Patent Acquisition Opportunity: Canyon Navigation
Hilco Global is seeking offers for the assets of Canyon Navigation, which developed self-describing fiducial technology for use in autonomous navigation in GPS-degraded environments.
Available assets include: U.S. issued patents and pending applications, and related software algorithms, simulation data, and other know-how.
Indication of interest deadline: SEPTEMBER 17, 2026
Canyon Navigation’s patented technology provides an alternative method for autonomous localization in GPS-degraded environments, where optical fiducials are emerging as critical infrastructure to allow a wide variety of machines to determine their exact position relative to a mapped coordinate frame. These applications represent large, rapidly expanding markets that are already adopting fiducial-based positioning.
The portfolio includes the following patents, with priority dating back to May 2016:
- Drone Delivery Systems: SDF markers can guide aircraft to safe, repeatable landing zones without reliance on satellite signals or expensive sensors.
- Warehouse/Logistics Robotics: SDF markers enable fleets of mobile robots to localize themselves using printed or illuminated floor markers, reducing system costs while improving reliability and throughput.
- Military/Defense Systems: The current warfare environment continues to advance electronically, fostering increasing opportunity for GPS interference. To maintain operations in GPS-denied or GPS-spoofed environments, non-satellite-based navigation is becoming a requirement in autonomous systems rather than a supplementary feature, and the Department of Defense and NATO support expansion into systems that circumvent GPS jamming, spoofing, or inaccessibility.
- Autonomous ground vehicles: optical markers in tunnels, parking structures, or loading docks to augment sensor fusion for driverless vehicles
- Urban air mobility / eVTOL aircraft: fiducial-encoded vertiports to provide precision landing
- AR/VR spatial computing platforms: optical anchors to align virtual content with the physical world
- Industrial and infrastructure inspection robots
The portfolio’s broad applicability across commercial delivery, warehouse robotics, and autonomous aviation makes it attractive both for defensive acquisition and proactive licensing across multiple high-growth sectors.
Hilco Global is seeking non-binding indications of interest (IOI) to acquire the assets of Canyon Navigation. IOIs should be submitted by September 17, 2026.
Interested parties should reach out to Hilco Global to obtain a nondisclosure agreement for access to a virtual data room with additional information including claim charts and evidence of use documents.
