Advanced Navigation

Advanced Navigation is an Australian navigation and autonomy company founded in Sydney in 2012 by engineers Chris Shaw and Xavier Orr, out of Orr's research into using neural network methods inside inertial navigation filters. Shaw remains chief executive, and the board is chaired by former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. The company has since built vertically integrated manufacturing in Australia covering photonics, electronics and fiber-optic gyroscope components, which is unusual for a firm of its age and is central to how it sells itself.

The product range breaks into four groups. MEMS GNSS/INS is the volume line: Certus is the dual-antenna workhorse with three degrees per hour bias instability, Certus Evo pushes MEMS accuracy to 0.03 degrees in roll and pitch, and the Certus Mini N, D and A variants shrink the same technology for small platforms, with the D adding dual-antenna GNSS heading. Fiber-optic systems sit above them under the Boreas name. Boreas A50 and D50 are the compact digital FOG units with a north-seeking gyrocompass, and Boreas D70 and D90 reach 0.01 to 0.005 degrees of roll and pitch accuracy for long-duration navigation where GNSS is denied or degraded. The digital FOG technology behind them came out of work with RMIT University.

The third group is standalone inertial sensing without a navigation solution attached: Motus, an ultra-compact high-accuracy MEMS IMU whose second generation the company claims performs beyond many fiber-optic systems, plus the Certus Mini A and the Boreas A70 and A90 as FOG-based IMU and AHRS options. The fourth group is acoustic and subsea. Subsonus is an ultra-short baseline acoustic positioning system, Subsonus Tag is a battery-powered acoustic transponder, and Hydrus is a compact autonomous underwater vehicle with a 4K camera producing georeferenced survey imagery. Around all of this sit accessories including GNSS Compass, odometry and air data inputs, antennas and post-processing software.

Software is a separate business. Cloud Ground Control is a hosted platform that connects, monitors and controls drones and uncrewed vehicles from a web browser over 4G and 5G, across manufacturers, and has been used in emergency response and disaster relief work.

Defense is one of several markets rather than the whole company. Advanced Navigation also sells into aerospace, automotive, mining, marine, subsea, surveying and agriculture. Its defense pitch rests on three things: navigation that survives GPS denial, an ITAR-free supply chain that avoids the long lead times of legacy Western suppliers, and open architecture for faster integration. Named application areas include tactical vehicle navigation, radar systems, counter-UAS, ISR and autonomous vehicle guidance.

Space is the other frontier. The company acquired Vai Photonics, an Australian National University spin-out, in 2022, and folded its laser-based photonic sensing work into a Canberra research facility. That became Project LUNA, a laser velocimetry system for lunar descent and surface navigation, which received 5.2 million dollars from the Australian Space Agency and was slated for demonstration on an Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander. Advanced Navigation has also worked with Q-CTRL on quantum-assured navigation and with CSIRO on photonic integrated circuits. It raised a 108 million dollar Series B led by KKR in 2022 and remains privately held.