Zephr.xyz – Namecheap customer – (United States)
The .xyz community is home to forward-thinking developers aimed at revolutionizing industries. Retail technology company EON.xyz is geared towards optimizing product traceability. Citizenship by Investment platform Baseflow.xyz strives to elevate global citizenship. Marketing platform SesameLabs.xyz aims to enhance the way marketers reach, engage, and attract customers. In this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, we’ll introduce you to a tech startup focused on revolutionizing GPS accuracy: Zephr.xyz.
Zephr.xyz is the online home of Zephr, a tech startup focused on next generation location-based solutions. Zephr aims to revolutionize GPS precision by utilizing raw satellite measurements from mobile phones and employing a software server for error correction, thereby significantly enhancing GPS accuracy. Founded by mapping professionals, Zephr’s approach, innovative and attracting investment interest, targets benefiting industries like rideshare, autonomy, and augmented reality with cost-effective, precise positioning solutions, reducing the need for extensive mapping. In November 2023, it was reported that the startup raised $3.5M to work toward their goal of improving GPS with zero hardware modifications.1
On Zephr.xyz, the company highlights “The Zephr Solution,” which aims to address the inconsistencies of GPS technology in mobile devices and wearables by introducing a networked GPS solution. Zephr claims this patent-pending technology enhances GPS accuracy by 5 to 10 times, achieving accuracy levels of under 1 meter. It achieves this enhancement by interconnecting satellite measurements across multiple devices, with a priority on user privacy. Zephr intends to provide this enhanced GPS as a standalone software development kit (SDK) product for mobile app integration, potentially unlocking new markets such as AR, gaming, mobility, logistics, safety, sports, and mapping. The company asserts that improved GPS accuracy can have significant economic value, with each second of enhancement translating into millions of dollars.
Zephr aims to tackle current GPS technology limitations, which are often plagued by inaccuracies from building bounce and blocked line-of-sight signals. Their innovative approach is designed to transform every mobile phone into a base station, leveraging raw satellite measurements to generate an ensemble error correction. This process aims to significantly enhance GPS accuracy and consistency, mitigating the issues associated with signal interference in urban environments.
Zephr.xyz explores potential applications for GPS improvements, highlighting the advantages of their technology in various fields. For example, they emphasize that achieving optimized GPS accuracy can significantly enhance augmented reality experiences, enabling a wide range of applications without the need for costly global 3D mapping efforts. Additionally, Zephr suggests that improved GPS accuracy can revolutionize gaming, enabling new interactive game mechanics such as precise tagging, obstacle avoidance, and location-based interactions, potentially enhancing the gaming experience for users.
Sean Gorman, CEO of Zephr, has a diverse background in technology and academia. Prior to his current role, he served as an engineering manager at Snap, focusing on consumer mapping and augmented reality. He joined Snap through the acquisition of Pixel8earth, a 3D mapping project. Before that, Sean worked at Maxar (formerly DigitalGlobe) as the Head of Technical Product Management, contributing to the development of GBDX and machine learning tools for satellite imagery. Sean’s academic background includes a PhD from George Mason University, where he conducted research in complex networks and geospatial technologies. He has also been recognized as an expert in critical infrastructure and served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. We had the opportunity to speak with Sean about his decision to build on .xyz. As he explained, “We went with a .xyz domain because we are a GPS technology company and latitude, longitude, altitude are often expressed as xyz coordinates. So it was a great fit since the end product of Zephr is a xyz set of coordinates.” You can learn more by following the company on LinkedIn and by visiting Zephr.xyz.
1.https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/02/zephr-emerges-from-stealth-with-3-5m-and-plans-to-create-a-networked-gps-using-cell-phones/
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