Apple has reportedly acquired Coherent Navigation, a San Francisco-based startup that is focused on hyper-accurate GPS technology and that may provide a shot in the arm to Apples mapping capabilities.

Coherent Navigations High Integrity GPS technology is supposedly granular enough to provide location information that is accurate to within a few centimeters, which, if integrated into Apple Maps, would significantly improve something the company has struggled with since phasing out Google Maps in 2012.

Coherent Navigation has worked on autonomous navigation and robotics projects in the past, as well as projects for the US Defence Department, most of which have involved combining mid-earth orbit GPS satellite data with low-earth satellite feeds to provide greater accuracy and higher signal integrity.

According to MacRumors, a number of the companys high-ranking employees including CEO Paul Lego have been working with Apple since the beginning of the year. The firms website has been taken offline, but on 30 April, the name servers for the domain were updated to point to Apples servers.

Exactly what the Coherent Navigation team is working on at Apple is still unclear, but Lego has confirmed that he is now a member of the Apple Maps team. Apple has made several mapping-based acquisitions over the past few years, snapping up the development teams behind Pin Drop, Hopstop, Broadmap and Locationary.

Apple has confirmed the acquisition to the New York Times, with a spokesperson stating that “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generall do not discuss our purpose or plans.”