As anyone who has ever missed a freeway exit while relying on navigation software can tell you, even at its best GPS is something of a guess. With a margin of error of around a few feet, GPS is can be decent enough for guiding cars on roads, but the wide range limits GPS to environments where a few feet of difference isn't a huge deal. A new, hyper-accurate system, developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, can upgrade GPS accuracy from a few feet to a few inches.
GPS is really good at finding where people are, typically with a margin of error of just a few meters. That's fine if you're using GPS for driving directions, but if you're, say, a drone operator, you might want to navigate the sky more precisely, as a few feet can mean the difference between flying between buildings and crashing into them. Created by Swift Navigation, the Piksi (pronounced "pixie") GPS receiver could give unmanned aerial vehicles a GPS signal accurate to an inch. The project has already received nearly six times its initial funding goal on Kickstarter.
