TITLE: What is the real life use of hyperbola?
QUESTION [20 upvotes]: The point of this question is to compile a list of applications of hyperbola because a lot of people are unknown to it and asks it frequently.

REPLY [3 votes]: Hyperbolas are used extensively in Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) analysis, which has many applications. For example, it is used for geolocation to determine the location of a vehicle relative to several radar emitters (e.g. passive geolocation of UAVs), localizing cellular phones without requiring a GPS fix (e.g. U-TDOA), or making "tapscreens" that can sense the precise location of a tap on a large display without expensive touchscreens (e.g. MIT's Tapper).
In TDoA, multiple sensors each detect the arrival time of a particular signal. The time differences between any two sensor measurements define a hyperbola of possible origin locations (since those are the points with a constant difference in distance to each sensor). Intersecting the hyperbolas gives you the position of the signal's source very quickly and precisely.