The world is racing to deploy autonomous systems, production is barely keeping up with the growing demand.
Advanced Navigation America, the U.S. arm of global robotics company Advanced Navigation, is expanding manufacturing in Huntsville, Alabama, to build and deliver some of the world’s most complex navigation technology at the speed and scale American industries depend on.
Backed by a $110 million Series C round, this new Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Center of Excellence will research, develop, and manufacture deep technologies across fiber optics, MEMs, laser sensing, photonics, vision-based systems, AI, and quantum sensing.
It will help autonomous systems navigate the world’s harshest environments when GPS cannot be relied on, and accelerate U.S mergers and acquisitions, bringing complementary technologies and expertise into the company’s portfolio.
These investments will grow its U.S. workforce and strengthen its secure, onshore capability to support U.S. programs.
Mike Cohen, President of Advanced Navigation America, said resilient navigation is becoming the backbone of the autonomy shaping the future of defense, space, marine, mining and heavy industry.
“The challenge for America is making sure the industrial base can produce these vital technologies as quickly and reliably as demand is growing. That is the gap we are addressing in Huntsville: bringing high-performance manufacturing, faster delivery and missionization closer to the customers and industries that depend on it.”
Chuck Matheny, Vice President of U.S. Operations at Advanced Navigation America, said one cannot separate engineering from manufacturing with technology this precise.
“Production, calibration and validation all have to work together. Bringing those capabilities under one roof gives us control from the sensor through to the finished system. This means we can move beyond the limitations of legacy navigation and build for the applications driving industry today, and those still taking shape.”
Advanced Navigation on Hardest Technology
Building fiber optic gyroscope (FOC) sensors precise enough to detect the Earth’s rotation requires engineering at a level similar to semiconductor fabrication, where even microscopic variations can affect performance. That makes the manufacturing technique itself part of the underlying intellectual property.
Advanced Navigation is one of a few companies globally with the capability to produce strategic-grade FOGs and laser velocity sensors at scale. These technologies provide the precision required for defense and heavy industrial systems to understand where they are and how they are moving when GPS is denied, degraded or unavailable across any harsh environment.
Advanced Navigation’s technology is deployed across land, air, sea and space, ranging from deep underground mining and maritime operations to defense systems and lunar exploration. The company has more than 100,000 systems deployed globally.
Cohen says the challenge is not about inventing better technology, it’s being able to manufacture it reliably, at scale, and get it into the hands of our customers in weeks rather than years.
“That is what we’re building in Huntsville.”
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