Topcon, the $600-million Japanese supplier of optical instrumentation for construction and agriculture, recently announced its acquisition of Javad Positioning Systems, a developer of GPS products for the survey, construction, and agricultural machine control markets. Javad’s acquisition reflects the increasing importance of GPS as a tool in the trillion-dollar construction market. The new Topcon business unit will be called Topcon Positioning Systems.”This is the future of GPS,” Javad Ashjaee, founder of Javad and chief technology officer of the new Topcon unit, told our sister publication GLOBAL POSITIONING & NAVIGATION NEWS.