As the global autonomous robotics market is set to reach $14B by 2030, Cortex AI will make Emesent’s proven GPS-denied stack commercially available to robotics companies and OEMs
Brisbane, August 5, 2026 ― Emesent, an autonomous mapping and robotics company, has been awarded a $3 million AUD grant from the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) program to develop and commercialize Cortex AI, an open, modular autonomy platform that enables any robotic system or vehicle to navigate, map, and operate in challenging and GPS-denied environments.
Modern industries are under growing pressure to automate; driven by the need for higher productivity, improved worker safety, and an explosion in commercial robotic hardware across mining, construction, defense, infrastructure, and beyond. But almost all automation systems today share a critical vulnerability: they lack advanced autonomy or depend on GPS. Underground mines, building interiors, tunnels, and contested military environments provide no GPS signal, and building GPS-denied navigation from scratch typically requires five or more years and several millions of dollars in R&D. Emesent's Cortex AI is being developed to eliminate these barriers.
The project, valued at a total of $7.4 million AUD and funded by the Australian government, is led by Emesent with support from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and EPE and is focused on delivering sovereign capability, accelerating Australian robotics development, and enabling global competitiveness. Combining Emesent’s proven navigation re-architected into modular APIs, QUT’s physical AI for scene understanding, and validation through EPE’s field-proven robotics solutions, Cortex AI will:
Decrease time-to-market for robotics applications: Cortex AI eliminates the need to develop GPS-denied autonomy from scratch. A hardware-agnostic robotics operating system for aerial and ground robots, as well as vehicle automation; the platform will drastically compress integration timelines through layered APIs and SDKs and new, advanced capabilities.
Power solutions purpose-built for nuanced use cases: Because Cortex AI handles the hard autonomy and AI foundation, partners can invest in domain-specific capability rather than reinventing the navigation stack. The result is more capable, more fit-for-purpose solutions than any single vendor building everything alone could deliver.
Open Emesent’s proven autonomy tech to more markets: Pivoting Emesent from single-purpose products to an open platform business model, Cortex AI will enable expansion through partners and OEMs. Every Cortex AI-powered system in the field means more data flowing into Emesent Aura Cloud, Emesent's all-in-one processing and visualization platform. This continuously improves spatial intelligence quality and makes the platform more valuable for every client's deployment.
“Emesent’s vision is to be world leaders in autonomous digitization of the most challenging and unreachable places on earth. That starts with robots that can navigate and sense autonomously, without GPS, on any platform,” said Dr. Farid Kendoul, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Emesent.
“Our team estimates that the GPS-denied autonomous mapping and navigation industry will reach $14B by 2030. Cortex AI is the engine that makes this scale possible, opening our proven autonomy to OEMs and partners so that more Emesent-powered systems can operate in the field, feeding richer data into Aura Cloud, and closing the loop between the physical world and the digital twin.”
A working prototype of Cortex AI has already been deployed with more than a dozen early adopter organizations across defense, mining, and the built environment and integrated into drones, ground robots, and heavy vehicles. Cortex AI is being built on the same SLAM and autonomy technologies already proven in Emesent's award-winning Hovermap and GX1 products – field-hardened and deployed at scale in more than 50 countries.
Emesent's Early Access Program for Cortex AI is already underway, with early adopters across defense, mining, and infrastructure integrating and field-testing the platform today. Robotics companies and OEMs with a GPS-denied navigation or autonomy challenge are invited to reach out to explore how Cortex AI could fit their platform.
Contact hello@emesent.com for more details.
Emesent will host an ‘open house’ event scheduled for 20 August at Emesent’s Brisbane HQ in conjunction with Surveyors Australia as part of Australia’s National Science Week of activities.
Titled Surveying the future: The high-value skills and advanced technologies driving the science, cities and businesses of tomorrow – the night features stories where Hovermap and Emesent GX1 have supported scientific endeavor, as well as demonstrations of Emesent’s latest capabilities.
Attendance is free, but registration is required. Visit the Emesent Science Week Open Night event page for more information or to book your spot.