NavLive, an AI-driven 3D scanning company, has launched with £4 million in funding to bring its scanning technology to the defence and construction sectors.

While traditional surveying equipment often fails in environments where GPS is blocked or human access is dangerous, NavLive’s scanning technology will boost situational awareness and provide accurate spatial intelligence for defence and nuclear applications.

The technology enables tunnel and subterranean reconnaissance to map subterranean environments, support GPS-denied navigation and detect hidden underground threats, map risky terrain via drones, and rapidly scan critical infrastructure for mapping and inspection.

The funding round was led by Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE), with participation from SOSV, Oxford Capital Partners, Clearance Venture Partners, and others, alongside a £700K grant from Innovate UK.

Developed by academics in robotics research at the University of Oxford, NavLive’s handheld LiDAR scanner combines edge AI processing with real-time SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) to generate rich, high-accuracy 3D point clouds, even in GPS-denied or hazardous environments where conventional tools fall short.

Adaptable by design, the system can be mounted on personnel, drones, or robotic platforms to access complex, rapidly evolving spaces. This gives defence and security teams the ability to gather actionable spatial intelligence on the move, delivering the real-time situational awareness needed to make informed decisions in high-pressure operations.

NavLive has demonstrated its versatility and effectiveness in both defence and nuclear related use cases. In collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE) division, they deployed their scanners in nuclear decommissioning projects to map hazardous areas, detect structural changes, and overlay thermal data onto 3D models.

This capability offers unparalleled insights into hazardous, inaccessible environments, enabling safer and more efficient operations.

Chris, CEO of NavLive, said: “Defence teams face many of the same challenges we have successfully addressed in the nuclear sector: limited access, high-risk environments, and the urgent need for accurate spatial awareness.

Our key advantage is that we have on-edge capability meaning we can deploy locally and securely for sensitive applications. NavLive delivers real-time, high-fidelity scans that allow operators to act quickly and confidently, whether they are surveying a secure facility, assessing a tunnel network, or deploying robots in GPS-denied terrain.

This is about bringing better tools to those on the front lines of complex operations. With this funding, we’re expanding our technology to meet those challenges head-on.”