Advanced Navigation, a provider of navigation and autonomous systems, has announced the appointment of Pawel Michalak as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead the next phase of its technology evolution.
This appointment arrives at a critical juncture for global positioning, as harsh environments, electronic warfare, and deep-sea or space missions push GPS-only-based navigation to its breaking point.
As CTO, Pawel will lead Advanced Navigation in shifting toward an approach rooted in scientific resilience: a Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) architecture that ensures reliable navigation without reliance on any single signal. This will include the expansion of engineering teams across Europe, powering the creation of entirely new navigation capabilities for the most extreme and contested environments.
Advancing the Next Phase of the Autonomy Revolution
Speaking of the appointment, Advanced Navigation CEO Chris Shaw said, “There was once a time where we could rely solely on satellite data for navigation, however that’s no longer the case. In today’s world, we need to treat signal anomalies, disruptions and unreliability as a given. This requires a fundamental shift in the way we go about building resilience and autonomy.
It demands the discovery of new innovations, new architectures, and new ways of thinking. Pawel has the acumen to translate empirical research into breakthrough technologies for the real world, at speed. He brings the rare combination of academic depth, industrial knowledge and long-term vision required to build the next generation of PNT systems – not just for today’s challenges, but for those yet to emerge.”
Building a “Nervous System” for Alternative PNT
Pawel will spearhead Advanced Navigation’s mission to industrialise a multi-sensor, inertial-centric architecture, fusing inertial sensing, photonics, robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum sensing, underwater acoustics, and advanced GPS antennas and receivers, among other PNT technologies. Together, these sensors form the “nervous system” of autonomous platforms operating across subsea, land, air and space.
“There is no one silver bullet in navigation. The future of Position, Navigation and Timing will be fully resilient and autonomous, built on the fusion of raw data from inertial, laser, vision, quantum, and other advanced sensors,” Pawel said.
