LAS VEGAS — At 145,000 attendees, CES 2026 was close to pre-pandemic levels. The massive trade show featured most mapping companies, fewer automotive companies, GNSS vendors and others.
One company, GEODNET, demonstrated the Geoswarm home security drone, showcasing how the company’s decentralized real-time kinematic (RTK) network delivers centimeter-level precision positioning for reliable autonomous operations in consumer applications.
The Geoswarm drone launches from a compact docking station on a home’s roof or exterior, using GEODNET’s high-accuracy location data to navigate precisely, return to its base, and land safely inside the station without manual intervention.
CEO Mike Horton also highlighted GEODNET’s consumer-focused RTK hardware, including a $150 device that mounts on a car to provide centimeter-accurate positioning for everyday vehicles. The company won an CES award for its RTK survey receiver, priced at $695, which serves as a consumer-grade surveying tool.
Horton said that GEODNET’s blockchain-based network of reference stations powers these capabilities through a token economy: infrastructure builders are rewarded in GEODNET tokens, while users’ service subscriptions automatically repurchase tokens in the background. The token has performed strongly since launching two and a half years ago and is now tradable on Coinbase.
Raven Connected and Swift Navigation announced a partnership to integrate Swift’s Skylark precise positioning service with Raven’s AI-driven video telematics platform, aiming to improve infrastructure management for municipalities and fleets. The collaboration uses centimeter-accurate GPS and edge-computing AI to automatically detect, map and manage road assets, enabling lane-level precision and a real-time “digital twin” of road networks.
Intrado Life & Safety and SBD Automotive released a new whitepaper at CES 2026 concluding that Advanced Automatic Collision Notification could help save more than 2,000 lives annually in the United States by accelerating emergency response after crashes. Based on a national survey of more than 5,000 drivers, the study found AACN could reduce roadway fatalities by 13.2 percent by automatically transmitting detailed crash, vehicle and occupant data directly to 9-1-1 systems.
Anello Photonics unveiled its new Anello Aerial INS, a compact inertial navigation system that combines the company’s Silicon Photonic Optical Gyroscope (SiPhOG) technology with integrated multi-band GNSS to provide resilient navigation for demanding aerial platforms. The system is designed for use on beyond-visual-line-of-sight drones, ISR and special-mission aircraft, heavy-lift and cargo UAVs, and other autonomous aerial vehicles.
YellowScan rolled out its CloudStation Viewer that enables users to understand massive lidar point clouds locally, without complex cloud infrastructures, while keeping full control over the data, the company said. The solution addresses a growing challenge across the geospatial ecosystem, as LiDAR adoption accelerates in fields such as mapping, civil engineering, environmental monitoring, education, and public communication, the company said.
AT&T T -0.32%↓ rolled out its IoT Network Intelligence, with an initial offering, IoT Network Intelligence Standard, to equip enterprises with a broad set of 4G and 5G network performance KPIs and insights for devices connected to the AT&T network. A key feature include Location-Based Performance, which gives insights on how IoT devices perform across different geographic areas for a clearer perspective on device operations.
