General Orbit

General Orbit develops magnetic positioning hardware and sensor-fusion software for vehicles operating where satellite navigation is unreliable. The Ann Arbor company combines magnetic measurements with algorithms designed to separate a platform’s electromagnetic noise from useful environmental signals. Its approach uses geophysical magnetic structure as a positioning reference, with intended applications in uncrewed aircraft, maritime systems, ground vehicles and spacecraft. The business originated from work at the University of Michigan’s Magnetometer Lab.

General Orbit markets an integrated sensing and processing architecture intended to reduce the custom shielding and integration effort associated with magnetic navigation. Public consortium material describes field-data collection and replayed GPS-denied localization tests, with performance bounded to those experiments. Michigan selected the company for a drone-navigation pilot in Detroit’s Transportation Innovation Zone. This supports a development-and-validation stage; it does not establish a fielded navigation system on every platform or immunity to all interference.