed that you arrived at the wrong place.

This problem is incredibly common, whether it be with services such as door to door food delivery applications, or GPS based navigation apps. Those types of confusions happen all the time, and in business where time equals money, those mistakes are critical.

An Israel startup by the name of ALMA Technologies, named after the founder’s first born daughter, is spearheading a unique solution. By utilizing already existing technology that is located inside every smart device, the company is able to accurately predict your location, even in place with no reception such as underground tunnels, parking spaces and more.

The company’s founder Dr. Barak Or, an expert on Deep Learning and navigation systems, understood that there is an urgent need for navigation without relaying on GPS technology, and decided to establish a dedicated company that consists of field professionals to solve this pressing issue.

Instead of relying on unstable connections and GPS, the company makes use of commercial IMU (inertial measurement unit) sensors that are implemented in smart phones, vehicles and other devices, to allow for accurate navigation, calculation of speed, type of terrain and even how awake the driver of a vehicle is. For only 20 cents a sensor, an everyday appliance is transformed into a powerful navigation tool.

Not only is this solution applicable to the private sector, but this technology is also useful for defense and military purposes, where navigation near spoofers is common and incredibly critical. A military force must know the location of its member, as well as the physical layout of the location they are operating in, and those often do not house a stable internet connection, if at all.

To contact , you can reach the company through their official website.