GPS

Pulsars have been proposed as a space navigation system in the past. Now NASA has demonstrated the viability of the idea, with an experiment showing that a spacecraft can constantly and automatically calculate its position by tracking the perfectly-predictable X-ray signals from an array of pulsars.

There’s a ton of trackers to find items that are always vanishing around the house, but most aren’t much good long-range. Samsung is now jumping into the tracker game with the Connect Tag, which uses a cellular connection to get a GPS readout essentially anywhere there’s a cell phone tower.

​We've seen a number of electronic bike locks lately, and we've also seen several GPS units that let you track the whereabouts of your two-wheeler if it gets stolen. The new Deeper lock, however, combines the two in one bicycle-mounted weatherproof device.

Mission Bicycle Company first caught our attention when it introduced a bike that looks black in the daylight, but reflects bright white in the dark. Now, the company has unveiled another interesting two-wheeled creation, the Lyra, which takes its own approach to visibility – and security.

​If you want GPS-enabled navigation on your motorcycle, you can of course just mount your smartphone on the handlebars. According to Steven Friedlander, however, trying to look at that little screen while riding isn't an ideal setup. His alternative? Gloves that'll show you where to go.

GPS might seem like a godsend, but apart from occasionally leading drivers astray, researchers at University College London (UCL) suggest that simply following instructions given by your navigational app could have another negative effect: allowing parts of your brain to go dormant.

Golfers have a growing number of gadgets to pick from to help them improve their game, and new to the range is the Approach G30 from Garmin, a handheld accessory with built-in GPS that can help players weigh up courses and track their stats.

Add-on head-up displays are a nice option for those who want to upgrade their car, but can't afford a car upgrade. We spent around a month with the Navdy HUD and found it to be a welcome addition to our dashboard.

An optical clock built by a team led by Matthias Lezius of Menlo Systems not only has the potential to one day produce centimeter-level GPS location fixing, but is capable of operating in a zero-gravity environment.​

Wearable walkie-talkies for outdoor enthusiasts are slowly growing into a significant category. The StarVox adds one more, and not only is it a two-way radio, it's an outdoor-specific smartwatch with touchscreen, GPS, pedometer and more.

GPS is great unless you lose the signal, so the University of California, Riverside is developing an alternative navigation system that uses secondary radio signals, such as from cell phone systems and Wi-Fi, and is claimed to be highly reliable, consistent, and tamper-proof.

To help avoid the inconvenience of losing a GPS navigation signal in tunnels, a system of wireless transmitters, known as Waze Beacons, have been developed that can send navigation signals directly to mobile devices via Bluetooth