Swift Navigation aims for pinpoint GPS to guide autonomous cars

Video captured by a Google self-driving car, inset, is coupled with the same street scene as the data is visualized by the car during a presentation at a media preview of Google's prototype autonomous vehicles in Moutain View, California September 29, 2015. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/Files

Most GPS receivers are accurate within a 5- to 15-foot radius – the size of an above-ground swimming pool. That's enough to find the nearest Safeway or Starbucks, but would be a disaster for self-driving cars or drones. 

To address that market, San Francisco's Swift Navigation is developing GPS receivers that are accurate within less than an inch – the diameter of a quarter.