Our work

Positioning, navigation, and timing

Delivering the most advanced PNT solutions with quantum advantage.

As featured in
The New York Times

Address the number one strategic threat

GPS rules our daily lives, but it has recently come under threat.  Over 1000 flights per day suffer deliberate jamming, putting flight safety at risk. Spoofing attacks are disrupting global shipping.   And even a short GPS outage could be economically devastating, costing over $1B per day. In an era of growing international conflict, GPS denial is becoming a weapon of great economic and strategic importance.

We lead the world in delivering true resilience against GPS unavailability via a new generation of quantum-assured navigation solutions for air, sea, and land.

Precise GPS-free quantum navigation by geophysical map matching

Ironstone Opal delivers reliable GPS-free navigation for land, sea, and air, leveraging unjammable geophysical map matching and offering a quantum-assured solution in GPS-denied environments. It incorporates Q-CTRL’s proprietary software-ruggedized gravitational and magnetic sensors with world-leading denoising and positioning software to deliver you a full-stack navigational solution to support your most challenging missions.

Compatible with crewed aircraft, uncrewed airborne systems, and maritime deployments, Ironstone Opal delivers resilience for defense and commercial operations to improve efficiency, safety, and mission effectiveness.

The only GPS-free navigation with a quantum advantage

Ironston Opal hardware

Delivering a new generation of quantum inertial navigation

Q-CTRL has partnered with Lockheed Martin to deliver a new generation of ultra-stable quantum inertial navigation systems compatible with the most challenging operating conditions.  

The partnership focuses on how Q-CTRL’s AI-powered infrastructure software can help stabilize quantum devices against the performance-sapping platform noise arising from the moving vehicle itself.  

Q-CTRL’s globally unique expertise in stabilizing quantum hardware against noise and interference is borne out in the technical literature, and is letting us leapfrog the global research community in its efforts to bring quantum inertial navigation to real defense platforms.

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Photo of a commercial airplane taking off

Real-world use cases

Q-CTRL

Delivering quantum advantage to airborne systems

Q-CTRL’s Ironstone Opal delivers GPS-free quantum navigation, achieving 94X better performance than INS in real-world flight and ground vehicle trials.

94X

improvement over the performance of a strategic-grade inertial navigation system in real flight tests

Read the case study

We achieved an accuracy in some trials comparable to a sharpshooter hitting a bullseye from 1,000 yards away. But because our quantum-assured navigation system allows a vehicle to position itself accurately irrespective of how far it’s travelled, by analogy that sharpshooter can hit the same bullseye no matter how far away they move from the target.

Michael J. Biercuk
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
,
Q-CTRL
Advanced Navigation

Developing a quantum-assured navigation solution

Partnering with Advanced Navigation to develop a hybrid approach to quantum navigation enabling high positioning accuracy over very long periods of GPS denial.

>180X

Navigational stability improvement.

Read the case study

Autonomous quantum sensors in space exploration will be invaluable in leveraging extraterrestrial resources for permanent human bases on the Moon and Mars.

Steven Marshall
Premier of South Australia
,
Advanced Navigation
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Make quantum technology useful
Contact us
Alice & BobAtom ComputingChalmers UniversityIBM QuantumImperial College LondonION QNorthwestern UniversityRigetti

Frequently asked questions

Q-CTRL builds several complementary technologies based on trapped atoms. These atoms respond to external magnetic and gravitational fields as well as accelerations, and these tiny responses can be measured with laser beams. Because the response comes from the properties of the atoms, the hardware doesn't require any calibration and is very stable over long periods. With those measured signals, a navigation computer can either compare readings to a local map (map matching) or calculate position and velocity from measured accelerations (inertial navigation).

The quantum navigation systems built by Q-CTRL cannot be jammed or spoofed by an adversary.  They function in any weather or visibility conditions and are completely passive, ensuring stealthy operations.  Overall quantum navigation provides a robust backup when GPS is untrusted or unavailable, and is a complement to other navigation solutions.

Q-CTRL is currently engaging select partners for additional field trails and system-integration demonstrations. Please contact the Q-CTRL team for further details.

Q-CTRL is the first and only company in the world to deliver field validation of quantum sensing technology for navigation. This includes real field trials on airborne, ground-based, and maritime platforms. Contact the Q-CTRL team for further details.

Q-CTRL produces infrastructure software for quantum computing and full-stack quantum-assured navigation systems including its own quantum sensing hardware. Q-CTRL does not sell sensor components, but the Ironstone Opal quantum-assured navigation system is now available for presale.Contact the Q-CTRL team for further details.