Canyon Navigation patents covering a way for drones and other autonomous machines to find their position without GPS are now up for sale. Hilco Global announced that its Intellectual Property Services group is seeking offers for the patent portfolio and related assets of Canyon Navigation, the company behind self-describing fiducial (SDF) technology. The intellectual property was built for guiding drones, industrial robots, and self-driving cars through places where satellite positioning is weak, blocked, or gone entirely.
The offering was announced from New York by the firm’s IP advisory arm, which focuses on valuing, advising on, and monetizing intangible assets. Interested parties have until September 17, 2026 to submit non-binding indications of interest, and the firm has asked anyone considering a bid to reach out to its IP Services team directly to learn more. The announcement describes Canyon Navigation as the developer of the SDF technology, and the portfolio being sold includes both the patents and the related assets tied to it.
Canyon Navigation Patents Target GPS-Degraded Environments
The core idea behind the Canyon Navigation patents is a landmark that can tell a machine exactly where it is. SDF-based landmarks optically transmit their own position, so a camera-equipped drone or robot can read a marker and calculate a precise location without ever receiving a satellite signal. Hilco Global has posted the Canyon Navigation patent acquisition opportunity on its intangible assets page, and it describes the approach as immune to both jamming and multipath errors. Because the positioning comes from the landmark itself, the system can either augment GPS or replace it completely.
That matters because GPS breaks down in more places than many people realize. The announcement points to urban canyons in large cities, where tall buildings block or bounce satellite signals, along with the insides of tunnels and buildings and areas where signals are being intentionally jammed. For an autonomous drone or ground robot, losing GPS in any of those settings can mean losing the ability to hold a position or complete a route. SDF technology is meant to fill that gap with a method that keeps working no matter what is happening to the satellite signal.
Low-Cost Scalable Positioning for Drones and Robots
Cost is one of the main selling points Hilco Global is emphasizing. According to the announcement, the SDF solution needs only two things: a measurement device, which is a camera, and the measurement targets, which are the SDF markers themselves. The markers are simple to produce, which means the same approach can grow from a single warehouse deployment all the way up to a city-wide positioning service without a fundamental change in hardware.
“It is even more critical in emerging autonomous-forward markets including warehouse automation, self-driving cars, construction inspection, eVTOL aircraft, drone delivery and other drone applications. SDFs are a low-cost, scalable solution to GPS degradation in those and other large, rapidly expanding markets where fiducial-based positioning is already being adopted.” Eric Hurwitz, Senior Director, Hilco IP Services
Hurwitz also noted that position data sits at the center of operations across automotive, aircraft, maritime, construction, and agriculture, among many other industries. His comments frame the Canyon Navigation patents as relevant not just to the drone sector but to any market where machines need to know where they are while satellite signals cannot be trusted. Fiducial-based positioning is already being adopted in several of those markets, which is part of the case Hilco Global is making to potential buyers.
Hilco Global is a subsidiary of ORIX Corporation USA and describes itself as a diversified financial services company offering professional services and capital solutions across retail, commercial industrial, real estate, manufacturing, brand, and intellectual property sectors. The company works with healthy, stressed, and distressed businesses, is based in Northbrook, Illinois, and has more than 810 professionals working on four continents. Through this sale process, the Canyon Navigation patents are being offered as a complete portfolio to any buyer building autonomous systems that must operate in GPS-degraded environments.
