Dr Bradford Parkinson, Hugo Fruehauf, Richard Schwartz and Anna Marie Spilker, who was standing in for her late husband, Professor James Spilker Jr, attended the ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

Earlier this year E&T interviewed the winners where they explained how the project originally came together in the 1970s and the complexities of the system, which uses atomic clocks and a constellation of satellites to provide users with their near-exact location on Earth.

Parkinson, often regarded as the ‘father of GPS’, led the development, design, and testing of the system.

Fruehauf developed a highly accurate, miniaturised atomic clock, a foundational component of the system that can also survive space conditions.

Schwartz engineered a satellite hardened to resist intense radiation in space, with a lifespan three times greater than expected.

Spilker was the main designer of the GPS civil signal and, with his team at Stanford Telecommunications, built the receiver that processed the first GPS satellite signals.

The Prince of Wales presented the accolade, on behalf of the Queen, to the award winners. It is estimated that four billion people around the world currently use GPS technology and receivers cost around $2.

GPS has an almost infinitely wide number of uses. Recently it has been used to track disease outbreaks, enable self-driving tractors and even sports teams are using it to improve their performance.

It uses a constellation of at least 24 orbiting satellites with ground stations and receiving devices.

Each satellite broadcasts a radio signal containing its location and the time from an extremely accurate onboard atomic clock.

GPS receivers need signals from at least four satellites to determine their position; they measure the time delay in each signal to calculate the distance to each satellite, then use that information to pinpoint the receiver’s location on Earth.

When he first learned of his award, Schwartz said: “Today, engineers around the world can still access that signal, for free, and use it to build creative solutions to benefit people around them.

“It took a great deal of collaboration to make the system work, and it’s great to see the next generation collaborating on innovative products now because of that.”

Spilker said her late husband had always said that “Engineering technology is the necessary catalyst for progress to world-changing benefits to humanity; it’s magic”.

Previous recipients of the award have been Robert Langer for his work in controlled-release large molecule drug delivery (2015) and Louis Pouzin, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen for their work on the internet and the World Wide Web (2013).

Dr Bradford Parkinson, Hugo Fruehauf, Richard Schwartz and Anna Marie Spilker, who was standing in for her late husband, Professor James Spilker Jr, attended the ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

Earlier this year E&T interviewed the winners where they explained how the project originally came together in the 1970s and the complexities of the system, which uses atomic clocks and a constellation of satellites to provide users with their near-exact location on Earth.

Parkinson, often regarded as the ‘father of GPS’, led the development, design, and testing of the system.

Fruehauf developed a highly accurate, miniaturised atomic clock, a foundational component of the system that can also survive space conditions.

Schwartz engineered a satellite hardened to resist intense radiation in space, with a lifespan three times greater than expected.

Spilker was the main designer of the GPS civil signal and, with his team at Stanford Telecommunications, built the receiver that processed the first GPS satellite signals.

The Prince of Wales presented the accolade, on behalf of the Queen, to the award winners. It is estimated that four billion people around the world currently use GPS technology and receivers cost around $2.

GPS has an almost infinitely wide number of uses. Recently it has been used to track disease outbreaks, enable self-driving tractors and even sports teams are using it to improve their performance.

It uses a constellation of at least 24 orbiting satellites with ground stations and receiving devices.

Each satellite broadcasts a radio signal containing its location and the time from an extremely accurate onboard atomic clock.

GPS receivers need signals from at least four satellites to determine their position; they measure the time delay in each signal to calculate the distance to each satellite, then use that information to pinpoint the receiver’s location on Earth.

When he first learned of his award, Schwartz said: “Today, engineers around the world can still access that signal, for free, and use it to build creative solutions to benefit people around them.

“It took a great deal of collaboration to make the system work, and it’s great to see the next generation collaborating on innovative products now because of that.”

Spilker said her late husband had always said that “Engineering technology is the necessary catalyst for progress to world-changing benefits to humanity; it’s magic”.

Previous recipients of the award have been Robert Langer for his work in controlled-release large molecule drug delivery (2015) and Louis Pouzin, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen for their work on the internet and the World Wide Web (2013).