Video • From Einstein to Farming

From Einstein to Farming — Stanford's Integrity Beacon and the Formation of Novariant, Inc.

This 4-minute video tells the story of how Clark Cohen and fellow Stanford Aero-Astro graduate students augmented and repurposed the GPS-based spacecraft attitude and position control system they helped develop for the Stanford/NASA Gravity Probe B (GP-B) experiment for use in the automatic landing of aircraft and the automated steering of tractors for precision farming.

Gravity Probe B, the longest-running and perhaps most difficult physics experiment undertaken in the 20th century, tested Einstein's general theory of relativity using ultra-precise gyroscopes in a cryogenic spacecraft orbiting 400 miles above the Earth.

To implement their spin-off GPS precision positioning technologies from GP-B, Cohen et. al. formed the company Integrinautics—later renamed Novariant, Inc.